A perfect stocking stuffer for active women, GoGirl allows the simple convenience of taking bathroom breaks standing up in situations where restrooms are unfit or nonexistent. (Photo: GoGirl)
Experts predict Israel will be first to go to war for control of the Litani River, then the Nile due to water shortages caused by climate change. And I agree.They've been stealing more than their share for years and getting away with it. Water will be the new oil of the 21st century. We were warned. A shame so many take this for granted.Experts predict Israel will be first to go to war for control of the Litani River,... more
Population discussions raise lots of hackles. And they bring the crazies out of the woodwork like termites when the Orkin Man appears. But I hope to post a series of pieces on population and water because we must stop ignoring the role of population in our environmental and water problems.
The amount of water on Earth is fixed. We’re not losing it to space and we’re not getting more (with negligible exceptions). The amount of water in a river basin or watershed is fixed. It goes up and down with natural variability, and it may change over time due to climate changes, but water is a renewable resources and our use of it does not affect the amount we get next year.
But population is not fixed. It is growing, and growing rapidly in some places. As a result, the amount of water available per person (”per capita”) is declining. Here is a simple example: assume that the average flow of water in a river basin is 10 million acre-feet per year and the population using that water is 20 million people. Then on average, the water available for use is around 450 gallons per person per day, if you could use it all (which would, of course, destroy the river ecosystem, but that’s another topic). If the population of the basin doubles to 40 million, the water availability per person drops in half, to around 225 gallons per person per day. If the population doubles again, water availability drops to just over 100 gallons per person per day.
The math is easy, but the consequences can be severe: abundance can become shortage. In simple terms, addressing water problems in the face of population growth come down to three choices: (1) increase the water supply, (2) decrease the water demand per person, or (3) change the number of people. Water policy in the past century focused only on increasing supply. Most of the work of the Pacific Institute has focused on the second because we believe the options for new supply in most places are increasingly limited, expensive, and environmentally damaging, and we see enormous potential for reducing demand. Almost no discussion, anywhere, focuses on the third choice. But the failure to address population in the long run will be disastrous. And the “long-run” is no longer so far away.
Water (Population) Numbers: While total water availability remains fixed, the population of the United States has grown from around 150 million in 1950 to over 305 million today. The population of California in 1950 was 10.5 million; today it is around 37 million. The population of the state of Georgia in 1950 was under 4 million; today it is approaching 10 million. The population of Jordan in 1960 was around a million; today it is 6 million. The population of Israel in 1960 was just over 2 million; today it exceeds 7 million. The population of Iraq in 1960 was around 7.3 million; today it exceeds 31 million.
Is it any wonder that California’s, or Georgia’s, or the Middle East’s water problems have worsened?
In a recent paper, Richard Seager of Columbia and his colleagues analyzed the recent drought in the southeastern United States. This drought led to water use restrictions, depleted flows in the major river basins of the region, and growing political tensions over water sharing between Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. The authors of this paper concluded that the recent drought in the Southeast was not climatologically different from past droughts, but was felt more severely largely due to the growth in population in the region. In July, a Federal judge ruled that Atlanta had to fundamentally change the way it obtains its water, and noted that
“Too often, state, local, and even national government actors do not consider the long-term consequences of their decisions. Local governments allow unchecked growth because it increases tax revenue...
more at the link
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dr. Peter Gleick is president of the Pacific Institute, an internationally recognized water expert and a MacArthur Fellow.Population discussions raise lots of hackles. And they bring the crazies out of the... more
The Gaza Strip's underground water supplies are "in danger of collapse" following years of overuse and a devastating war Israel waged in the territory at the turn of the year, the UN said Monday.
"The underground water supplies, upon which 1.5 million Palestinians depend for agriculture and drinking water, are in danger of collapse," the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said in a statement accompanying a new report.
"Unless the trend is reversed now, damage could take centuries to reverse. Since the aquifer is a continuum with Israel and Egypt, such action must be coordinated with these countries," the report says.
Israel and Egypt have sealed off the impoverished territory to all but basic goods since the Islamist Hamas movement seized control in June 2007, severely hampering the upkeep of basic infrastructure.
