Brazil - the water shortage

  The Brazilian scientists were sceptical. They ran different models to check calculations.

“When we got the first results, we wondered if there was a problem in the equations,” said Cassio Bernardino, a project manager for environmental group WWF-Brazil.

The figures checked out.

The country with the most freshwater resources on the planet steadily lost 15% of its surface water since 1991. Gradual retreat in the Brazilian share of the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland, left water covering just one-quarter the area it did 30 years ago. And the data only went up to 2020 -- before this year’s drought that is Brazil’s worst in nine decades.

“The prospects are not good; we’re losing natural capital, we’re losing water that feeds industries, energy generation and agribusiness,” Bernardino said. Brazil’s “society as a whole is losing this very precious resource, and losing it at a frighteningly fast rate.”

The ongoing drought has already raised energy costs and food prices, withered crops, rendered vast swaths of forest more susceptible to wildfire and prompted specialists to warn of possible electricity shortages.

In Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, water that evaporates then travels on air currents to provide rainfall far afield. But some climate experts argue that the Amazon is headed for a “tipping point” in 10 to 15 years: if too much forest is destroyed, the Amazon would begin an irreversible process of degradation into tropical savannah.

There are more immediate sources of alarm, like possible power rationing this year. Hydroelectric reservoirs have been drained by a decade of lower-than-usual rainfall. Reservoirs in the Parana River basin, which powers the metropolis Sao Paulo and several states, have never before been so depleted, the grid operator said this month.

Brazil’s declining water resources also risk exacerbating fires that people often set during the Southern Hemisphere’s winter to clear pasture, which then rage out of control. Last year, more than one-quarter of Brazil’s Pantanal went up in flames. It was by far the worst annual devastation since authorities started keeping records in 2003.

“Once again, the specter of fires is back,” said Angelo Rabelo, president of a local environmental group that oversees a protected area of about 300,000 hectares. Last year, 90% of his land was damaged by blazes. “The scenario is even worse this year: drier, and with less water,” Rabelo said.

Brazil water survey heightens alarm over extreme drought (apnews.com)