Report identifies water priorities in foreign policy.
Photo: A girl fills jars with water in Rajasthan, India. Photo © J. Carl Ganter / Circle of Blue
By Brett Walton, Circle of Blue
To coordinate its response to floods, droughts, disease, and other water challenges whose political and economic consequences leap borders the Trump administration submitted the federal government’s first global water strategy. Ordered by Congress in 2014, the strategy lays out four goals: increase access to safe drinking water and sanitation, improve water management, protect watersheds from pollution, and prevent conflict over rivers, lakes, and aquifers that cross political boundaries.
“Safe water and sanitation are fundamental to solving challenges to human health, economic development, and peace and security,” the 70-page report states. For years the U.S. government has funded water wells and irrigation systems abroad and provided technical support to farmers, water managers, and political leaders from the Mekong to the Nile. The actions were piecemeal, though. The strategy released on November 15 is an attempt to align federal agency responses to increasing social and economic pressures from water scarcity, floods, and pollution. A string of warnings in the last five years from the State Department, Defense Department, and the […]
Full article: U.S. Government Releases First Global Water Strategy