Global Freshwater Crisis
Freshwater scarcity is reshaping global politics, agriculture, and public health, and this MIT OpenCourseWare course lays out why. The first half covers water systems, dams, water transfers, pollution, climate change, and the links between scarcity and conflict, including cases where shared rivers pushed nations toward cooperation instead of war. The second half turns to solutions: adaptive technologies, policy and planning tools, economic mechanisms, and the behavioral changes needed to manage a resource the U.N. projects will leave more than half the world's countries facing water stress by 2025. Field trips to water, wastewater, and biosolids reuse facilities, along with water-energy sites, ground the material in actual infrastructure rather than abstract projections. Materials include the full syllabus, readings, and assignments as published by MIT. No certificate is offered, but the complete course structure supports independent study of both the crisis and the engineering and policy responses to it.