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Pumped Dry: The Global Crisis of Vanishing Groundwater

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In places around the world, supplies of groundwater are rapidly vanishing. As aquifers decline and wells begin to go dry, people are being forced to confront a growing crisis.

Much of the planet relies on groundwater. And in places around the world – from the United States to Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America – so much water is pumped from the ground that aquifers are being rapidly depleted and wells are going dry.

Groundwater is disappearing beneath cornfields in Kansas, rice paddies in India, asparagus farms in Peru and orange groves in Morocco. As these critical water reserves are pumped beyond their limits, the threats are mounting for people who depend on aquifers to supply agriculture, sustain economies and provide drinking water. In some areas, fields have already turned to dust and farmers are struggling.

Climate change is projected to increase the stresses on water supplies, and heated disputes are erupting in places where those with deep wells can keep pumping and leave others with dry wells. Even as satellite measurements have revealed the problem’s severity on a global scale, many regions have failed to adequately address the problem. Aquifers largely remain unmanaged and unregulated, and water that seeped underground over tens of thousands of years is being gradually used up.

In this documentary, USA TODAY and The Desert Sun investigate the consequences of this emerging crisis in several of the world’s hotspots of groundwater depletion. These are stories about people on four continents confronting questions of how to safeguard their aquifers for the future – and in some cases, how to cope as the water runs out.

How Sea Cucumbers Can Help the Ocean

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Sea cucumbers are a prized aphrodisiac in China. But like many coastal species they have been chronically overfished. One remote community in Madagascar has started a pioneering coastal-farming project with astonishing results.

The Ocean is facing environmental catastrophe. Overfishing is a ticking time bomb for both planet and people.

In one remote coastal village the locals appear to have found an unlikely solution. A strange little sea creature that’s a popular aphrodisiac and just possibly a fisherman’s salvation. In the first business of its kind in Madagascar, Dadiny has recently started farming these animals. Sea cucumbers.

Sea cucumbers are under threat. Growing them in designated and contained areas is helping to protect both this important species and other kinds of marine life here in the south-west of Madagascar. Because of the part sea cucumbers play in cleaning up the seabed it’s believed that they help maintain stocks of other marine life.

In this region, not just sea cucumbers, but all kinds of marine life have suffered from chronic overfishing. When marine conservationist Alasdair Harris first visited Madagascar in 2001 he was shocked to discover the extent of this devastation. To reduce this overfishing the NGO that Alasdair runs helped train 700 local fishermen and women in small-scale sustainable sea-cucumber farming. It’s meant many locals are no longer using the techniques that contributed to overfishing in this region. Alasdair’s research suggests fish stocks have doubled here since 2006. But it is not marine conservation that has fundamentally persuaded the local population to buy into aquaculture – It’s hard economics.

There’s a strong demand for sea cucumbers in Asia where they’re prized as an aphrodisiac. Farmers here can now make up to $50 a month, about twice that of a regular fisherman. While this is still substantially below the average global wage, it’s brought dramatic improvements in the local quality of life. NGOs, including Alasdair’s, are now working on similar farming ventures in other coastal villages around Madagascar. Localised efforts can only go so far in countering the vast damage to ecosystems across the ocean.

But in the face of an increasingly urgent crisis that could still be a very long way.