The State of the World's Rivers

Newsbriefs

More than half of the

world’s rivers are either going dry or are polluted, according to the World Commission on Water for the 21^st Century. During 1998, for the first time ever, more people were displaced for want of useable water (“environmental refugees”) than those displaced by war: 25 million vs. 21 million war-related refugees. Among the most severe problems:

•The Yellow River in China is severely polluted and ran dry in its lower reaches 226 days during 1997.

•The Nile River in Africa (the world’s longest river) is more than 90% consumed by irrigation and evaporation from reservoirs by the time its highly polluted residue flows into the Mediterranean Sea.

•The Colorado River in the U.S. and Mexico is so depleted from agriculture and other withdrawals and so polluted from agricultural runoff that the once-lush ecosystems at its delta have been turned into salty, desolate marshes.