It is the only known planet that is covered with a liquid aqueous layer. Oceans, rivers, lakes, wetlands, clouds, most of their surface features are constituted by water.
Life itself, whose presence is intrinsic to Earth, formed, developed and exists thanks to the presence of this indispensable liquid.
From space or from the depths of its gaseous envelope, this is a world of water.
However, despite the global abundance, human beings are having problems of water scarcity, increasingly frequent, increasingly intense, increasingly devastating.
Contemporary societies are suffering a new global drought, and it is not due to the lack of rain, or the lower annual flow of rivers, or the absence of aquifers.
On the contrary, climate studies show an average tendency to increased rainfall. The fluvial flows have become more irregular but they have not diminished. And the total groundwater balance has not changed significantly either.
Many scientists think that the world is becoming more humid, and that due to the greenhouse effect, evaporation, cloud cover, and precipitation are increasing.
Paradoxically, in this context of increasing rainfall, societies are having problems with the vital liquid: the drought in the world of water. Although water exists, it is not where it is needed. And when it is found, its degraded quality makes it unusable.
The semi-arid regions are increasingly dry. Oceanic air masses, loaded with moisture, still arrive, but the absence of vegetation cover has reduced evapotranspiration, and therefore, the formation of clouds potentially producing rain during periods of dryness has diminished.
As the seas heat up, the climatic engine accelerates generating more numerous and intense systems that intensify erosive processes and catastrophic floods. At the same time, the soils are dried up and the humid film of life that supports the plants and animals disappears.
Incessantly new wastelands are developed every day. Episodes of drought extend more and more over time. Farmers and cattle breeders, who since ancient times produced the food that nourished towns and cities, are becoming the impoverished inhabitants of the new deserts, which only originate dust and hungry migrants.
While ancient wet landscapes dry in rural areas, large cities are dedicated to emptying or degrading rivers, lakes and aquifers. The waters are diverted, accumulated, unevenly distributed and heavily polluted by urban monsters that are constantly growing. A pathological concentration of demand has been generated and therefore there are not enough resources to satisfy it. Precisely, it is these same urban areas that most degrade the resource. Not only do they consume a lot of water, but they also return it to natural systems in poor conditions.
Contemporary societies are alienated. Humans no longer feel part of the environment. Water, the basis of life, of ecosystems, of terrestrial natural cycles, has become, just a resource. And a devalued resource.
By drying the lakes, rivers and aquifers we are drying our own lives. By degrading water, we are polluting the future. The drought we are creating is voluntary. The Waterworld is still here, with us. If we learn to understand and respect it, we can still immerse ourselves in it to live fully in the future.
Translated from Sequìa en un Mundo de Agua, D.Antón, Piriguazú Edicionesw.
