Sao
Paulo: A Megacity runs dry
7
April, 2015
I
am writing by candle light. The aching in my hand and the irregular
handwriting reminds me that it’s been a long time since I wrote on
paper and not a keyboard. The power cut has already lasted more than
eight hours and I fear that the combination of events and outcome of
what we are going through might be a foreshadowing of what’s soon
to come around the world.
It
started with an irony, that may well be the perfect metaphor: the
largest city in a country that holds 20 percent of Earth’s fresh
water supply ends up without any. A combination of climate change,
years of deforestation, privatization and a badly managed and corrupt
political system have come together in a perfect storm to throw my
city into one of its darkest crises ever. We now face a reality of
four days without water and two with. We might as well call it what
it is: a total collapse.
Imagine
a megacity like São Paulo as schools are forced to close, hospitals
run out of resources, diseases spread, businesses shut down, the
economy nose dives. Imagine the riots, the looting … what the
police force, infamously known as one of the most violent in the
world, will do as this dystopian scenario engulfs us. One of the
great modern, rising capital cities of the world suddenly falls
apart.
We
brought this on ourselves. We buried our rivers under concrete, we
polluted the reservoirs, chopped down trees, erased the local biome
to grow sugar cane, soy and corn to fuel our vehicles, feed our
appetites, our extravagant lifestyles.
I
read the IPCC reports warning us of catastrophe. I watched the
documentaries exposing corporations’ hidden agendas … the YouTube
videos showing polluted oceans, overfishing, extracting, fracking and
burning. I knew all this. And how markets march “forward” no
matter what. How leaders pose for group shots with those golden
pledges they never deliver … and how we, the People, march
demanding change.
This
is personal … it’s about everything I love. And you have no idea
how terrifying it is. It’s the kind of fear that you have no
control over, that makes you grind your teeth at night while you
sleep. There’s no language to describe this feeling of dread. No
way to fix it. No time to fix it. This is the future that science
warned us about. The new normal. And the truth is, I never realized
it could happen so fast and that my friends, family and I would be
forced to live through it, suffer like this.
The
battery on my phone is almost dead. The power has been out for 16
hours now. Still no water.
I
scroll the photos I took last month on our trip to NYC.
My
wife comes to me and in a low voice asks what we are going to do. “I
don’t know,” I reply.
What
will 22 million people do in the dark?
—
Pedro Inoue
It’s
OK to report on environmental catastrophes so long as it’s not in
your own backyard and no links are made
The
wealthy megacity on the brink of disaster
8
April,2015
IT’S
a city that more than 11 million people call home, and it’s located
in one of the wealthiest regions of South America.
Yet
Brazil’s bustling Sao Paulo is a megacity on the brink of disaster.
There’s water everywhere, but barely a drop to drink.
Despite
the country having the largest supply of freshwater in the entire
world, it has been battling a huge water
problem for months.
Water
is not flowing into the city readily. Source: Getty
Images
And
now, the state government is so desperate to save the city that it
has come up with a controversial “solution”.
It
wants to tap into a long-polluted dam in an area locals described to
the Wall
Street Journal as
“a foul soup of raw sewage laced with human excrement”.
The
Billings reservoir is filthy, and it’s apparently the solution.
Picture: Milton Jung Source: Flickr
While
the government says it will use treated water only from the
non-polluted parts of the Billings reservoir, scientists have warned
it would be a dangerous move due to the high levels of faecal matter
and contaminants.
It
hasn’t been used as a potable water source for decades, and locals
won’t even swim in it.
Do
you blame them for staying away? Picture: Milton Jung Source: Flickr
“If
they want to use this water, they will have to stop this [pollution]
first,” marina worker Valdir Mastrocezari, 56, who blames
contaminants for a rash on his arms, told the WSJ. “People
don’t swim here. We avoid putting our feet in the water.”
The
plan is one of several proposals put forward in a bid to end the
water crisis which has left millions going without it for days on
end.
The
previous water line over the Atibainha reservoir, part of the
Cantareira System that provides water to the Sao Paulo metropolitan
area, can be seen here. Source: AP
So
what’s to blame for the region’s worst drought in 80 years?
Brazil
has more freshwater than any other country on the planet — with 12
per cent of the entire world’s volume, the global research
organisation World
Resources Institute reports.
But a change in weather patterns has hit hard.
According
to the WRI: “The ongoing drought in Southeastern Brazil offers a
prime example of how damaging a major supply drop can be over the
course of a year. (It began) between December 2013 and February 2014,
historically the wettest time of year.
“The
region received only half its usual amount of rain, according to
NASA’s Earth Observatory.”
Water
rationing has already been taking place. Picture: Alex
Thomson Source: Flickr
And
it’s not the only factor — environmental destruction is also to
blame.
“Expert
consensus is building around deforestation as a major driver of this
year’s drought and other serious dry periods in Brazil. In 2009,
Antonio Nobre, a scientist at Brazil’s Center for Earth Systems
Science warned that Amazonian deforestation could interfere with the
forest’s function as a giant water pump; it lifts vast amounts of
moisture up into the air, which then circulate west and south,
falling as rain to irrigate Brazil’s central and southern regions.
“Without
these ‘flying rivers’, Nobre said, the area accounting for 70 per
cent of South America’s (gross national product) could effectively
become desert.”
An
aerial view of the Atibainha dam. Source: Getty
Images
Authorities
already have imposed water-saving measures in Sao Paulo, including
cut rates for people who limit usage, reduced pressure in water lines
during off-peak hours and de facto rationing: some areas receive
water only half the day.
And
it looks set to continue — the crucial Cantareira water system,
which provides water to about 6 million of the 20 million in the
metropolitan area of Sao Paulo state, is still only about one-fifth
full.
The
water level of the Cantareira System is at 6 per cent of its total
capacity. Source: Getty
Images
Environment
Minister Izabella Teixeira said those programs must be expanded, and
the government is preparing “a rational water-use program”. But
some think that may not be enough.
Many
also question the amount of water that’s going to waste in the
system — with an estimated 30-35 per cent of its water supply lost
due to leakage.
Some
people have been forced to hoard and recycle water. Source: Getty
Images
Earlier
this year the president of Brazil’s Water Regulatory Agency,
Vicente Andreu,warned
Sao Paulo residents of
a “collapse like we’ve never seen before” if drought conditions
persisted.
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