February 12, 2015 — The recent Global Opportunity Report listed lack of freshwater as one of the five biggest risks facing the world today. The World Economic Forum recently went a step further and named water crises the top risk facing the world in 2015. And with good reason — according to the World Water Council, globally 1.1 billion people lack access to safe, clean drinking water on any given day.

This new video from the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change & Security Program delves more deeply into the issue, showing how competition for this scarce resource in one of the world’s global water hot spots can lead to conflict among competing interests.

Filmed in Meghalaya, India, the documentary takes viewers to the front lines of one of the country’s water-energy-food conflicts by showing how rat hole coal mining affects downstream water usage.

The video illustrates up close the challenges of balancing economic development across multiple communities and stakeholders with water quality and environmental protection in a rapidly industrializing world.

As the headmaster of one of the villages in which fishing was harmed by water pollution says in a particularly poignant moment, “Why should [the coal miners’] livelihood come at the cost of ours?”

The documentary “Broken Landscape: Confronting India’s Water-Energy Choke Point” was produced by the Wilson Center and Circle of Blue for a series called Global Choke Point. The director/producer is Michael T. Miller.