Water Security

Last week, widespread mob violence broke out in India’s high-tech capital, Bangalore, over a Supreme Court order that requires the state of Karnataka to release 15,000 cubic feet of water per second per day from the Cauvery river to the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu. The violence, which left two dead and hundreds arrested, stems from a decades-lo… Read more

Season’s Greetings! On behalf of In Asia’s editorial board and bloggers, we thank you for your engagement and continued readership throughout the year. This week we feature a countdown of the year’s most-read pieces: our top 10 blog posts on some of the most pressing events and issues in Asia throughout 2015. We return on January 6 with the first issue of 2016.

South Asia has witnessed rapid social and economic transformation over the last two decades. Undeterred by a global slowdown, the region’s economic growth rate is expected to remain at a respectable 6 and 6.4 percent for 2015 and 2016….

The latest United Nations World Water Development Report, released just ahead of World Water Day on March 22, warns that, by 2030, only 60 percent of the world’s demand for water will be met by existing resources at the current rate of use.

By 2050, South Asia’s population is expected to hit 2.2 billion, and as urban populations grow, estimates predict that all major population centers in the region will experience extreme seasonal or perennial water shortages. While the region supports more than 21 percent of the world’s population…

March 22 is World Water Day, and this year’s theme is focused on water and sustainable development. The relationship between water and development is particularly critical in the Asia-Pacific region, one of the most water-stressed regions in the world, and home to 61 percent of the world’s people, with a population expected to reach five billion by 2050.

2014 was a good year for regional cooperation in South Asia. In May, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s invitation to the heads of state of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries to attend his swearing-in ceremony…

Severe floods in the Kashmir region of Northern India and Pakistan over the past few weeks have taken 450 lives so far, and uprooted thousands of residents on both sides of the highly politicized border. Heavy monsoon rains caused the Chenab and Jhelum rivers (tributaries of the Indus River system) to overflow their banks…

Images of the major rivers of Asia – including the mighty Mekong that snakes through Southeast Asia and the Ganges and other revered rivers that bisect the subcontinent – might seem at odds with the sobering fact that Asia is the world’s driest…

In 2008, Nepal and India experienced one of the worst river disasters in their modern history, when the Kosi River breached an embankment flooding vast areas of terai Nepal and northeastern parts of Bihar, India. The floods caused tremendous loss of human life and property, affecting an estimated 50,000 Nepalis and 3.5 million Indians. A tributary of the Ganges and a transboundary river that flows through Tibet, Nepal, and India, the Kosi River is prone to seasonal variations in river flow and sediment discharge, resulting in frequent downstream floods.

By 2050, estimates predict that close to 70 percent of the world will live in cities. Asia is home to 17 of the 25 most densely populated cities in the world, and the mass migration from the countryside to Asia’s cities is “unprecedented in human history” and has significant environmental consequences, according to the Asian Development Bank.