LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Drought-stricken Cape Town could run out of water as soon as April, but South Africa is not alone in its struggle as ever more world cities battle acute water shortages.
Water scarcity already affects more than 40 percent of the world’s population and is expected to rise due to global warming, with one in four people projected to face chronic or recurring shortages by 2050, according to the United Nations.
Following are some of the crisis cities:
The reservoir supplying Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city and a metropolitan region of 20 million people, nearly dried up in 2015, as the country faced its worst drought in 80 years, depriving many residents of water for 12 hours a day.
The city has been working to improve watersheds in the Andes mountains, while residents in hillside shantytowns overlooking the city have been using nets to condense thick fog from the Pacific Ocean into drainage pipes.
Amman, the capital city of Jordan, has no nearby source of water and regularly experiences drought, while its lower-lying parts are inundated when it rains heavily.
The government is moving ahead with new pipelines for groundwater and projects to desalinate water from the Red Sea.
Built on what was once a lake, it is also prone to flooding.
The Australian city suffered the so-called ‘Millennium drought’ between 1997 and 2009.
Originally planned to support about 1 million people, the Afghan capital is now home to more than 4.6 million, according to U.S. government estimates.

NAIROBI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – About 6.2 million people in Somalia – half the population – need emergency aid, such as food, water and shelter, due to unprecedented drought and ongoing conflict, the United Nations said on Wednesday, appealing for $1.6 billion.
The drought – spanning four consecutive poor rainy seasons – has forced millions from their homes and left hundreds of thousands of children malnourished.
One in four people in the Horn of Africa nation faces the risk of hunger.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said donors raised enough funds in 2017 to avert famine and stave off an outbreak of cholera, but the situation was set to worsen this year without sufficient aid.
Somalia’s 2011 famine killed 260,000 people, half of whom died before the official declaration of famine, caused by drought, war and lack of access for humanitarian aid.
Its weak, Western-backed government is struggling to assert control over poor, rural areas under the Islamist militant group al Shabaab – challenging the delivery of aid to the most needy.
Somali Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khayre thanked the international community for the $1.3 billion raised last year, but warned there was no room for complacency.
“We face similar challenges and risks this year and the years to follow,” said Hassan.
“Drought and conflict will continue to affect the lives of millions of Somalis.
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“These leaves are used to treat stomach aches,” Nzarayebani says with a smile.
“You either boil the leaves, then drink the water, or you can chew the leaves raw and swallow the juice.
These leaves are good for treating any kind of stomach upset.” But such medicinal plants are growing rarer in Zimbabwe these days.
But one of the most serious problems appears to be the country’s lengthening droughts, associated with climate change.
But those plants are disappearing.
He said he still held out hope that some would return if rains remain good.
“We are worried that our source of medicines is fast disappearing,” Mutasa told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“I used to get a plant known locally as mutsombori to treat various sicknesses at the wetland nearby but due to the droughts experienced in the past years the wetland is gone and the plants are gone too.” He said prolonged droughts appear to have killed even the underground tubers or bulbs that had once helped plants regenerate once rains returned.
“The plants are disappearing, both fruit and herbal medicines, but we cannot do anything.
Lawrence Nyagwande, a plant expert with Environment Africa, an environmental organization based in Zimbabwe, said there was little doubt that droughts linked to strengthening climate change were a big contributor to the loss of Zimbabwe’s medicinal plants.

NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Flint was drowning in empty bottles after a toxic water scandal became the latest crisis to hit the Michigan town – this week it fought back with a project that transforms its plastic waste into a hip new line of clothes.
The impoverished community of 100,000, once a thriving manufacturing behemoth, drew national attention in 2015 when research revealed residents were exposed to dangerously high levels of lead in their running water.
Bottled water became a safe alternative, alongside water filters.
The idea is as much about creating objects of beauty as about reviving some of Flint’s lost manufacturing luster, as chronicled by Michael Moore’s acclaimed movie “Roger & Me” about the shutdown of its local auto plants.
Flint has faced a run of crises, sinking deep into depression after its car industry shrank, becoming known for high crime rates, dangerous living and for its city falling into financial emergency.
The public health crisis created by the city’s tainted water affected thousands of residents, causing an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease, and led to the unsightly bottle buildup.
“I said ‘How can something that is emblematic of a bad situation leave Flint and return as something that is about the principle of hope and regeneration?
(Courtesy Ben Premeaux) Inspiration came after the conceptual artist visited Flint last year, and found women stitching hospital scrubs and other garments on a basketball court, part of a community project.
Containers designed to collect empty water bottles as part of Flint Fit, an art project to recycle the bottles and transform them into a clothing line, are seen in this October 30th, 2017 photo.
The Flint Fit collection will premiere at the Queens Museum in New York City with a fashion show and exhibition, expected to take place next April, Chin said.

He used to grow maize and beans, but irregular and insufficient rainfall meant he harvested very little – five bags of maize at most per season, which earned him 10,000 Kenyan shillings ($96) at the market.
Joseph Mureithi, director of the organization, said that “rain-fed staple farming is becoming increasingly difficult in Kenya due to poor rainfall, whereas growing fodder can help farmers withstand prolonged drought.” For two years Mutisya has been growing Rhodes grass to supplement his income.
He sells grass bales to herders for 200 Kenyan shillings ($2) each, and makes up to 200,000 Kenyan shillings ($1,930) per season.
Thomson Reuters Foundation/Kagondu Njagi Mutisya said the growing demand for fodder from herders in times of drought is what makes it such an attractive proposition for subsistence farmers like him.
“Pastoralists are realizing that in dry weather it is better to buy fodder for their livestock instead of walking long distances in search of pastures, and risk their animals dying along the way,” he explained.
Our livestock die,” he said, pointing to the village path littered with rotting animal carcasses.
Melita now buys about 60 hay bales every month, which he says allow him to keep his livestock fed and alive, even in dry weather.
The herders’ group has been encouraging people to sell some of their animals during drought, to buy fodder or pay for family food or school fees.
“Pastoralists rely on fodder grown by farmers.
Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience.

CHEMORA, Algeria (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Squinting under a relentless sun, Houssin Ghodbane watches his son tend a flock of 120 of their sheep.
Fifty-year-old Ghodbane, his tanned face etched with deep lines, has been herding sheep for 20 years, having inherited the job and land from his father. But in this dry region, worsening cycles of drought are posing new challenges to an old profession.
The country is also facing higher temperatures.
“Drought stops everything,” he said.
Algeria’s government has tried to help herders, including by providing limited subsidies to offset some of their increasing costs for water and feed.
Ghodbane, who was born on the land he now farms, says the seasons are changing, with longer summers interfering with the spring and fall rains that are crucial to strong harvests and herding years.
After graduating from high school, he followed in his father’s footsteps and has worked on the farm full time for the past five years, herding animals from six in the morning to eight in the evening.

NAGAPATTINAM, India (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Vinod Kumar remembers a time, not so long ago, when the fields in his village in the southern state of Tamil Nadu were green all year round.
In Nagapattinam, in the Cauvery river delta region of southeast India, drought and irregular rainfall have blighted lives for about a decade now.
Now, as the water table falls from overuse, he is only able to pump enough water to cultivate half his land. Lush green rice paddies lie on one side of the road, barren fields on the other.
“Today, you have to pay more, go 200-250 feet to hit water. Plus there are barely any men left here to work on the fields,” he said.
Still, tens of millions of people – mostly young men – have moved to cities for work in the last decade, analysts estimate, leaving behind women and children and the elderly to eke out a living from the land.
His family, like hundreds of other low-caste families in the district, does not own any land of its own.
We can no longer depend on the land like we used to,” he said on a visit home, to a modest hut by the side of a dry irrigation ditch.

