How do countries that share cross-border rivers respond to periods of abnormally low water availability? This article argues that understanding whether countries react cooperatively or conflictually to within-basin shortages is just as important as identifying the influence of cross-basin differences in absolute availability. To study the effects of within-basin, relative scarcity, the article ...

Rice is the staple food and rice production consumes about 50% of the fresh water resources in China. In addition, drought is one of the most important constraints in rice resulting in large yield losses and limiting the average yield increase of the country. There is an urgent need to enhance water-saving (W) capacity or drought resistance (DR) of rice. WDR varieties can be developed through i...

Conventional techniques for assessing and monitoring water quality have been primarily based either on the use of living material as “bioindicators” or on the employment of analytical measurements to provide information about the physical and chemical status of aquatic ecosystems. The former have predominantly utilised the presence of selected species to indicate the quality of waters in which ...

This inequality is especially critical for Asia, which has 60% of the world’s population but only 36% of the world’s water. Water quality in terms of pollutant loading also is not distributed equally and is related to the type of use and a country’s level of development (Figure 2). Developing countries often have less capacity to improve water quality and depend on lower-quality water for a var...

The sufficient supply of food and energy requires large amounts of fresh water. Mainly required for irrigation, but also processing and cooling purposes, water is one of the essential resources in both sectors. Rising global population numbers and economic development could likely cause an increase in natural resource demand over the coming decades, while at the same time climate change might l...