An ongoing war in the north, a separatist rebellion in the south, and a revolution stirring in the capital-center may not measure up to the imminent catastrophe that lays ahead for Yemen: water extinction. In the coming century, Yemen’s water shortage will overshadow any of the challenges it faces politically or socio-economically.

More than three weeks since a magnitude 8.9 earthquake rumbled off the coast of Japan and sent 97-foot waves crashing inland, Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan has conceded that there will be a “long-term battle” to curb the damage caused by the radioactive leakage from a nuclear plant as the country executes post-disaster reconstruction.

It was the stuff of nightmares. Early morning on December 3rd, 1984, as an entire community slept their homes were invaded by a silent, lethal foe. Before daylight, thousands would perish in a “blinding, vomiting, lung-searing hell.” People trampled each other in their rush to escape, leaving the streets littered with the dead.

Aging chemical waste management facilities are found across Europe, relics of the Soviet era. Many have been decommissioned since the communist era, abandoned years ago with their toxins buried deep in the ground. Others, however, transitioned into the private sector during the 1990s, but are not operating under modern safety guidelines.

Pieces of rock from a dynamited boulder fly all over. An army of excavators, bulldozers, loaders, and scores of heavy machines dig through the giant Omo gorge in Southern Ethiopia near the Kenyan border.

Since the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti in January 2010, the world’s attention has turned to the Caribbean country. In only fifteen months, what started as an environmental disaster morphed into a humanitarian nightmare with international ramifications of the first order.