'Water always wins' but 'slow' solutions to water scarcity are growing in popularity

Jul 12, 2022

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Human-made 'gray' infrastructure is crumbling, causing some urban areas to lose up to 40% of this precious resource: several major cities across the globe now regularly run out of water or have shortages. Yet our pervasive attempts to control water have actually made accessing it harder, especially as humanity faces the silmultaneously occurring biodiversity, climate and water crises.

Author and journalist Erica Gies joins the Mongabay Newscast to discuss her new book 'Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge.' She covers non-invasive solutions ('slow water') that could help humanity not just mitigate our water problems, but also restore biodiversity that's been degraded by 'gray' infrastructure.

Cities such as Chennai, India, are already embracing these slow water practices, many of which are rooted in traditional hydrological knowledge, while other areas like coastal Louisiana contemplate managed retreat from rising water. Solving water access and water infrastructure design isn't a simple one-size-fits-all solution, but there are many measures socieities could take today, and on a local level, to make things easier for us in the future.