The sewage system has been particularly hard-hit, as Israel does not allow the import of virtually any pipes or other metal equipment that it fears could be used by Palestinian militants to construct improvised rockets.
The UN report estimates that restoring the aquifer beneath Gaza could require 1.5 billion dollars (a billion euros) over 20 years, including the construction of desalination plants to take pressure off underground sources.
The report said overextraction was causing seawater to seep into the freshwater aquifer, sending salinity levels across the territory above the 250 milligrammes per litre considered safe by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The UN researchers also found high levels of nitrates that exceeded WHO guidelines of 50 milligrammes per litre, with one site rising to 331.
High nitrate concentrations in water have been linked to a form of anaemia known as "blue baby syndrome," the report said.
The report also expressed concern about the state of Gaza's landfills, saying it found large amounts of exposed hazardous medical waste "in part as a result of an increased level of casualties" during the war.
More than 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed in December and January when Israel carried out a massive military offensive on the territory in a bid to stem Palestinian rocket attacks.The Gaza Strip's underground water supplies are "in danger of collapse" following... more
More than 800,000 people have lost their livelihoods in a four-year dry spell exacerbated by climate change and rising food prices. Almost half of them live in urban makeshift camps.
Deraa, Syria - The acute drought that has driven an estimated 300,000 Syrian farmers, herders, and their families to abandon home for makeshift urban camps may not be the worst in the region's history; the Fertile Crescent has often experienced cycles of drought.
But now climate change, an exploitation of water resources, and higher food prices brought about by the global financial crisis have all severely sharpened the impact of this dry spell, now in its fourth year. The numbers of Syrians affected – an estimated 1.3 million, 803,000 of whom have entirely lost their livelihoods – point to a serious humanitarian crisis.
With Syria's population expected to triple by 2025, the severity of the drought presents yet another challenge for a leadership isolated internationally and struggling at home to maintain a broken state system while slowly introducing capitalism.
"It's going to underline for the everyday person the vulnerabilities and inadequacies of the Syrian state," says Joshua Landis, codirector of the University of Oklahoma's Center for Middle East Studies.
Mass emigration compounds Iraqi refugee crowding
Shams Asa Mousa is already too familiar with those.
For more generations than she can remember, her family has grown wheat in Syria's Euphrates river valley. But as a result of the drought, they left their home in the eastern part of the country. Now, she and most of her 10 children sit idle in a tent made of wheat sacks outside of the southern city of Deraa near the Jordanian border, swatting flies, hundreds of miles away from their family home.
The mass migration toward Syria's cities, already overwhelmed with Palestinian and Iraqi refugees, is only the most urgent of the drought's consequences, which also include wide-spread malnutrition, increased illness, and school dropout rates, according to a recent United Nations report.
Asa Mousa's family has been living at the camp for three months without running water and only spurts of stolen electricity, subsisting on bread, rice, yoghurt and sugared tea.
She says no tangible help has come except for a government official who offered the family 20 percent of their Deraa income to return home. The family declined the offer.
"We are totally forgotten," says Asa Mousa. "Sometimes we feel like no one knows we are here."More than 800,000 people have lost their livelihoods in a four-year dry spell... more
This is just sad. Their farmland now fallow and dry, sits there, dead. We better begin to connect the dots because the same scenario is unfolding in California and the Midwest here. My question is, will the Copenhagen summit this December even address this? Will the poor even have a voice?This is just sad. Their farmland now fallow and dry, sits there, dead. We better begin... more
Maude Barlow gives a talk regarding the global water crisis and her new book, Blue Covenant. She is the national chairperson of The Council of Canadians, co-founder of the Blue Planet Project, and was recently named Senior Advisor on Water Issues by the President of the 63rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly.Maude Barlow gives a talk regarding the global water crisis and her new book, Blue... more
The agricultural giant Monsanto may well still be the world's most hated company. The company that brought the world Agent Orange, the defoliant of choice in the Vietnam War, followed up a decade ago with a strident push to flood the world with genetically modified crops. It alienated millions – and even its friends and rivals among GM supporters blamed Monsanto's belligerence for putting back the cause by many years. But I'm going to ignore GMs and talk about water. And belligerence.
In part, no doubt, to help salvage its GM-tarnished reputation, Monsanto now makes great play of its efforts to help engineer a second green revolution built around "sustainability".
