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This year’s World Water Day is marked by some troubling developments as droughts plague parts of Canada, Mexico, Chile and India.
Drought in the western Canadian province of Alberta is stretching into its fourth year and farmers and oil companies are planning for water restrictions that threaten production of wheat, beef and crude.
Alberta has opened water-sharing negotiations among license-holders for the first time in two decades, hoping to salvage output from two of its biggest industries.
This underlines the difficult compromises facing resource-rich regions adapting to extreme weather. Hydrologists say the future will bring Alberta more rain instead of snow due to climate change, which will strain summer water supplies.
In Mexico, alfalfa crops and other agriculture are sapping the ancient oasis of Cuatro Cienegas, the most important wetland in the Chihuahuan Desert and a geological anomaly that scientists say can help them understand the origin of Earth, climate change and the chances of life on Mars.
Meanwhile, the Cogoti reservoir in northern Chile’s Coquimbo region, a basin with a capacity of 150 million cubic meters, has completely depleted. The historic drought has impacted nearly every aspect of life in copper-rich Chile, from mining to green areas in its capital Santiago.
In India’s southern state of Karnataka, home to Bengaluru, the main reservoir is at 16% of capacity. Water reserves are the lowest for March since 2019, when reservoir capacity fell to 35% and saw southern cities such as Chennai run out of water. This could escalate the crisis in central and southern Indian cities which face extreme heatwaves in April and May.
