Water Scarcity: merged thread

[davidbfpo]

From a longer post on the David Kilcullen thread.

Water supply was one issue and he cited Syria as an example. Syria, with an expanding population for several years had issues over water supply, so much that water rationing applied in most cities. This was aggravated in 2010 with a drought in the south-east, which pushed more people into the cities and in 2011 two of those cities were where the protests began.

I've not heard of this before; no doubt it is fully explained in the book, but if anyone can add please do.

[davidbfpo]

As if by magic - a tweet from the BBC's World Service (west African reporter) Thomas Fessy:

Mini demos and riots in #Dakar last night sparked by 2-week long water cut.

Nothing on BBC News website.

[davidbfpo]

Anger and dismay in Dakar. The water is off for two weeks because of a network failure distribution station Keur Momar Sarr 200 km from the capital. Not a drop of water in the taps and some people are affected by floods.

A little more on this French report:http://www.rfi.fr/afrique/20130928-l...r-colere-dakar

[Firn]

West’s historic drought stokes fears of water crisis

In still other areas, aquifers are emptying so quickly that the land itself is subsiding, like cereal in a bowl after the milk has drained out.

“How many straws can you stick into one glass?” asked John Viegas, a county supervisor who, after months of fielding complaints from constituents about water shortages, recently was forced to lower his own well by 40 feet. “People need to realize you can’t water everything.”

...

“A well-managed basin is used like a reserve bank account,” Howitt said. “We’re acting like the super rich who have so much money they don’t need to balance their checkbook.”

It is worth to point out that those aquifers have been formed in many, many years.

Yet, agriculture’s huge appetite for water makes it an easy target for state officials looking for ways to conserve. Irrigation accounts for 41 percent of the state’s water use, compared with 9 percent for urban water systems. And the recent shift to crops such as alfalfa and rice has prompted questions about whether this drought-prone region is suited for water-intensive agriculture.

Looks like a classic market failure with water not being priced nearly high enough with most of the public infrastructure effectively subventioning the farmers heavily. This gave bad incentives and resulted in high private investments into the wrong crops/assets.

Now of course California Water Prices Soar for Farmers as Drought Grows .

Farmers in California’s Central Valley, the world’s most productive agricultural region, are paying as much as 10 times more for water than they did before the state’s record drought cut supply.

Costs have soared to $1,100 per acre-foot from about $140 a year ago in the Fresno-based Westlands Water District, which represents 700 farms, said Gayle Holman, a spokeswoman. North of Sacramento, the Western Canal Water District is selling it for double the usual price: $500 per acre-foot, about 326,000 gallons (1.2 million liters).

Last but not least a key Californian advantage over many other areas:

Lund said he believes Californians are more capable of adjusting, compared with people in other water-challenged parts of the world, because they already possess experience and expertise and “because we happen to be rich, which helps.”

[davidbfpo]

A short 10 mins video explains 'Day Zero':

Early this year, the South African government announced that Day Zero was looming – a moment, after three years of unprecedented drought, when dam levels would be so low that taps would be turned off and people would have to fetch water at communal collection points.

After taking remedial measures, Capetonians managed to push back the date of Day Zero until next year. We visited the city to find out how the threat of an apocalyptic disaster has changed lives.

Link:https://www.theguardian.com/environm...ning-dry-video

There is only one reference to why the reservoirs are now 20% full and that it is the richer suburbs which have had to adjust the most - the townships may have 25% of the population, but use 4% of the water.

[AdamG]

Yemen is gripped by civil war—and some experts say it could be the first of many “water wars” to come, as the planet grows hotter and drier. In This Is the Way the World Ends: How Droughts and Die-Offs, Heat Waves and Hurricanes Are Converging on America, Jeff Nesbit writes of the Yemeni conflict and many other geopolitical consequences of a warming world, including the precarious future of the Indus River, under the control of China, India and Pakistan, and why Saudi Arabia’s biggest dairy company is buying farmland in the Arizona desert.

Soundcloud link to the whole shebang here -> https://www.sciencefriday.com/segmen...57e2a-53934117

[davidbfpo]

Reminded yesterday about the impending, if not current drought in Southern Iraq; alas that article is behind a pay-wall. Instead there is this BBC report after rioting in Basra:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-...-in-basra-iraq

There are a couple of earlier reports too:https://www.aljazeera.com/news/middl...193258236.html and http://www.bayancenter.org/en/wp-con.../980987665.pdf