Sustainability is a much-abused term and it infiltrates almost every corner of the company's website. But to be fair they do try and define what the word means for its business. The company promises that its "sustainable yield initiative" will "reduce by one-third per unit produced the aggregate amount of key resources such as land, water and energy, required to grow crops by 2030."
Many analysts now see water, rather than land, as the key limitation on growing food to feed a future world population of nine billion in the coming decades. So a third more crop for the same amount of water is a valuable goal. The company trumpets especially its work to engineer more water-efficient maize.
Of course, despite the company's public pledge to "share knowledge and technology" the company's corporate aim is to make sure that farmers buy Monsanto-patented water-efficient seeds by the trillion.
But you would expect Monsanto to be especially sensitive about how it manages water in its own farming operations, and particularly to show concern for how neighbouring farmers are facing up to water shortages. Wouldn't you?
The scene shifts to the Hawaiian island of Molokai. This is an old stomping ground of Monsanto's. It is the largest employer and the island is sometimes known as "the birthplace of biotechnology" and "the Silicon valley of the seed corn industry".
This is where Monsanto does a lot of its research into GM crops such as maize, and where it grows many of the seeds it sells to farmers round the world.
Nature on Molokai has suffered badly from the invasion of Monsanto and other big-farm companies. In recompense, Monsanto puts money into a Nature Conservancy programme on the island to "preserve biodiversity and protect water sources".
The company has nonetheless gained a bad reputation there as a water bully. As a local journalist wrote there last year in the Molokai Dispatch, "Monsanto's thirst for more water" threatens its future on the island. "Like most large corporations, Monsanto's number one priority is to maximise profits. In this case it means planting as many acres as possible, and using a lot of water," wrote Todd Yamashita.
Recently, during a drought that emptied reservoirs and forced the local irrigation company to demand 20% water cutbacks from local farmers, Monsanto insisted on the right to take more water and lobbied for a new aquifer to be tapped.
In law, two-thirds of the water from the Molokai irrigation system should go to homestead farmers. In practice big landowners, especially Monsanto, take 84% of the irrigation system's water consumption. Monsanto alone, according to Yamashita, takes almost twice as much water as all 200 homesteaders.
So I think I have this right. In the cause of developing crops that will allow the world's farmers to use less water, Monsanto is so overusing the water in its own backyard that local farmers are have resorted to legal action to get their water back. As the Molokai Dispatch's headline has it: "Monsanto could be its own worst enemy."
end of excerptThe agricultural giant Monsanto may well still be the world's most hated company. The... more
Don't think water wars are relegated to third world countries. California is a breeding ground for the same with drought, lack of moral will, greed, and political grandstanding all coming together to make matters worse. Sooner or later, something's got to give.
Excerpt:
The pumps that export water out of the delta regularly pulverize federally threatened and endangered fish, yet the government agencies that operate them are rarely held accountable. The agency that is supposed to monitor and protect the health of the San Francisco Bay and the fragile delta ecosystem also gets 80 percent of its budget from water sales. And the state water projects regularly promise more water than they can deliver.
THE GREAT SUCKING SOUND
California's water wars stem from a tricky dilemma: two-thirds of the precipitation falls in the north, while two-thirds of the people live in the drier south. The delta, located primarily in Sacramento and San Joaquin counties, is the heart of the state's water supply, where the freshwater flows of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and vein-like tributaries converge. It boasts the largest estuary on the west coast of North and South America, providing critical habitat for at least a dozen threatened or endangered species including salmon, smelt, splittail, sturgeon, and others.
The delta is also like a superhighway interchange of water for the state.
Two vast plumbing networks — the Central Valley Project, operated by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and the State Water Project, operated by the Department of Water Resources — transport water from delta pumping stations to cities and agricultural operations across the state.
Roughly 5.7 million acre-feet of water was exported annually from the delta in recent years, a high that many environmentalists say is unsustainable. (An acre-foot, or 325,853 gallons, is the amount that covers an acre one-foot deep.) Before the Central Valley Project was constructed in the 1930s, only 4.7 million acres of farmland were irrigated statewide. By 1997, the acres of thirsty cropland had climbed to 8.9 million, converting many areas that were once barren desert into lush green fields. Agribusiness dominates the sector, with some farming operations like agricultural empires, spanning tens of thousands of acres.
