‘This is an eye-opener’: Changes in global water supply hint at future conflicts and crises

Thursday, May 17, 2018

Wi in the media
Water Institute Executive Director Roy Brouwer spoke to the Globe and Mail on May 16 to provide comment on the new portrait of the world's water supply, gleaned from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE. The NASA-led mission, launched in 2002, returned 14 years' worth of satellite data that point to areas where the potential for conflict exists, as demand for water and the impacts of climate change escalate. The maps show shifting Canadian water supplies that include wetter, more flood-prone regions in many areas, but a general drying out in the western sub-Arctic.

“This is an eye-opener,” said Roy Brouwer, an economist and executive director of the University of Waterloo’s Water Institute who was not involved in the analysis. “It raises awareness that things are changing and that in some areas something has to happen to counter and anticipate some of the catastrophes that may be waiting for us in the not-so-far future.”

Read the full story on the Globe and Mail website.