More than 5 billion people could suffer water shortages by 2050 due to climate change, increased demand and polluted supplies, according to a UN report on the state of the world’s water.
“For too long, the world has turned first to human-built, or ‘grey’, infrastructure to improve water management.
Global demand has increased sixfold over the past 100 years and continues to grow at the rate of 1% each year.
Demand for water is projected to rise fastest in developing countries.
This was apparent in the São Paulo drought of 2014-15, which the city’s water authorities and scientists have linked to Amazon deforestation.
The key for change will be agriculture, the biggest source of water consumption and pollution.
This would also be crucial to reverse erosion and degradation, which currently affects a third of the planet’s land, a different UN study found last year.
The authors stress the goal is not to replace all grey infrastructure, because there are situations where there is no other choice, for example in building reservoirs to supply cities with water.
But they urge greater take-up of green solutions, which are often more cost-effective as well as sustainable.
They are staging an alternative forum in Brasília that puts greater emphasis on community management of water as a free public resource.

Lesser amounts (0.6 to 1.0 inch) dampened the central Appalachians, the Tennessee Valley, portions of the northern Intermountain West and southern Rockies, and most other sections of California outside the interior valleys and arid southeastern areas.
Dryness and drought expanded in some areas receiving relatively small rainfall totals, specifically portions of Florida outside the Panhandle, southeastern Georgia, and the northern and southeastern reaches of South Carolina.
South Dryness remained at bay across the Lower Mississippi Valley and southeastern Great Plains, although only light precipitation at best fell on western sections of the region.
Little or no precipitation fell on the remaining areas of dryness and drought in the Middle Mississippi Valley.
Drought intensity was degraded in many areas, with Exceptional Drought (D4) introduced in a patch of northern Oklahoma east of the Panhandle.
Extreme (D3) drought now covers a large swath across northeastern New Mexico, most of the Panhandle and adjacent areas in Texas, western Oklahoma, south-central and southwestern Kansas, and southeastern Colorado.
According to the National Agricultural Statistics Service, a large proportion of the winter wheat crop in several states is in poor or very poor condition, including 74 percent of the crop in New Mexico, 72 percent in Oklahoma, 53 percent in both Kansas and Texas, and 27 percent in Colorado.
West Outside the patches of moderate precipitation in California and adjacent Oregon, it was a dry week, with more than 0.5 inch of precipitation restricted to parts of Arizona and far southern Nevada.
Elsewhere, generally moderate precipitation (0.5 to 1.5 inches) is expected across western Oregon and in broad area covering the southern Appalachians, central Gulf Coast States, Middle Mississippi Valley, central Plains, and central and northern Rockies.
Abnormally warm weather is favored in southern Florida, the west half of the Gulf Coast, most of Texas, the southern High Plains, and the southern Rockies.

TOPEKA, Kan. — Kansas Gov.
Jeff Colyer has declared a drought emergency, warning or watch across the entire state.
Colyer signed an executive order Tuesday following several weeks of abnormally dry conditions in all 105 counties.
He declared an emergency for 28 southern Kansas counties and a warning for 29 other counties in central and southern Kansas.
The remaining 48 counties are under a drought watch.
See the full county breakdown here: Drought Emergency: Barber, Barton, Clark, Comanche, Edwards, Finney, Ford, Grant, Gray, Hamilton, Harper, Haskell, Hodgeman, Kearny, Kingman, Kiowa, Meade, Morton, Pawnee, Pratt, Reno, Rice, Sedgwick, Seward, Stafford, Stanton, Stevens, Sumner Drought Warning: Allen, Butler, Chautauqua, Chase, Cowley, Dickinson, Elk, Ellis, Ellsworth, Greeley, Greenwood, Harvey, Lane, Lincoln, Marion, McPherson, Montgomery, Morris, Neosho, Ness, Rush, Russell, Saline, Scott, Trego, Wallace, Wichita, Wilson, Woodson Drought Watch: Anderson, Atchison, Bourbon, Brown, Cherokee, Cheyenne, Clay, Cloud, Coffey, Crawford, Decatur, Doniphan, Douglas, Franklin, Geary, Gove, Graham, Jackson, Jefferson, Jewell, Johnson, Labette, Leavenworth, Linn, Logan, Lyon, Marshall, Miami, Mitchell, Nemaha, Norton, Osage, Osborne, Ottawa, Phillips, Pottawatomie, Rawlins, Republic, Riley, Rooks, Shawnee, Sheridan, Sherman, Smith, Thomas, Wabaunsee, Washington, Wyandotte The order directs state agencies to combat drought conditions.
It also opens up land in the federal Conservation Reserve Program for cattle grazing and temporarily lifts height and weight restrictions on trucks for easier shipping of hay into drought-stricken areas.
Colyer said the state must act because conditions are not expected to improve and “we need to get ahead of this as early as possible.”