As cropland has expanded, so has agriculture's demand for water. State and federal agencies sell delta water by issuing contracts to water districts, and the water is priced substantially lower for agricultural use. A report issued by the Natural Resources Defense Council suggests that delta water allocation has traditionally gone something like this: "Corporate and agricultural interests demanded more and more water, and the state and federal agencies let them have it."
No one can say just how much rain will fall from the sky in a given year, so stipulations were written into the water contracts to deal with allocation during times of water shortage. Depending on a district's water rights — a status determined by a combination of seniority and a hierarchy of uses — it may get 100 percent of the amount promised on paper during a dry year, or a mere fraction of it.
But the districts continue to promise water to farmers, and the state continues to promise water to the districts.
This latest round of water wars is exacerbated by the drought, which has sapped water supply in California for three years in a row.
continued at the link.Don't think water wars are relegated to third world countries. California is a... more
Farmers in the western United States are drilling ever deeper to water their crops. Mainers are concerned with lowered water levels in their wells when water bottlers come to town. Arizonans see the Santa Cruz River withering away. In communities around the country, these citizens are all seeing the effects of a decline in one of our most crucial but least understood natural resources: groundwater.
The water that settles between rocks and dirt under the earth’s surface after it rains accounts for about 40 percent of our drinking and agricultural water supply. Through the watershed, it links to surface waters, which share sources of water from both above and below the ground. When it disappears, pumping through wells becomes harder and more expensive; rivers, lakes, streams and wetlands dry up; and even the land itself can cave in.
Today, our groundwater resources are disappearing in many parts of the country. In some regions, underground water levels are falling because we are pumping water through wells faster than it is naturally replaced by rainfall. This may permanently damage our aquifers’ capacity to hold water, and can have broad consequences for our entire freshwater supply.
How much danger are we in? We don’t know. According to the United States Geological Survey, no one has ever comprehensively studied groundwater level declines across the country. Many states collect data on a local level, but vary in how much data they collect and the resources they contribute to such projects. Even when states do collect data, local data can only provide limited information about whole aquifers, which often cross state lines.
Without scientific data on groundwater availability, state water managers cannot make sound decisions about water allocation. That is why scientists, government agencies and non-governmental organizations are asking the federal government to collect groundwater quantity and quality data on a national scale.
Because groundwater pools beneath our feet, we do not always register its absence until the effects become drastic.
We cannot wait for the visible effects of groundwater depletion to kick in before taking action. The federal government must take action now by supporting nationwide groundwater data collection projects — so that we can accurately evaluate the status of our groundwater and take steps to protect it before it is too late.
You can read the entire report at the link.
end of excerpt.Farmers in the western United States are drilling ever deeper to water their crops.... more
I have a couple of suggestions for the Chinese govt. : Stop building new coal plants which are exacerbating the crisis through global warming/climate change, stop diverting these farmer's water supply to Bejing, and stop building the dams that are causing diversion of water for agricultural uses and causing environmental devastation.
Excerpt:
A fast-spreading drought has decreased drinking water supplies for nearly 7 million people and damaged crops in seven provinces and regions in central and northern China, the national anti-drought administration said.
Official statistics showed the drought had caused water shortages for 6.93 million people and 5.62 million head of livestock by Thursday.
Meanwhile, 145 million mu (9.67 million hectares) of crops have been affected - 3 million mu more than the average during the past few decades.
The overall scenario is serious because the drought is spreading fast due to low rainfall and lingering high temperatures, anti-drought officials said.
In the south, drought has hit in Hunan, Hubei and Guizhou provinces and the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, due to a record-high temperature in the past two weeks.
Between Aug 15 and 25, six provinces in the south experienced 5.7 days with an average temperature of more than 35 C. Meteorologists said this is the longest record since 1960, as the area usually has only two days of temperatures that high during that time period, China News Service reported.
"Though it won't damage crops, the drought will cause problems for some people and livestock to get drinking water," Lu Juan, deputy head of Department of Water Hazard Research with China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, told China Daily on Friday.
