International Water Day: between drought, heat waves and abandonment, obtaining it is increasingly difficult

As the planet warms due to human-caused climate change, fresh water for drinking, cooking and cleaning becomes harder to obtain for many people.

This is because global warming is causing erratic rainfall, extreme heat and periods of drought, as well as decades of water mismanagement and extractive policies around the world. The UN estimates that approximately 2.2 billion people worldwide do not have access to safely managed drinking water.

On World Water Day, Associated Press journalists from around the world interviewed some of the people struggling to get clean water.

Lima, Peru

Justina Flores, a 50 year old grandmother, lives in a neighborhood of Lima (Peru) without running water. With some of the water coming from the government, He hand washes clothes for his family of sixand then reuse it bathe the dog or throw it on the floor outside to prevent dust from rising and entering the house.

The Peruvian government provides drinking water to 1.5 million of the poorest people, like Flores, who live in the hills. THE gigantic cisterns full of water risen on steep roads, and the scarcity of this resource usually causes conflicts between neighbors.

Flores is committed to using as little water as possible in all of its daily activities. He has an old washing machine, but he washes by hand allows you to save approximately 45 liters of water washing.

The capital of Peru, Lima, the second largest city in the world built on a desert After Cairo, it is also one of the cities that suffers most from water scarcity. According to data from the National Superintendency of Sanitation Services (SUNASS)3.5 million people do not have access to drinking water throughout the country, of which approximately 2 million live in Lima. (March 21)

Flores and her family get some 3,000 liters of water for washing, cooking and cleaning weeklywhile in San Isidro, the richest area of ​​the capital, a family of the same size uses on average 11,700 liters per week coming from tap water, according to official data.

Flores has worked as a domestic worker in the homes of wealthier families since she was a child, so she has seen this disparity firsthand.

“In those houses You can bathe as many times as you want. Here at most twice a week,” he says, looking out the window at the buildings that cover the hills.

Jakarta, Indonesia

In the vast Indonesian archipelago, access to drinking water It’s uncertain, even in the most developed city in the country, Jakarta, where more than 10 million people live.

Devi Putri Eka Sari, 37, a mother of three, has had to buy water from street vendors along the narrow asphalt streets of her low-income neighborhood since she was a child, even after the government installed pipes and pumps to extract water from the ground.

State water is unreliablehe says: sometimes it just drips from the tap when you open it. Even though it flowed regularly, He wouldn’t dare use it for drinking.

“It’s not healthy. It’s full of bacteria that make you sick.” he says. “It smells like a swimming pool, like chemicals.”

Your fear of bacteria is not unfounded: seven out of ten Indonesian families consume drinking water contaminated with E. coliaccording to the World Health Organization.

Instead, Sari, like millions of Indonesians across the country, buys water in large reusable containers or disposable packaged plastic bottles. They are easy to find, but generate large quantities of waste in city waterways, already crowded with plastic.

“It’s what I’ve done my whole life,” Sari says. “It’s the option we have.”

Ras el Ma, Morocco

Mimoun Nadori bends to dip his hand into the river and test the water next to the groves where his family has long grown fruit and vegetables on their farms in northern Morocco.

He makes a face. It’s salty. But it wasn’t like that before.

“Everything was green,” he recalls. “We drank from the river and washed in the river. We built our lives there.”

But less rainfall and more dams and pumping upstream caused less water to flow through the Moulouya River in Morocco and threaten the livelihoods of farmers like Nadori. Where once the river flowed from the mountains into the Mediterranean, now it’s blocked, which allows sea ​​water infiltrates inland and transform water from a source of life into a deadly poison.

Nadori has started importing water for the chicken coop he runs their cows used to drinking from the river died. I didn’t know the water was brackish or that they fed on it until they died.

Overuse of the river has also put new pressure on underground water reserves as Moroccan farmers like Nadori (as well as those across the nearby border with Algeria) drill more wells to make up for the loss of their old reserves.

“We’re not going to lie and say the reason is just humans or drought, it’s both,” he said. “We don’t know how to use water and we waste a lot of it.”

Corning, California

There was a time when Fred and Robin Imfeld’s pool sparkled on hot summer days and their yards were filled with plants.

But two years ago, the well that supplied the water at his home in rural Corning, California, dried up for the first time in 40 years. Now the swimming pool It is empty and its trees have rusty shadows.

Throughout California, domestic wells have dried up in record numbers in recent years due to drought and excessive pumping, which have caused groundwater levels to drop. The couple wants to drill a new, deeper well, but $25,000 It’s a considerable expense.

Today they depend on state-funded water supply. Twice a month they get a 9,463-gallon tank full of water outside the garage for showering, washing dishes and doing laundry. They also receive 113 liters of potable water every two weeks for cooking and drinking.

When they need a little more, Fred carries the water just as he did for seven months when the well ran dry, before getting the tank. He loads the containers into his truck, drives about three miles to a friend’s house and fills them with water.

“We’re just emotionally exhausted with our personal lives and trying to deal with (the water) worrying about what’s to come.”

Kenya

Joyce Mule I walked about two hours to find water. In their mountainous, rocky village in Makueni county in arid southeast Kenya, water is very scarce. There is little running water and few reliable alternatives.

One way Mule got water was through holes in sandy river beds. These works are carried out by people digging in the sand and the water contained in the pore spaces seeps from the adjacent sand into the holes. This method is still popular in southeastern Kenya.

But in 2012, Mule and his fellow villagers decided to tackle the problem by adopting rock harvesting, a method to rcollect rainwater from rocky outcrops, which are gigantic natural rocks that sit hundreds of feet above the ground. The mule brings water here about five times a day and takes about half an hour to get home.

The technology works simply: the villagers build a concrete wall around the rock to trap rainwater. They placed large stones to filter the water and a pipe to carry the water to the storage tanks. Water collected from the rock basin flows into tanks through the pipe and then to a nearby collection point where residents collect it from taps.

He is happy because he is nearby, constantly available and the water is clean. As a result, their trees produce more fruit and their cows produce more milk.

“We thought these rocks were useless, but now we see their benefits.”

Bawal, India

Ramkrishan Malawat, 52, remembers a time when groundwater was just 21 meters below surface level and a fast-flowing river 10 kilometers from his farm in Bawal, near New Delhi, provided plenty of water.

But now the river has dried up and the water is 76 meters underground. “We are forced to go deeper with each passing year,” she said. Malawat uses a well to obtain water for his crops: mustard, corn and millet.

The deeper the water, it’s dirtier, states, as it “increases the level of pollution from fluoride and other chemicals.”

India It is the largest groundwater extractor in the world and pumps more water than the United States and China combined, according to the United Nations.

Extraction for agriculture, construction and other needs, combined with climate changes such as erratic rainfall and extreme heat, means that groundwater levels decline dramatically across the country.

“There’s so much construction around here and when it rains now, the water just runs off, instead of seeping into the ground and replenishing supplies,” Malawat said. Bawal is better known for its automotive industry than its agriculture. “Sometimes I understand “There is a fear that within 10-15 years in my city there will no longer be good water available for agriculture”.