My first case study is about the water stresses that are occuring in South Africa, and how they can be addressed. The article details how much like the rest of the world, South Africa is experiencing many issues to its ongoing water crisis and how the implications of this can affect its national security. Many of the problems are caused by climate change. By developing new strategies and technologies, these problems can be solved in the future. In a forecast, the water demand in South Africa will have significantly outpaced its demand by the year 2035. In order to combat this, new implementations are being put in place that include groundwater extraction, waste water treatment, and new water conservation methods so that there is not a future where water is an issue. A link to the article can be found here: http://allafrica.com/stories/201602251643.html

The second I have chosen comes from Australia, where the country is experiencing the worst drought that has occurred in over one thousand years. In order to help resolve this situation, the country has taken steps in its conservation method in order to preserve the water. These have put a restriction on the water being used and has raised the price to 70 cents per kiloliter of water. In addition to this, the government is putting into place new construction of dams and other irrigation systems in order to keep the supply of water up. The regulation, however, had little success in one of their areas in that all owners of water were able to use their own demand as well as sell their water to make a profit. It did have success in preventing large scale extractions that would have otherwise caused large environmental effects. A link to the article can be found here:

http://personal.colby.edu/personal/t/thtieten/Gorman.htm

I picked these two articles because they relate to the area where I lived, Northern Cambria, PA last year when there was a drought in May of 2015. I come from a rural area and many farmers were concerned about the yield of their crops for that year due to this drought. One of the actions of this declaration called for a 5% decrease in water usage in order to preserve water. This connected to the Australian article in that they called for a restriction on their water usage whenever a drought has occurred. In addition to this, new methods were being used in order to conserve water for farming purposes that included reducing the evaporation from the soil where mulch would be left by plants as well as shading areas where soil is exposed. This also relates to the Australia article because new irrigation techniques were being adopted for water conservation. A difference between my hometown and the South African crisis is that they are looking for long term solutions to their problems, where my county and hometown only called for temporary solutions. There is a similar solution that South Africa is taking that would make it very similar to my hometown is that they are looking into adopting groundwater. My hometown sole water source is from groundwater.

Source:

http://www.wfmz.com/news/news-regional-berks/drought-in-pa-leaves-farmers-concerned/33278534