In the north, drought is getting serious from Jilin and Liaoning provinces in northeast China to the grasslands of Inner Mongolia in north China.
"The rainfall in Inner Mongolia has been barely enough for grass to grow", and both people and livestock are facing a serious shortage of drinking water, Lu Juan said.
Liaoning and Jilin, two of China's grain production bases, have also been hit hard by drought, and are likely to face a reduction in grain yield, such as corn and beans, she said.
Pan Shuhe, a farmer from Beipiao town of Liaoning, told China Daily that 80 percent of his farmland, measuring 8-mu, will not produce anything because of drought. The city of Chaoyao, which Beipiao belongs to, is the hardest hit in Liaoning.
Since crops in one mu of farmland typically earn almost 1,000 yuan ($147), Pan said he could lose as much as 8,000 yuan.
His family will have to rely on grains stored earlier. And since no one is sure whether the city government will give them subsidies, many young people have left home to work in cities, he said.
Agricultural officials estimated that the grain yield in Fuxin of Liaoning would only reach half of that in the past, while the yield in Chaoyang would only manage to reach 20 to 30 percent of the usual level.
endI have a couple of suggestions for the Chinese govt. : Stop building new coal plants... more
And what is Turkey's solution to this crisis for the Euphrates River? Why build more dams to divert even more water of course. There is no "democracy" in any place where people are deprived of the basic necessities of life. So much for our "occupation." It's bad enough we forced Monsanto seeds down their throats to ruin their agriculture, but now they don't even have enough water to water the seeds. Why is it everywhere we go we bring nothing but misery to the people who live there?
The Middle East is already an arid water scarce area.They cannot afford to have climate change along with multiple dams and wasteful practices adding to their crisis. Once again, the sun shines bright in the sky and all people can think of is using water for electricity that they need to grow food and survive because it makes contractors and politicians rich, and can also be used as a political weapon as the Ilisu Dam in Turkey is one against the Kurds.
Restore the Marshlands, give the seeds back to the farmers, tear down the unncessary dams in Turkey destroying history and being used as political weapons, and invest in solar power in this area to save water. These dams have displaced thousands of people and denied water to those who need it to live. It isn't as though the solutions aren't there, but of course they are always the solutions that make someone money that only matter.
It is time for the Middle East to come into the sun.And what is Turkey's solution to this crisis for the Euphrates River? Why build more... more
After three years of drought, California's legendary water wars are flaring once again, and towns like Mendota, San Joaquin, and Firebaugh are getting a first glimpse of what their future might look like. Farmers blame the area's blight on a "man-made drought" brought on by increasingly strict environmental regulations, but that is only the beginning of the story. There's also the crushing confluence of political negligence, drought, and a century's worth of unbridled growth. Now, as residents wonder if normalcy will ever return, planners are forced to consider a far uglier question: should it? Is a new "normal" required?
That towns like Mendota even exist reflects the extraordinary ambition that built the American West. A century ago, much of the San Joaquin Valley was an undeveloped dust bowl, its few small farming communities clustered around natural water sources. Today, it is a green expanse of agricultural empires. Most of the water that has irrigated these seemingly endless fields comes from northern California, diverted by an epic system of dams and canals born from New Deal funds. It was one of the most ambitious water systems ever built, and the San Joaquin Valley became, in the words of historian Kevin Starr, "the most productive unnatural environment on Earth."
The valley is home to a $20 billion crop industry; the San Joaquin region alone produces more in farm sales than any other individual state in the country. Mark Borba, 59, has a big stake in that business, just as his grandparents did in the valley's development. Borba Farms started off with about 20 milk cows and 30 acres of land in 1910, at a time when farmers who had tapped an underground aquifer were kicking off a race to cultivate. The farm now covers 10,000 acres, and Mark Borba is only one of 600 growers in the Westlands Water District, a water-contracting group of farmers and landowners on the far west side of the valley where Mendota and other towns sit. By the time Borba took over his family's operation in the 1970s, the valley was already supplying 25 percent of the country's food.
