Maybe water wars are the future | Emergency Preparedness | Forums

everyone knows about what is going on the western US, what about the rest of the world?

Sao Paulo residents were warned by a top government regulator today to brace for more severe water shortages as President Dilma Rousseff makes the crisis a key campaign issue ahead of this weekend’s runoff vote.

“If the drought continues, residents will face more dramatic water shortages in the short term,” Vicente Andreu, president of Brazil’s National Water Agency and a member of Rousseff’s Workers’ Party, told reporters in Sao Paulo. “If it doesn’t rain, we run the risk that the region will have a collapse like we’ve never seen before,” he later told state lawmakers.

The worst drought in eight decades is threatening drinking supplies in South America’s biggest metropolis, with 60 percent of respondents in a Datafolha poll published yesterday saying their water supplies were restricted at least once in the past 30 days. Three-quarters of those people said the cut lasted at least six hours.

Rousseff, who is seeking re-election in the Oct. 26 election against opposition candidate Aecio Neves, is stepping up her attacks of Sao Paulo state’s handling of the water crisis, saying in a radio campaign ad yesterday that Governor Geraldo Alckmin was offered federal support and refused. Neves, who polls show is statistically tied with Rousseff, and Alckmin are both members of the Social Democracy Party, known as PSDB.

Neves said yesterday on his website that ANA is being used by the PT for it’s own purposes. “The agency could have been a much better partner to Governor Alckmin,” he said.

GDP

Neves campaign officials didn’t immediately respond to an e-mailed request for comment on ANA chief’s accusations.

With more than 40 million people and over 96,000 square miles (250,000 square kilometers), Sao Paulo state is geographically bigger than the U.K. It’s responsible for almost a third of Brazil’s gross domestic product.

Andreu, who served as secretary of water resources under Rousseff’s predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, criticized the state government’s handling of the water crisis, saying officials haven’t communicated with water regulators on key issues. Sabesp, the Sao Paulo state-run water utility, andAlckmin’s office declined to comment.

“Sabesp’s responses have been small -- they should have already taken huge steps,” Andreu said, adding that he told the state’s water secretary in August that “we can’t keep this up; we’re not alerting the population of the seriousness of this situation.”

Sabesp is struggling to find new ways to supply greater Sao Paulo after the drought turned its Cantareira reservoir, which serves half of Sao Paulo, into a dried-up bed of cracked earth. What’s left of the four-lake complex are sediment-filled pools in the center -- so-called dead reserves -- that were previously untappable until Sabesp built 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) of pipes to drain the water.

Water levels fell to 3.3 percent of capacity at Cantareira and 8.5 percent at Sabesp’s Alto Tiete reservoir, according to the company’s website.

Sabesp, formally known as Cia. de Saneamento Basico do Estado de Sao Paulo, is Latin America’s largest publicly traded water company. The stock has plunged 27 percent this year.

http://www.bloomberg.....tages.html

Southern China is a rice-growing region, while the northeast is the country’s wheat and corn-growing “bread basket.” This summer the northern province of Liaoning is suffering the worst drought in 63 years, according to the local meteorological bureau: The province has seen the lowest precipitation since the government began keeping records in 1951. The dry summer threatens immediate drinking water supplies and autumn harvests.

The agricultural research service Shanghai JC Intelligence predicts that China’s corn yields may drop 1.5 percent this year, which could drive up domestic corn prices and compel farmers to use alternative grains for animal feed.

http://www.businessw.....n-63-years

Even as the government remains reluctant to declare 2014 as a drought year, the rainfall deficit in northwest India, the principal foodgrain producing region, has hit a high of 21 per cent.

The meteorological subdivisions of Haryana, Delhi and Chandigarh have recorded a 56 per cent deficit, while rains in Punjab were deficient by 50 per cent. Western Uttar Pradesh was deficient by 56 per cent and eastern UP by 42 per cent.

Central India was deficient by 10 per cent, while east and northeast India received 12 per cent less rain. Receiving 777.5 mm of rainfall as against the normal of 886.9 mm, the country as a whole had a deficiency of 12 per cent.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) says it is up to the water resources ministry and the agriculture ministry to make an official declaration about a hydrological or agricultural drought. According to IMD, the retreat of the southwest monsoon is on course.

"We only give the deficit of rainfall and do not have the mandate to proclaim drought. It is upon the government to decide this," said B.P. Yadav, head of the IMD's forecasting division.

The agricultural ministry indicated it is unlikely to announce an agricultural drought for this year despite a preliminary assessment about a reduced kharif crop output.

According to a senior ministry official, there was no chance of an agricultural drought as rains were good in most parts of the country, barring northwest India. "Northwest India is mostly an irrigated agricultural region. Even if the rains failed, irrigation sources compensated for the event. The crops, especially paddy, were watered both in the sowing and the later period," the official said.

The highly deficient rainfall in the northwest is, however, expected to affect rabi and vegetable crops.

According to the Central Water Commission, the country's 85 reservoirs, which are crucial for irrigation, were filled with 155.046 billion cubic metres (BCM) of water. This is about 78 per cent of their total live storage capacity of 253.388 BCM and is said to be lower than the level of last year.

Pollution and rain

Human-induced air pollution is one of the major factors driving changes in the monsoon rainfall pattern in India and Southeast Asia, and the monsoon precipitation over the Northern Hemisphere has decreased over the past 50 years, a study published in the Geophysical Research Letters has concluded.

Levels of rain during the Northern Hemisphere's summer monsoon fell by as much as 10 per cent during the second half of the 20th century, said the study published last month. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh said their work provided clear evidence of human-induced rainfall change. Alterations to summer monsoon rainfall affect the lives of billions of people, mostly those living in India, Southeast Asia and parts of Africa.

"Studies suggest that anthropogenic aerosols have been a key factor driving changes in tropical and monsoon precipitation. Anthropogenic aerosol, not greenhouse gas or natural forcing, has been the dominant influence on Northern Hemisphere monsoon precipitation over the second half of the 20th century," the study said.