First, the good news: Mexico City will not run out of all water in a few weeks as some media reports have alarmingly suggested.
The much-touted arrival on June 26 of the so-called “day zero,” the point when the city cannot supply any more water to its citizens and companies, is in fact a theoretical exercise mentioned by the press for months, but unlikely to happen in the short term.
Now for the bad news: Due to a combination of persistent drought, higher temperatures and antiquated infrastructure, the perennial water scarcity problems of Mexico’s capital are becoming dangerously worse.
While deficient water systems are not a novelty for the city, one of the world’s largest metropolises, its emerging climate conditions are pushing authorities toward emergency measures such as rationing and distributing water by truck to fill up tanks across different neighborhoods.
In fact, most of Mexico’s territory suffers from water stress: More than 70 percent of the country is experiencing some degree of drought and the main dams are filled to just 36 percent of capacity compared with 50 percent in February.
Look at Mexico City for a moment: The Cutzamala system, a set of reservoirs, dams, pipes and water treatment plants accounting for about one-quarter of the city’s supply, has been the main victim of a damaging dry spell.
According to official figures, the system’s reservoirs have shrunk to a record low of about 214 million cubic meters, or 27 percent of capacity. That compares with reservoirs 41 percent full at the beginning of this year and 36 percent filled at this time last year. In addition, only 118.3mm of rain have fallen over the system between January and early this month, compared with 310.1mm last year.
Moreover, last month was the hottest month in the city’s history.
Yet experts are confident that the worst-case scenario can still be avoided.
I spoke to Mexico’s National Water Commission (Conagua) and to two independent analysts, and they concur that “day zero” will be postponed because:
First, authorities at the national and local level are taking emergency measures including digging new water wells and restricting demand; second, June is traditionally a rainy month, which should help to replenish the Cutzamala; and third, even if Cutzamala goes off, the city still receives about 75 percent of its water from other sources.
This might not sound completely reassuring, but it offers a big lesson: A country like Mexico, more than half of whose land has desert or semi-arid climates, needs to take the problem more seriously because it will not magically go away.
In fact, a hotter atmosphere will make heatwaves and droughts more frequent and intense. This year’s weather is just a preview of what’s to come — and the increasingly chaotic climate will only intensify the pressure to find solutions.
Thankfully, the problem featured in the parties’ platforms during this month’s national election. The presidential candidates and the Mexico City mayor hopefuls heatedly discussed their proposals during the campaign.
As climate change expert and Eurasia Group Sustainability director Franck Gbaguidi says, increasing media scrutiny and public opinion pressure are crucial for officials to make the issue an environmental and political priority.
“It’s good to reach that tipping point to trigger real action,” Gbaguidi told me. “You need that level of attention for policymakers to act now.”
In an ambitious hydrological plan that she pitched during the campaign, now Mexican president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum — who won Mexico’s vote by a landslide on June 2 — pledged to make the access of water for human consumption a priority.
Sheinbaum wants to change legislation (not updated since 1992), undertake strategic water supply projects and use technology to help with agricultural irrigation, a usual source of waste.
She also said that she plans to review private water concessions “to avoid abuses.”
“Every water user needs to put the national and people’s interest above individual interests,” Sheinbaum, who is a climate scientist by training, said in a speech on March 1.
While illegal exploitation should certainly be punished and eliminated, her nationalist approach risks leaving little room for private investments in the sector, begging the question of where the government will find the funding needed for massive projects.
In addition, private companies have at times been made the scapegoat of water restrictions when these are the result of policy mismanagement and deficient planning.
In any case, much can be done to improve infrastructure, upgrade pipes and other transportation and storage systems that can prevent leaks, responsible for an estimated 35 percent of the city’s water waste. Reversing the budget cuts applied to Conagua should be a starting point for next year’s budget.
Also essential are clampdowns on illegal water-trafficking and campaigns to promote behavioral change by consumers, particularly in non-essential services.
Gbaguidi also says that authorities need to coordinate actions at different government levels and add water experts to their bureaucracy structures to improve their understanding of the problem.
In the meantime, several days of recurrent pollution and sweltering temperatures have made Mexico City feel like a giant oven, prompting Chilangos to rush out to buy fans or consider air-conditioners — once unthinkable in a city famous for its supposedly mild weather.
That was then and this is now: The reality is that since March, Mexico has been smothered by what meteorologist Ben Noll has called a “heat blob,” the product of a hellish cocktail of weather conditions including bathtub-like temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico and the El Nino weather pattern pushing warm air eastward from the Pacific Ocean.
El Ninos, heatwaves and droughts are not new phenomena, but rising global temperatures are making them more powerful and dangerous.
The average temperature in Mexico City last week was 4.6°C higher than normal, which climate change made five times more likely, research group Climate Central estimates.
According to a new report by Climate Central, the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre and World Weather Attribution, the country as a whole currently experiences 62 extra days per year of extreme heat due to climate change.
It will likely suffer even more frequent and intense heatwaves and droughts as the planet warms in the decades ahead, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts.
All of this will make managing the water supply for a metropolitan area of 22 million people — and a nation of almost 130 million — even more difficult in the years to come.
As Sheinbaum prepares to take over the presidency on Oct. 1, fixing the water problem might turn out to be one of her most urgent and difficult challenges.
J.P. Spinetto is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Latin American business, economic affairs and politics. He was previously Bloomberg News’ managing editor for economics and government in the region. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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