Making that explosive growth possible is access to water delivered through an increasingly byzantine system centered on the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, a thousand-square-mile web of channels, islands, and levees where the two rivers meet before flowing into the San Francisco Bay. From there, giant dams and pumps suck the water southward through veinlike aqueducts to 25 million people and more than 5 million acres of farmland. But not all water consumers are created equally. In fact, access to the water is essentially based on a squatters' rights notion: "First in rights, first in time." In other words, whoever signed up for a water contract first got the best guarantees. Latecomers got junior rights, meaning they'd be the first to get cut in a dry. Westlands, which has a contract for water delivery with the federal government, is the most junior of the bunch.
It was complicated and costly, but for a long time, the system worked. Over the last three decades, however, the valley's explosive growth has caused rivers to run dry, dead fish to accumulate near the water pumps, and chronic water shortages. The levees near the bay are old, prompting worries that a failure, perhaps following an earthquake, could cause salt water from the bay to rush into the delta, crippling the water supply for the entire state. And the delta smelt, an endangered species of fish no bigger than an index finger, began disappearing as the massive pumps sucked up fish along with the water it was sending south. Lawsuits over the fish filed by environmental groups and water contractors multiplied, and court-imposed restrictions and regulations began siphoning off more and more of the 6 million acre-feet of water exported through the river basin each year.
more at the linkAfter three years of drought, California's legendary water wars are flaring once... more
The river has dried up, the well yields only dust, and Li Yunxi is hard pressed to irrigate his plot of land, even though he lives right next to the largest water project in history.
The elderly farmer watches in despair as his corn crop wilts under the scorching northern China sun, knowing that a fresh, abundant stream is only a stone's throw away.
"We ordinary people don't dare use that water," Li told AFP as he nodded toward the fenced-in canal, part of China's hugely ambitious but troubled South-North Water Diversion Project.
"That water is for Beijing, and people here do not steal water."
The temperatures have approached 40 degrees centigrade (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for weeks this summer in Hebei province, a region surrounding Beijing that has been stricken by drought for much of the last decade.
But although Li's crops are withering away, he is getting no sympathy from the authorities -- quite the opposite.
Earlier this year the government announced that the completion of the project's central canal, stretching 1,300 kilometres (800 miles) from a tributary of the Yangtze river to Beijing, will be delayed five years to 2014.
This means that instead of being a beneficiary of the project, Hebei will now be tasked with supplying water to the capital until the project is completed.
The delay will further complicate a water shortage in northern China that experts say is caused by global warming, drought and rising demand from 96 million people who live in the booming Beijing region that includes Hebei.
Currently a 300-kilometre portion of the canal from the Hebei city of Shijiazhuang to Beijing is supplying emergency water to the capital from three reservoirs that previously provided water to the parched province.
The canal, which sits above Li's farmland, abruptly disappears as it nears the dry riverbed of the North Yishui river only to reappear on the opposite bank next to a large pump station that sucks the water through pipes underneath the dusty riverbed.
"There has been no water in the river for 30 years," the bronzed Li said, sweating under a straw hat, a partially capped silver tooth gleaming in the sunlight.
His family's well dried up about 10 years ago, so he like other villagers must now rely on water from a machine-pumped well -- and pay for it, making irrigation prohibitively expensive.
"At first the machine-pumped well was only 30 or 40 metres deep, now it is well over 100 metres deep," Li said of the falling underground water table, a phenomenon seen throughout north China.
This situation should have been alleviated by the water diversion project -- an unprecedented 400-billion-yuan (58-billion-dollar) plan to channel water from the humid south to the parched north along three separate lines.
"Now that (construction of the canal) has been pushed back for five years, we will see a deepening of the crisis in the North China region," said Zhang Junfeng, a water expert with Green Earth Volunteers, an environmental group.
"The North-South project was supposed to come on line earlier and it was designed to reduce the amount of underground water being used in urban areas."
The delay means that the region will have to rely on pumping more underground water to meet demand.The river has dried up, the well yields only dust, and Li Yunxi is hard pressed to... more
MEXICO CITY - Mexico is suffering from its driest year in 68 years, killing crops and cattle in the countryside and forcing the government to slow the flow of water to the crowded capital.
Below-average rainfall since last year has left about 80 of Mexico's 175 largest reservoirs less than half full, said Felipe Arreguin, a senior official at the Conagua commission, which manages the country's water supply.
