Entries by Keith Schneider

A Murder on South Africa Wild Coast Escalates Conflict Over Water, Land, Mining

Opposition leader assassinated in one of world’s dangerous clashes over industrial development.

South Africa Coal Projects Collide With Water Scarcity, Financial Turmoil

Keith SchneiderCircle of Blue’s senior editor and chief correspondent based in Traverse City, Michigan. He has reported on the contest for energy, food, and water in the era of climate change from six continents. Contact Keith Schneider http:/Circleofblue.org/about/staff/Keith

Without Water, South Africa Anticipates A Mammoth Crop Failure (Part Two)

Climate-related consequences are raising food prices, joblessness, crime, and instability.   Photo © Keith Schneider / Circle of Blue Royal palms flank a road between drought-withered sugar cane plantations in Pongola, KwaZulu-Natal. By Keith Schneider, Circle of Blue PONGOLA, South Africa — South Africa long ago accepted as scientific fact and impending reality the idea that […]

Without Water, South Africa Anticipates A Mammoth Crop Failure

Climate-related consequences are raising food prices, joblessness, crime, and instability. By Keith Schneider Circle of Blue PONGOLA, South Africa — On the last Friday of January, payday on the sugar cane farms of northern KwaZulu-Natal province, a hot sun beat down on the red clay of Cobus Horn’s equipment yard. Nduku Msimanga, taut and muscled […]

Durban Water and Sanitation For Poor Sets Global Standard

South African city’s water experimentation and innovation serves 1 million residents. By Keith Schneider, Circle of Blue DURBAN, South Africa — Arguably the most elegant aspect of an inelegant subject is how this city of 3.2 million residents, South Africa’s second largest, is solving monumental water and waste challenges in its jammed informal settlements. The […]

South Africa Crocodile Farm, Hurt By Drought, Is Where Gucci Bags Start

Metcroc farm is full of slow moving product that doesn’t bite….hard. Photo © Keith Schneider / Circle of Blue Juvenile crocs rest by a large pool in a kind of hyper-alert somnolence. Metcroc is one of the dozen or so croc farms that produce the bulk of the 45,000 skins that the United Nations estimates […]

South Africa Drought Draws A Frustrated Nation Together

In rare instance of unity, people eye government’s blunders, not each other. Photo © Keith Schneider / Circle of Blue Karsten Hinze fills a 500-liter tank from spring-fed water tanks at his brother’s farm for delivery to the homes of his mother and sister in Paulpietersburg, South Africa. He makes the trip every two weeks […]

Drought Pushes South Africa To Water, Energy, and Food Reckoning

Cities run dry and harvests retreat in an already reeling nation. Photo © Keith Schneider / Circle of Blue South Africa’s power sector supplies 91 percent of the nation’s energy from coal-fired power plants, most of them operating in Mpumalanga province, east of Johannesburg.  By Keith Schneider Circle of Blue PONGOLA, South Africa — January […]

2015 Biggest Trends: Water Scarcity Rises to Top Global Concern

After a year of deep droughts, worsening pollution, rising sea levels, and floods, water was finally recognized as perilous to nations and the international economy. By Keith Schneider Circle of Blue JOHANNESBURG — In the last days of 2015, the Famine Early Warning System Network, a forecasting tool, reported that the deepest drought experienced by […]

South African Power Plants Roiled By Water Scarcity and Global Pivot Away From Carbon

Bankruptcies, project shutdowns, regulation, and emission limits curb enthusiasm for fossil fuels. By Keith Schneider, Circe of Blue Images from space of the Kusile and Medupi power stations, under construction in South Africa, show rows of partially completed turbine plants, a pick-up sticks jumble of big tower cranes, and an armada of trucks. The stunningly clear […]