Gov.
Jeff Colyer signs an executive order Tuesday afternoon declaring drought emergency, warnings and watches for all 105 Kansas counties.
Thad Allton, Special to the HDN By Tim Carpenter / Special to the HDN Gov.
Jeff Colyer joined the administration’s agriculture and water officials Tuesday to sound an alarm about evidence of drought in 28 counties and moisture shortages in 29 southwestern Kansas counties.
“The entire state of Kansas has been considered in drought or abnormally dry conditions for the past several weeks,” he said.
The most imperiled region is the block of counties running from Hamilton County in the west across to an arc shouldered by Barton, Rice, Reno, Sedgwick and Sumner counties.
The warning zone covers a swath one to four counties deep from the Colorado line over to Cowley, Chautauqua, Montgomery, Neosho and Allen counties.
The least threatened area includes counties on the Nebraska line, a large cluster of counties in northeast Kansas and the band of counties along the Missouri border.
In the past six months, state officials said, average precipitation in Kansas was 66 percent of normal rates.
In addition to the executive orders, Colyer said the administration would begin the process of seeking permission for farmers or ranchers to cut hay or graze livestock on land enrolled in the federal conservation reserve program.

Recently, Gov.
Jeff Colyer signed a drought declaration for all 105 counties in the state of Kansas to provide assistance to farmers and ranchers as they cope with the impact the drought will continue to have on crops and livestock.
This action activates the disaster response efforts at the state level and provides authority for the deployment and use of personnel, supplies, equipment, materials or facilities available to aid the drought response.
Importantly, this declaration will temporarily suspend certain motor carrier rules and regulations in order to expedite efforts to transport hay to livestock in drought-stricken areas.
In addition, the governor issued letters to the Kansas State executive director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency and all county executive directors to encourage them to act quickly to review the situation on the ground and consider making a request to permit the use of acres enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program for haying and grazing.
The U.S. Drought Monitor, used to track drought across the United States, identifies general areas of drought and labels them by intensity.
The Kansas Drought Response team utilizes this data along with projections from other sources to make recommendations about necessary action for drought conditions.
See the latest from the U.S. Drought Monitor at www.droughtmonitor.unl.edu.
Agriculture makes up 45 percent of the state’s economy, and contributes $68 billion to our state.
When the state experiences a drought, it can impact each and every Kansan, and KDA will continue to work with farmers and ranchers and all of our partners in agriculture to help provide access to the resources they need to cope with crop losses and impacts on livestock.

Oregon Gov.
Kate Brown spoke with a roomful of local leaders, irrigators and representatives of the Klamath Tribes on Tuesday morning at the Klamath County Government Center in downtown Klamath Falls before signing an Executive Order approving a drought declaration in Klamath County.
“We are very concerned about the upcoming summer season, the impacts on agriculture, livestock, natural resources, the economy,” Brown said, noting impacts could be “significant” during what she anticipates will be a “record-breaking” drought year.
Standing nearby Brown as she signed the order were County Commissioners Donnie Boyd, Kelley Minty Morris and Derrick DeGroot, as well as state Rep. E. Werner Reschke, R-Klamath Falls, state Sen. Dennis Linthicum, R-Klamath Falls, Klamath Tribes Chairman Don Gentry, Klamath Falls City Mayor Carol Westfall and Klamath County DA Eve Costello.
The in-person signing made good on a commitment she made to Boyd and Klamath Water Users Association Executive Director Scott White last month.
Brown is directing state agencies to coordinate and prioritize assistance to the region, and said continuing to work with federal partners on assistance is “critical.” Federal assistance Seeking solutions Klamath Tribes’ focus Irrigator impact With dry conditions, despite a rainy Tuesday, that is not the case this year for Robison.
He said he would like to plant 150 acres this year, but he said it’s not “concrete” yet because of the drought.

The extreme wet and dry periods Mongolia has experienced in the late 20th and early 21st centuries are rare but not unprecedented and future droughts may be no worse, according to an international research team that includes a University of Arizona scientist.
The 10 researchers then combined that information on past climate with computer models that can project future regional climate.
Finding that future droughts would likely be no worse than those of the past was a surprise, said Anchukaitis, who led the modeling team.
Mongolia’s rainy season is in the summer, the warmer time of the year, whereas California and the Mediterranean have winter rains and dry summers.
As global temperatures increase, continental regions with summer rains may get more precipitation, offsetting the effects on plants of higher temperatures.
The team’s research paper, "Past and Future Drought in Mongolia," is scheduled for online publication in Science Advances on March 14.
This new research is an outgrowth of previous research he, Hessl and their colleagues conducted to figure out how past climate influenced the Mongol civilization.
Anchukaitis and his colleagues used their tree-ring record of past climate in Mongolia to reconstruct what the annual Palmer Drought Severity Index, or PDSI, would have been going back in time 2,060 years.
Even with the highest level of greenhouse gas emissions and rising global temperatures, the model simulations indicate that future droughts in Mongolia would be no more severe than those of the past.
More information: "Past and future drought in Mongolia," Science Advances (2018).