"We have zones where the reservoirs are totally full but others that don't have even a drop of water," he said in an interview late on Tuesday.
More than 1,000 cattle have been lost due to lack of rainfall, and up to 20 million tons of crops managed by 3.5 million small farmers are at risk of being lost, agriculture groups say.
The arid northwest region of Mexico has been hardest hit, along with the central part of the country surrounding Mexico City where 20 million people live.
Mexico typically has a rainy season from around June to October, topping up lakes and reservoirs that supply much of the country's water during the rest of the year.
The El Nino weather phenomenon, a warming of the seas in the Pacific Ocean, has induced a dry spell in South America and is likely partly to blame for Mexico's lack of rain, experts say.
Authorities have reduced the flow from the Cutzamala series of dams and rivers more than 60 miles long that supplies a quarter of Mexico City's water to ensure enough is available until next year's rainy season.
Trucks are delivering water to some parts of the capital where cuts have made the flow of water intermittent.
"If all we have is a bucketful, we wash up with a cloth, but not well, not like you should," said Maria de la Luz, who has sold chicken at a neighborhood market for 48 years. "Now is the worst it's been since I was a girl."
Arreguin said the water situation in the capital was alarming but not yet a full emergency.
"If it were a traffic light it would be yellow," Arreguin said.
FARMERS HIT
In Mexican states like San Luis, Aguascalientes and Colima, some farmers have been unable to successfully plant their crops because of a lack of rain, while others watched their corn and beans plants wilt. Authorities are handing out cash to small farmers in hard-hit areas.
Four-fifths of Mexico's water resources are used to irrigate crops and the government is encouraging farmers to adopt more efficient methods over the long term.
In neighboring Guatemala, the government is distributing emergency food to 56,000 families whose crops have been damaged.
"This problem happens every year, but this year it seems particularly serious," said Guatemalan government official Juan Aguilar.
Mexico's sugar crop was harvested before the drought set in, and coffee farms are mostly in unaffected areas.
Already-taxed underground water accounts for most of the supply to Mexico City, an urban sprawl built over a drained lake bead, and will likely face more stress.
Mexico has had slightly less rainfall over the past decade but there is insufficient data to say how much global warming can be blamed, Arreguin said.
"How much of this phenomenon is from El Nino? How much is from climate change? The best thing is to hope for the best but prepare for the worst," Arreguin said.
Mexico City officials are urging residents to conserve water by installing efficient shower faucets and to use buckets instead of hoses to wash their cars. (Additional reporting by Mica Rosenberg and Sarah Grainger; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)MEXICO CITY - Mexico is suffering from its driest year in 68 years, killing crops and... more
Groundwater levels in northern India have fallen about 20 percent more than expected because of excessive pumping, threatening to spark a major food and water crisis, according to a study based on U.S. space agency data.
The study, led by Matthew Rodell of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said groundwater across three states, including the New Delhi region, dropped at a rate of 1.6 inches per year between August 2002 and October 2008.
That depletion is double the capacity of India's largest reservoir and is around 20 percent higher than previous estimates by Indian authorities. More than 110 million people live across the three states, or nearly twice the population of Britain.
"If measures are not taken soon to ensure sustainable groundwater usage, the consequences ... may include a reduction of agricultural output and shortages of potable water, leading to extensive socio-economic stresses," the study said.
The findings, published in the journal Nature, come as almost a quarter of India faces drought because of failing monsoon rains this year. But the drop reported in the study came in years where there was no shortage of rainfall, so the decline was caused by excessive demand for irrigation and other uses.
The study, nonetheless, only confirms what has been long feared. Water shortages plague Indian cities and villages alike as a burgeoning population of 1.1 billion people tries to meet growing economic and farming activity, stretching natural resources.Groundwater levels in northern India have fallen about 20 percent more than expected... more
Georgia, Alabama and Florida have been bickering over water for nearly two decades. The focus: a reservoir at Lake Lanier, north of Atlanta.
Georgia believes it deserves the water. Alabama and Florida say it is needed downstream. A federal judge recently ruled that Georgia doesn't have the right to take drinking water from the reservoir, but that is where 3.5 million Atlanta residents get their water. Now, some wonder whether the area can continue to grow without it.
