Squeezing more out of taps: How Cape Town cut consumption in half

A new effort involving just about anyone who flushes a toilet from Lino Lakes to Woodbury is about to eclipse the scattered sprinkling limits and water-saving campaigns to rescue a shrinking White Bear Lake.

Water:Charity assumed that money and celebrity exposure would be able to solve the world’s access-to-clean-water crisis. But this approach often led to more abandoned water pumps. Charities – and journalists who cover them – are now working to concentrate on making their solutions sustainable.

Raton, a town once surrounded by eight coal mines, now has a main street of boarded-up buildings. There is reason for optimism as the town diversifies its local economy, betting on "a mix of small manufacturing businesses, health care and specialty services, and hospitality for travelers" to endure the sudden decline in mining revenue. Its calculated revitalization may hold lessons for other towns.

Fariel Salahuddin was determined to tackle the extreme lack of access to fresh water she encountered in rural Pakistani communities, but she wanted the model to be sustainable, not dependent on donations. Most of the communities didn't have regular access to rupees to help sustain their solar water pump micro-enterprises - what they did have, however, were goats. Salahuddin set up a scheme where villagers could pay for their clean water access with livestock instead of cash, which she then sells using Facebook at high rates during Muslim festivals to generate a sustainable revenue source.

Many herders are adapting to climate change by adopting farming. In the wake of severe droughts in recent years, herding communities in Ethiopia have expressed increasing interest in farming as a way to secure additional income. The non-profit organization, Farm Africa, helps herders to make the transition into farming by educating and assisting them with technical matters, such as irrigation, as well as aiding with financing and finding markets.

In Arizona, the use of drones as farming technology is gaining traction. While still in the early stages, drones have shown to help with field mapping and data collection on things like crop conditions, water quality, and infestations. In an area that has been experiencing a 2-decade drought, these drones are able to help identify more precisely the water needed for soil.

The Women’s Collective is a nonprofit that works with more than 10,000 subsistence farmers in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu to promote food security using millets, a crop resilient to drought and climate change. For Pavitra, one of those farmers, she began cultivating the ancient grains in 2015 and now has more than enough food to feed her family year-round. However, there’s a lack of public investment in millet production and machinery. And there’s no unified effort to create demand for millets: Some state governments lead the charge and in other states, it’s led by grassroots organizations.

A grass blend formulated specifically for northern Utah’s environment uses at least 30 percent less water than typical turf.

Lamakani, a small village in India, went barren and townspeople completely depended on water tankers after a drought in the 90s. One leader initiated a watershed movement. They applied a series of approaches which included things like watershed development, bans on grass grazing and tree falling, and collaborating with local artists to communicate messages of conservation. Now, the town is lush again.

New solar-powered irrigation systems in the Chotanagpur Plateau region in India are giving farmers more dependable water and allowing them to diversify their crops, allowing them to also grow their income. Many farmers from a local village used to migrate to other places to search for work, but a new irrigation system has allowed them to grow cauliflower for a competitive price. While the cost of buying and installing a solar-powered irrigation system can be high, this form of irrigation could be more climate-friendly and help stabilize crop production.