I’ve been trying desperately to catch up on life admin over the past couple of weeks, clearing ancient emails out of my inbox and going through masses of links amassed for newsletter research. And when I was going through all of the bits and pieces it became obvious that the emergent theme was water, and our increasingly fragile access to it.
I try and avoid British news where possible, as I find the state of this country too depressing to think about, but in recent years it’s been impossible to miss the ongoing saga over water companies flooding our rivers with sewage, collecting massive bonuses for the board of directors, and laughing over their cash while customers (and the planet!) suffer the consequence of years of underfunding with leaks and supply issues galore. It’s ghastly, and it’s not in any way a problem unique to the British isles.
You can’t really talk about drinking water without Flint, Michigan, coming to mind, or those awful videos of people in fracking zones setting alight the ‘water’ coming from their taps.
But while those stories are dramatic and memorable, today we’re looking at water loss on a more pervasive (and global) scale. It feels like half of the links I’ve shared on recent issues of The Clicker (paid subs only) relate to water scarcity somewhere in the world, with no continent unaffected.
For those of you who don’t get the weekly round-ups, we’ve seen water reservoirs in Mexico City get so dry they’ve been catching on actual fire (?!?!?!); Spain in general but Catalunya in particular is a mess; Italy’s Po river is drying up and taking the future of risotto with it; as well as my usual — endless — list of ways in which the Mekong Delta is crumbling. Then there was the news that the Panama Canal is also drying up, while water shortages affecting indigenous communities in Central and South America and across southeast Asia. India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are suffering their own water crises, and the less said about Africa the better.
Yay.
Not from the round-ups but more of the same old story, ‘Mexico City is running out of water, forcing many to ration’ (but not tourists I’ll bet…); ‘Global water crisis is threatening world peace and prompting calls for change’, UNESCO report. One solution? To find ways of drawing water from desert air.
It shouldn’t need saying that water is essential to human survival. Not only do we die of dehydration a heck of a lot faster than we die of starvation, but non-potable water has been essential to human development. Since the beginning of time (sort of) we’ve gathered ourselves near rivers and coasts to facilitate the movement of people and goods, be it early developments along the Nile or the obvious fact that every historically important city has water running through it.
Flying into Tirana, Albania, a few years ago, we were starting our descent when I noticed a city on the coast with a large harbour and clear transport links to the rest of the country. From the air you could see an old town, a commercial district, a large river acting as a natural border, and a network of motorways, and I assumed we were flying over the capital. We were not. (It was Durres, if you’re curious.)
Tirana is actually quite centrally located within Albania, and while there’s a piddly stream running through it there aren’t any waterways that make for obvious historic trade routes. I asked my guide what the story was, and he explained that Tirana was chosen to be the modern capital both for its central location but also because it wasn’t a city that came with the sort of emotional/tribal baggage that would lead to one or another group of people being made to feel more or less important. (I paraphrase.)
Albania became independent in 1912, by which point rivers and canals were becoming less vital to international trade. Tirana was named the capital in 1922 on a temporary basis, and permanently in 1925, by which point the country was using its (small) railway for the bulk of freight transport. So it was able to buck tradition, and become a successful capital city without needing a river.
Which is all a long-winded way of saying that water is/was/has been important to the growth of cities, but then we entered the post-industrial era in which we sort of tacitly decided that our technology had more potential than nature, bucked the old way of doing things, and ended up in this carbon-unhappy reality we occupy today.
Yay?
I Googled ‘capital cities with water shortages’ and the results are too depressing to list here. But London, Melbourne, and Sao Paulo — three cities that each get plenty of rain — are all listed, as are those you might expect in countries with high populations, hot temperatures, and low GDPs.
I also Googled ‘solutions to water scarcity’, and one of the first ones was to invent new water conservation technologies. This is where I want to insert the sobbing emoji. We’re hardly new to the climate crisis, we’ve been aware of potable water scarcity for decades now, and our answer is to rely on tech we’ve not invented yet? Meanwhile we’re inventing endless apps designed to turn us all into addicts while feeding vulnerable adolescents self-harm and suicide content. Sometimes I wonder if we even deserve to make it as a species.
No answers, no solutions, just a 900-word depressing screed before I go and hide under a blanket for a bit. Have a great week?
I, too, wonder more frequently than I care to admit, if we deserve to survive as a species...
Seems that we either have too much water (flooding) or too little (drought), it's something of concern to us civil engineers. Flooding problems can be relieved to a point, though global warming has made the issue much worse in that prevention works just a few years old are now being breached. As for the drought, well, we can all help with that by moderating consumption and, as you rightly suggest, treating water as a valuable resource. Of course, the water companies have to plug their leaks and planning new reservoirs might be unpopular but necessary.