Some 35 miles northeast of Atlanta, not far from Lake Lanier, is the town of Suwanee, Ga. In 1990, 2,400 people lived there; now, there are nearly 17,000. The growth was planned, but there is no doubt that the city benefited from a plentiful water supply.
Judicial Decision
Now there is a new worry. Last month, a federal judge ruled that the Lake Lanier reservoir was built for flood control, navigation and hydropower — not for drinking water. So, the judge gave the governors three years to negotiate a deal.
If they can't, Congress must approve drinking water as an appropriate use, or Georgia must return to the amount it withdrew in the 1970s, when the Atlanta area was only one-third its current size.
Suwanee Mayor Dave Williams says going back is not an option.
"If you're asking me, do I think we're literally going to have no water — I don't think that's going to be the case," he says. "But I don't think we're going to probably ever again take for granted the fact that we can build as much as we want and the water is going to be there to be had."Georgia, Alabama and Florida have been bickering over water for nearly two decades.... more
If one out of every 100 American homes retrofitted with water-efficient fixtures, we could save about 100 million kWh of electricity per year—avoiding 80,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions. That is equivalent to removing nearly 15,000 automobiles from the road for one year!If one out of every 100 American homes retrofitted with water-efficient fixtures, we... more
Is it the final curtain for the Fertile Crescent? This summer, as Turkish dams reduce the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to a trickle, farmers abandon their desiccated fields across Iraq and Syria, and efforts to revive the Mesopotamian marshes appear to be abandoned, climate modellers are warning that the current drought is likely to become permanent. The Mesopotamian cradle of civilisation seems to be returning to desert.
Last week, Iraqi ministers called for urgent talks with upstream neighbours Turkey and Syria, after the combination of a second year of drought and dams in those countries cut flow on the Euphrates as it enters Iraq to below 250 cubic metres a second. That is less than a quarter the flow needed to maintain Iraqi agriculture.
Tensions have been growing since May, when the Iraqi parliament refused to approve a new much-needed trade deal with Turkey unless it contained binding clauses on river flows. But Turkey appears in no mood to compromise. In July, it announced the final go-ahead for yet another dam, the Ilisu on the Tigris.Is it the final curtain for the Fertile Crescent? This summer, as Turkish dams reduce... more
Hopes that the 10 Nile Basin countries would sign a water-sharing agreement at a meeting in Alexandria to settle one of the planet's most contentious water issues have been dashed — for now at least — after Egypt and Sudan rejected any cuts in their traditional quotas.
But the prospects of a long-term accord on an equitable share-out of the waters of the 3,470-mile Nile, the world's longest river, remain dim, largely because Egypt, the largest user, refuses to surrender its veto powers and its historic rights over the river that has been its lifeblood since time immemorial.
The Nile and its tributaries flow through Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi.
The water ministers of these states put off finalizing a treaty for six months when they wrapped up their four-day Alexandria meeting on Tuesday.
In May, the riparian states had drafted a Cooperative Framework Agreement at a summit in the Congo, but Egypt and Sudan refused to sign because it made no mention of their historic claims on Nile water that date back to the colonial era.
Cairo and Khartoum, which do not see eye-to-eye on most things, hailed Tuesday's postponement. "It's a big victory," a senior Sudanese official declared. "They were going to sign the agreement beginning Aug. 1 regardless of Egypt and Sudan."
The dispute over the Nile's life-giving waters has stirred resentment and tension for years now. But now the feuding over water appears to be intensifying.
Some international law experts have gone so far as to suggest that if political and diplomatic efforts fail to settle the issue, the use of military force would be the only option.
Others say it is unlikely that any of these states would resort to such extreme action. But the U.N. Development Program recently voiced concern that conflict over shrinking water resources could trigger "water wars" — as has happened before in the arid Middle East.
Climate change in recent years has reduced rainfall, leading to lower water flows in the Nile and jeopardizing hydraulic projects in several states.
Egypt and neighboring Sudan are the Nile's largest consumers. Egypt, which lies at the end of the river as it flows into the Mediterranean, does not contribute any water to the Nile system.Hopes that the 10 Nile Basin countries would sign a water-sharing agreement at a... more
