We are witnessing, all over the world, the unmistakable signs of the threat of water shortages and the consequences of prolonged droughts that afflict millions of people today.
In 2019, a report from several English and American newspapers reached us by international courier, described scenarios for sixteen countries experiencing water stress, affecting millions of people.
Large cities have long suffered from water shortages, in Brazil, India and South Africa, but also in Mexico – and the unfortunate inhabitants of parts of the Horn of Africa and Ethiopia continue to see their livestock die. to thirst and hunger.
About 7000 years ago, the people who inhabited the Tassili (plateau) N'Ager, a region of the eastern Sahara elevated about 800 meters above the average level of the desert, had to abandon the region, moving to the Nile valley, leaving impressive testimonies of their misery.
But this calamity was brought about by natural climatic transformations, as they always did over millions of years; we are now in a time of climate change, mainly due to human actions, which push the climate towards global warming when, in the opinion of some researchers, the Earth should be entering a small glacial period.
the map of World Resources Institute (WRI), published here with due bow, is very enlightening about the regions most affected by water scarcity and it is easy to see how we, Portugal, are included in those regions with the darkest colors.
This information is combined with others that have come to us for several years from scientists such as International Pannel on Climate Change (IPCC), of the UN, and which published another map reproduced here, again with due bow, and without words.
It seems that the Governments in Portugal govern a country from another planet, because they do not realize the dramatic situation that the water resources in our country are reaching. For the Ministers of Agriculture (do they really exist?...) and for the enlightened of the Environment, everything remains undaunted and serene as far as substantive measures are concerned – they always shoot with millions to the front!
The Ministry of Agriculture supports the expansion of intensively irrigated orchards, instead of investing in agri-food crops that we are so lacking. And in Ambiente, the word is always the same: everything is under control.
They will ask the small farmers on the Costa Vicentina, who no longer have water to irrigate their vegetable gardens and orchards, if they think everything is under control.
Ask producers in the north of the country if they are comfortable with the lack of water for their irrigation systems; and the Serra da Estrela shepherds think that everything is under control, when there is no pasture for the cattle when it is time to make the famous Serra cheese – and they are given some alternative.
Everything controlled?
How can a government be so careless with regard to the primary sector, which is fundamental to the country's sustainability? Why haven't there, for months now, when this already dramatic panorama started to be designed, awareness campaigns and a plan with water saving measures, both for rural and urban environments, when you know, since many years ago, of the huge annual losses in the distribution networks?
Why was there a delay in undertaking a program for the desalination of seawater for domestic use, as is the case in most Mediterranean countries, for urban supply of coastal population concentrations? What have you been waiting for? – that a Chinese business and pots for some notables arise?
We will still watch rain dances or pilgrimages to Our Lady of Fátima…
Author Fernando Santos Pessoa is a forestry engineer and landscape architect…and writes with the spelling he learned at school
Comments