As floods increase, cities like Detroit are looking to green stormwater infrastructure

In the face of a prolonged drought, residents of Melbourne, Australia, cut water consumption in half by capturing rainwater and using efficient toilets and washing machines.

The River Basin Authority, which selects a few locations each year to provide potable water and sanitation interventions, completed development projects in Igbo that improved the community’s quality of life. To facilitate agricultural use of the vast land in the community, the authority constructed an access road to help farmers take their produce from their farms to local markets, where they can sell them to make a sustainable living. They also provided irrigation access and solar-powered boreholes to provide potable water, reducing the risk of water-borne diseases like cholera.

A government scheme in Pakistan involves the construction of water-harvesting dams in areas that experience droughts, which allows farmers in the region to use the irrigation water from the dams for their crops. One farmer is growing onions and wheat and because of the access to water, his income has increased more than 60 percent. There are concerns about how helpful the water from the dams will ultimately be in the arid region, but there are plans to build more dams in the next few years.

Western Kansas' finite Ogallala aquifer is the bedrock of an agricultural region that accounts for 10 percent of Kansas' economy. But thanks to decades of over-drafting for irrigation, the aquifer is on track to run dry in the not-so-distant future. Now some are calling for regional conservation, and some smaller programs have shown promise; however, the challenges of scalability and political wrangling remain vast.

The effects of climate change, such as rising sea levels and hotter global temperatures, are already having drastic impact on many communities, especially the rural, agricultural regions of countries such as Myanmar (formerly Burma) and Mozambique. Earthrise explores how people in these communities are learning new skills, implementing new techniques, and are striving in every way possible to adapt to these environmental changes while creating hope for sustainable growth in the future.

An AI-powered underwater sensor system developed by KMFRI and ShoShin Innovation Hub detects dangerous drops in dissolved oxygen in Lake Victoria and sends SMS alerts to fish farmers. This enabled them to move their cages in time and successfully averting a mass fish kill in February 2026 that would have threatened hundreds of tilapia cages at Dunga Beach.

Multiple agencies across Ohio's Mohican River Watershed are implementing a coordinated wetland restoration strategy to address the river's declining water quality. Through H2Ohio grant funding, local park districts, land conservancies and state agencies are converting hundreds of acres of former agricultural land back into wetlands. The H2Ohio wetland program has demonstrated measurable success, reducing 41,308 pounds of phosphorus per year in the Western Lake Erie Basin alone as of May 2025.

In a science class in a local New Jersey school, students came up with a green solution to a storm water management and flooding problem in their parking lot when it rained. With help from the Cooperative Extension Water Resources Program out of Rutgers University and funding from city agencies, they were able to build planters and install concrete to absorb the runoff. The project galvanized the community, encouraging the school to expand their STEM curriculum.

A greenhouse that is cooled by seawater and the wind is allowing farmers in Somaliland to grow crops like tomatoes and vegetables despite extreme heat. By creating an environment that is higher in humidity and cooler in temperature, plants don’t need to drink as much water — almost 10 times less water because of the cooling system. There are challenges to scaling the response, but these greenhouses offer farmers the potential to increase their revenue in Africa.

A California farm has successfully grown crops with the use of post-treatment water which the historically dry state has plenty of. Coco San Sustainable Farm is built on land that is reclaimed and uses free reclaimed water to irrigate its abundant produce. If wastewater reclamation was put into effect by the states $50 billion agricultural industry, it would relieve the water-strapped state’s constant water struggles.