Today marks the beginning of World Water Day, a three-day international conference designed to call attention to the lack of clean drinking water in many parts of the world.
This year's focus is on issues facing urban water supplies, and over a thousand representatives from more than 30 organizations have gathered in South Africa to discuss how cities will manage the increasing pressures on their water resources.
It's easy to forget about ongoing issues like water shortages when intense political upheavals under way in places like Egypt and Libya dominate the news and demand our attention. But it's actually all connected. Extreme water-security risks across the Middle East and North Africa could lead to further increases in global oil prices and heightened political tensions in the future, according to a new study, which rates the region as having the least secure water supplies in the world.
View the 18 nations ranked as having "extreme risk" water supplies here.
Read more at the Huffington Post.
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