This May 31, the streets of the Uruguayan capital lived a demonstration that seemed like science fiction: the inhabitants came out to demand drinking water. Due to the lack of rain, the government decided to take water from the Río de la Plata to supply the urban southwest of the country, an action that endangers the health of the inhabitants.
In Uruguay it no longer rains when it is wet, here it rains when it is dry, since this country has recorded a third of what it normally rains in the last year. The lack of rainfall has led Uruguayan society to one of the most feared scenarios of climate change: lack of drinking water. The authorities had to resort to the Río de la Plata to supply drinking water, with a high sodium content.A march in defense of the right to water took place this Wednesday in Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital.
“There was no planning”
“Does today 26 days that in he area metropolitan, this is he south of the country in where lives he 60% of the population Uruguayan, we are without water potable. We are with water current, but with levels of chlorides and sodium by on of it permitted, it that ha carried to that we are in a emergency water. This water is harmful for great part of the population that has issues of health and not can consume it,” he explains María Selva, member of the Friends of the Earth network in Uruguay.
“This to that HE has to? By that we arrived to this crisis? We are traversing a moment of drought very important, fairly product of the change climate, but we could have it faced of other manner. we knew that this I was going to pass and No was none planning neither no plan of contingency for the crisis that we are living,” he denounces.
“Extraordinary drought”
And although it is too early to know scientifically how global warming is modifying the rainfall regime in Uruguay, Marcelo Barreiro, a climatologist at the University of the Republic, warns about the vulnerability of the Río de la Plata basin to droughts.
“Clearly this is a drought extraordinary. Yeah one compare with he record of the last 44 years for that region of the southwest of the country, finds that No there is no record similar to this. Something that maybe I would be Well have in account is that, of agreement with the last report of the Panel intergovernmental of Change Climate, in the basin of the River of the Silver, that includes Uruguay, south of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguayan, the droughts to future, due to the change climate, would further frequent and further severe, but further short in principle. Always is Well take a case So, that it affects the security water of hundreds of Thousands of people, for get prepared and treat of that this guy of situations No happen in he future”, indicates the climatologist.
This drought has caused losses of some 2,000 million euros, the largest economic loss in Uruguay in the last 30 years, declared the Minister of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries (MGAP), Fernando Mattos.
