The Stream, July 2: New Modeling for Australia’s Murray-Darling River?

Australian state and federal water ministers have agreed for new modeling to be done on returning more environmental flows to the ailing Murray-Darling river system, ABC Radio Australia reported. As Circle of Blue has reported previously, the process to adopt new water use regulations for the basin has pitted states against states and environmentalists against irrigators in a hot-button debate about the best ways to manage Australia’s largest river system and prime food-growing region.

Hydraulic fracturing should be allowed to go ahead in the United Kingdom but should be better monitored and regulated, according to a new report by the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society, the Guardian reported.

Meanwhile, official advisers at the U.K. Committee on Climate Change have said that the government needs to multiply investment in clean energy and must resist a new “dash for gas,” according to the BBC.

China will invest about $27.5 billion before the end of 2015 to ensure safe drinking water in rural areas, Xinhua reported. As many as 298 million rural residents in the country still lack safe water, according to official reports.

Monsoon rains have forced rivers out of their banks and flooded more than 2,000 villages in northeast India, killing at least 27 people, washing away homes and leaving hundreds of thousands of residents trapped or isolated, Associated Press reported.

Melting permafrost in the Swiss Alps is causing rockfall and massive debris flows, and threatening mountain villages, according to Inter Press Service.

Is water the next global security threat?

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