Governor Jeff Colyer recently issued Drought Declarations for Kansas counties with Executive Order 18-11 at a press conference with Secretary of Agriculture Jackie McClaskey and Kansas Water Office Director Tracy Streeter.
The declaration includes all 105 counties either in an emergency, warning or watch status.
“The entire state of Kansas has been considered in drought or abnormally dry conditions for the past several weeks,” said Governor Colyer.
“This has led to an extremely high risk of fire hazards and many have already occurred.” The drought declaration placed 28 counties in emergency status, 29 into a warning status and 48 into a watch status.
Over the past six months the state-wide average precipitation was only 66 percent of normal and in January and February the state-wide average precipitation was even less, at 43 percent of normal.
“While wildfires are the most urgent concern at this point, water supplies can be dramatically impacted in a very short period of time, especially as we start to enter into spring and summer months,” said Streeter.
“The Governor’s Drought Response Team will continue to monitor the situation closely as future outlooks call for drought persisting and make recommendations to the governor as necessary.” McClaskey remarked on the potential impact the drought could have on Kansas agriculture, saying “The Kansas Department of Agriculture is committed to serving Kansas farmers and ranchers, especially during challenging times like the current drought.
Drought Emergency: Barber, Barton, Clark, Comanche, Edwards, Finney, Ford, Grant, Gray, Hamilton, Harper, Haskell, Hodgeman, Kearny, Kingman, Kiowa, Meade, Morton, Pawnee, Pratt, Reno, Rice, Sedgwick, Seward, Stafford, Stanton, Stevens and Sumner.
Drought Warning: Allen, Butler, Chautauqua, Chase, Cowley, Dickinson, Elk, Ellis, Ellsworth, Greeley, Greenwood, Harvey, Lane, Lincoln, Marion, McPherson, Montgomery, Morris, Neosho, Ness, Rush, Russell, Saline, Scott, Trego, Wallace, Wichita, Wilson and Woodson.
Drought Watch: Anderson, Atchison, Bourbon, Brown, Cherokee, Cheyenne, Clay, Cloud, Coffey, Crawford, Decatur, Doniphan, Douglas, Franklin, Geary, Gove, Graham, Jackson, Jefferson, Jewell, Johnson, Labette, Leavenworth, Linn, Logan, Lyon, Marshall, Miami, Mitchell, Nemaha, Norton, Osage, Osborne, Ottawa, Phillips, Pottawatomie, Rawlins, Republic, Riley, Rooks, Shawnee, Sheridan, Sherman, Smith, Thomas, Wabaunsee, Washington and Wyandotte.

Kate Brown’s news release said at the end of February, the snow-water equivalent in Klamath County was 40 percent of a normal water year, and forecasted water conditions are not expected to improve.
Drought, severe weather conditions, and the upcoming fire season are significant threats to the local economy, agriculture and livestock, natural resources, and recreation in the county.
Oregon Gov.
She met with Klamath County officials, tribal members, and water users to discuss options for immediate drought relief, and while Brown committed the state to a locally supported, comprehensive resolution of conflicts over water and land in the Klamath Basin, she asked federal officials to commit to this, as well.
"We know 2018 is shaping up to be a very difficult year for the Klamath Basin, and we’re closely monitoring drought conditions here and statewide," she said.
"I am committed to doing everything possible to make state resources available to provide immediate relief and assistance to water users throughout Klamath County.
As a result, drought, severe weather conditions, and the upcoming fire season are significant threats to the local economy, agriculture and livestock, natural resources, and recreation in the county.
Her declaration makes available several drought-related emergency tools for water users, including assistance to local water users, and allows the Water Resources Department to expedite review processes and reduce fee schedules.
The release said a request for federal assistance has been made and is supported by members of Oregon’s congressional delegation.
On Feb. 20, the Klamath County Commission had declared a drought emergency due to low snowpack, low precipitation, low streamflows, and warmer-than-normal temperature, asking for a state drought declaration.

Water is a resource that citizens have a strong tendency to take for granted.
Swindle has a special insight into the matter as he’s a geology professor with knowledge of, among other topics, water issues.
Derby residents usually consume 100 gallons.
With that in mind, council members approved a new, updated plan.
“This is more of apples to apples,” he said of the relationships between Derby and Wichita, which supplies the city’s water.
Under the plan, there are three conservation stages.
They are: Stage 1 – voluntary conservation; Stage 2 – mandatory restrictions; and Stage 3 – a water emergency.
Under the plan, there are a system of “triggers” that set off the stages.
Under emergency conditions, no lawn watering would be allowed.
A sign must be posted in front of the property to alert authorities that the homeowner has well water.