Poor rains in Kenya deepens drought, children go hungry – UNICEF.
NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – The number of children in need of life-saving aid continues to grow in Kenya amid one of most punishing droughts in years and another disappointing rainy season, the United Nations’ children agency said on Friday.
With crops failing and livestock producing too little milk, nearly 370,000 children across the East African country aren’t getting enough to eat, an increase of 30,000 from February, UNICEF said.
Kenya’s northern Turkana and Marsabit counties, home to pastoralist communities, have been hardest hit, with one in three children there acutely malnourished.
UNICEF, which is giving aid to the Kenyan government to overcome the effects of the drought, said hunger was spreading faster than its humanitarian assistance.
“We have reached 60 percent more children with life-saving assistance in the first half of 2017 compared to 2016, yet more and more children are becoming malnourished,” said Werner Schultink, UNICEF’s representative in Kenya, in a statement.
Now in its third month, the strike over poor pay has led to patients being sent away from some hospitals.
UNICEF called for more resources not only to keep children healthy and nourished, but also tackle knock-on effects of the food crisis, such as children being pulled out of school as their families flee the drought and others being sent to work.
Kenya has lowered its 2017 economic growth forecast to 5.5 percent due to drought and political uncertainty, a top official said on Friday.
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Poor rains in Kenya deepens drought, children go hungry: UNICEF.
NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – The number of children in need of life-saving aid continues to grow in Kenya amid one of most punishing droughts in years and another disappointing rainy season, the United Nations’ children agency said on Friday.
With crops failing and livestock producing too little milk, nearly 370,000 children across the East African country aren’t getting enough to eat, an increase of 30,000 from February, UNICEF said.
Kenya’s northern Turkana and Marsabit counties, home to pastoralist communities, have been hardest hit, with one in three children there acutely malnourished.
UNICEF, which is giving aid to the Kenyan government to overcome the effects of the drought, said hunger was spreading faster than its humanitarian assistance.
“We have reached 60 percent more children with life-saving assistance in the first half of 2017 compared to 2016, yet more and more children are becoming malnourished,” said Werner Schultink, UNICEF’s representative in Kenya, in a statement.
Now in its third month, the strike over poor pay has led to patients being sent away from some hospitals.
UNICEF called for more resources not only to keep children healthy and nourished, but also tackle knock-on effects of the food crisis, such as children being pulled out of school as their families flee the drought and others being sent to work.
Kenya has lowered its 2017 economic growth forecast to 5.5 percent due to drought and political uncertainty, a top official said on Friday.
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Tanzanian city gets new sewage scheme to curb disease, ocean pollution.
DAR ES SALAAM, Sept 11 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – For Andrew Kilula, the wastewater perpetually seeping from his toilet presents a daunting and costly challenge.
“When my children step in it, they get sick.
The father of six, who lives in the Kigogo area of Dar es Salaam, about 20 minutes by car from the centre of Tanzania’s biggest city, has no choice other than to discharge the sludge from his toilet in the nearby Msimbazi River.
Most residents in this crowded neighbourhood lack access to sanitation services, such as cesspits emptied by private firms.
”I honestly don’t like to pollute the river’s water, while I know people use it for growing vegetables,” said the carpenter.
A network of sewage pipelines linking different city suburbs will also be installed, the government said.
As one of Africa’s fastest-growing cities, with 70 percent of its 4.4 million residents living in informal settlements, Dar es Salaam is highly vulnerable to water-borne diseases.
In the centre of Dar es Salaam, the existing sewage network often becomes overwhelmed during the rainy season, forcing effluent to overflow and exposing residents to health risks.
DAWASA’s Mwang’ingo said the rest of the solid waste will be turned into manure to fertilise city farms and gardens, while treated water from the sewage plants will be used for irrigation and cooling industrial machinery, among other purposes.