by As the world warms from human-caused climate change, fresh water for drinking, cooking and cleaning is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain for many people.
That’s because a warming world has resulted in erratic rainfall patterns, extreme heat and periods of drought – on top of decades of poor water management and extractive policies around the world. The United Nations estimates that around 2.2 billion people worldwide do not have access to safely managed drinking water.
This World Water Day, Associated Press journalists from around the world interviewed some of the people struggling to get fresh water.
LIMA, PERU
Justina Flores, a 50-year-old grandmother, lives in a hilly suburb of Lima, Peru, with no running water. With some of the water she receives from the government, she washes her family of six’s clothes by hand, and then reuses it to wash the dog or dumps it on the ground outside to keep the dust from getting up and into their a house.
The Peruvian government provides potable water to 1.5 million of its poorest residents, like Flores, who live in the hills. Huge tankers filled with water are plying the steep roads, and the scarce resource often provokes conflicts between neighbours.
Flores tries to use as little water as possible in her daily activities. She has an old washing machine, but can save about 45 liters (12 gallons) of water per load if washed by hand.
She and her family get about 3,000 liters (790 gallons) from all their washing, cooking and cleaning every week, while in San Isidro, the wealthiest area of the capital, a family of the same size uses 11,700 liters (3,090) on the average. gallons) per week coming from piped water, according to official data.
Flores has been a domestic worker in the homes of wealthy families since she was a child, so she has seen this difference firsthand.
“You can bathe as much as you want in those houses. Here, at most, it’s twice a week,” she said, looking out her window at buildings covering the hills.
Jakarta, INDONESIA
In the vast island nation of Indonesia, access to clean water is uncertain – even in the country’s most developed city, Jakarta, home to more than 10 million people.
Ever since she was a young girl, Devi Putri Eka Sari, now a 37-year-old mother of three, had to buy water from the vendors going up and down the narrow paved streets in her low-income neighborhood – even after for the government. installed water pipes and pumps drawing water from the ground.
The government’s water is unreliable, she says: Sometimes the tap drips when she turns it on. Even if it flowed regularly, she wouldn’t dare use it for drinking.
“It’s not healthy. It’s filled with bacteria that will make you sick,” she said. “It smells like a swimming pool, like chemicals.”
Her fear of bacteria is unfounded: seven out of 10 Indonesian households consume drinking water contaminated with E. coli, according to the World Health Organization.
Instead, Sari, like millions of Indonesians across the country, buys water in large refillable containers or single-use packaged plastic bottles. They are easy to find, but they create large amounts of litter in cities’ waterways that are already laden with plastic.
“It’s what I’ve been doing all my life,” Sari said. “It’s our choice.”
RAS EL MA, MOROCCO
Mimoun Nadori turns to dip his hand into the river and taste the water near the groves where his family has long grown fruit and vegetables on their farms in northern Morocco.
He grimaces. It is salty. But it wasn’t like this.
“Everything was green,” he remembers. “We drank from the river and we washed with the river. We made a life with it.”
But less rain and more dams and pumping upstream have left less water flowing through Morocco’s Moulouya River and threatened the livelihoods of farmers like Nadori. Where the river once flowed from the mountains to the Mediterranean, it is now stagnant, allowing sea water to flow into the land and turning water from a source of life into a deadly poison.
Nadori started importing water for the on-site chicken coop he manages after his cows that were used to drinking from the river died. He did not know that the water was salty or that they were feeding from it until they were dead.
Overuse of the river has also put new pressures on underground water reserves as Moroccan farmers like Nadori — as well as those on the other side of the border in nearby Algeria — are digging more wells to compensate for the loss of their wells. . supply.
“We won’t lie and say it’s just people or drought, it’s both,” he said. “We don’t know how to use water and we waste a lot of water.”
CORNING, CALIFORNIA
There was a time when the water in Fred and Robin Imfeld’s pool moved on hot summer days and their yard was full of plants.
But two years ago, the well that supplied water to their home in rural Corning, California, dried up for the first time in 40 years. Now the pool is empty, and their trees are shades of rust.
Across California, inland wells have experienced record numbers in recent years due to drought and over-pumping, causing groundwater levels to drop. The couple wants to drill a new, deeper well, but at $25,000, it’s a big expense.
These days, they rely on state-funded water deliveries. Twice a month, they get a 9,463-liter (2,500 gallon) tank outside their garage filled with water to shower, wash dishes and do laundry with. They also receive 113 liters (30 gallons) of potable water every second week for cooking and drinking.
When they need a little extra, Fred draws water just as he did for seven months when the well dried up, before they got the tank. He loads his truck with containers, drives three miles to a friend’s house, and fills them with water.
“We’re emotionally reeling with our own personal lives and trying to deal with (the water) and worrying about what’s next and where we go from here,” Fred said.
MAKUENI COUNTY, COUNTY
Joyce Mule used to walk for about two hours to get water. In his rocky hilly village in Makueni County in dry southeast Kenya, water is very scarce. There is very little piped water and few reliable alternatives.
One way Mule used to get water was through scooped holes in the sandy river bed. These work with people digging into the sand and the water held in porch spaces percolating out of the adjacent sand into the hole. This method is still common in south-eastern Kenya.
But in 2012, she and her family decided to tackle that problem by adopting the rock catchment system, a method of harvesting rainwater from stone outcrops, which are huge natural rocks standing hundreds of feet above above ground. Mule gets water here about five times a day and it takes about half an hour to bring it home.
The technology works in a simple way: The villagers build a concrete wall around the rock to catch rainwater. They put large stones to filter the water and a pipe to bring the water down to the storage tanks. The water collected from the rock catchment flows into the tanks through the pipe, and then to a nearby water collection point where residents get it from taps.
She is happy because it is close, constantly available and the water is clean. As a result, her trees are producing more fruit and her cows are giving more milk.
“We thought these rocks were worthless, but now we see the benefits of them,” she said.
BAWAL, INDIA
Ramkrishan Malawat, 52, remembers a time when groundwater was just 21 meters (70 feet) below surface level and a fast-flowing river 10 kilometers (6 miles) away from his farm in Bawal, near New Delhi. providing abundant water.
But now the river is dry and water is 76 meters (250 feet) underground. “We’re forced to dig deeper with each passing year,” he said. Malawat uses a bore well to get water for his crops: mustard, corn and various millets.
The deeper the water, the dirtier it is, he says, as “the level of contamination with fluoride and other chemicals increases.”
India is the world’s biggest groundwater extractor and pumps more water than the United States and China combined, according to the UN
Extraction for farming, construction and other needs together with climate changes such as torrential rains and extreme heat means that groundwater levels are dropping dramatically across the country.
“There’s so much construction around here that when it rains now, the water flows out” instead of going into the ground and replenishing stocks, Malawat said. Bawal is better known for its automobile industry than for its agriculture. “I sometimes worry that in 10 to 15 years there won’t be good water for farming in my own town.”
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Associated Press journalists Carlos Mureithi in Makueni, Kenya; Sibi Arasu in Bengaluru, India, and Manish Swarup in Bawal, India; Dorany Pineda in Los Angeles; Sam Metz and Oussama Alaoui in Ras El Ma, Morocco; Victoria Milko in Jakarta, Indonesia; Franklin Briceño in Lima, Peru, and Natalia Gutierrez in New York contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage is financially supported by multiple private foundations. AP is responsible for each and every subject. Find AP standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and covered areas of funding at AP.org.
