Home to the largest river in the world by volume, the Amazon, Brazil holds about 12% of global freshwater reserves. As a result, many Brazilians have long run with the narrative that their water is abundant. But that is changing.
“This myth needs to be broken because we are seeing a series of problems related to water use and a change in availability,” said Juliano Schirmbeck, technical coordinator of a MapBiomas report on water.
For the past four years, the Brazilian monitoring platform has been going through an archive of satellite images, dating all the way back to 1985, to track the area of aquatic surfaces in Brazil month by month.
On average, these areas have been shrinking over the past decades, with recent years particularly badly affected. Just from 2023 to last year, the country lost about 400,000 hectares of water surface. That’s more than five times the size of Singapore.
Last year, Brazil was plagued by water shortages from North to South. Authorities declared a state of water scarcity in five major river basins. And wildfires ravaged the Amazon rainforest and Pantanal wetlands after months of drought.
The trend lays bare an uncomforable truth. Even countries with vast freshwater resources, like Brazil, are at risk of water crises due to deforestation, climate change and poor management.
Water crises impact Brazilians’ pockets
Brazil has experienced three major water crises in recent history — in 2001, 2014-2015 and 2021. These years were marked by low rainfall leading to water rationing, failing crops and power outages as the country generates around 60% of its electricity from hydropower. And that impacts Brazilians’ pockets.
“During the drought in 2021, electricity prices went up, food prices went up,” said Augusto Getirana, a research scientist at NASA’s Hydrological Sciences Laboratory.
And such impacts are felt beyond Brazil, which is a leading exporter of beef, soy, corn and sugar.
“A water crisis in Brazil is a world crisis,” said Getirana.
Deforestation in ‘Brazil’s water tank’
But it is Brazil’s role as an agribusiness powerhouse that threatens the nature that provides it with so much water.
Crops and pastures require vast amounts of space. And, historically, businesses and farmers have acquired this land by clearing forest, often illegally.
Most of that deforestation is now happening in the Cerrado, a savanna that many refer to as “Brazil’s water tank.” Its trees’ roots go deep underground, bringing rainwater to aquifers that replenish some of the country’s most important springs.
The Cerrado lost 8,174.17 square kilometers (3,156.06 square miles) of vegetation from August 2023 to July 2024, according to the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE). That’s about 2,000 square kilometers more than in the Amazon.
“This project of turning Brazil into a farm for the world is promoting the loss of entire ecosystems,” said Luciana Gatti, a senior researcher for INPE. And that has implications across Brazil and abroad.
‘Flying rivers’ provide vital rainfall
That’s because the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, also plays a crucial role in Brazil’s water cycle.
Winds from the east bring water that has evaporated from the Atlantic Ocean to the Amazon, where it falls as rain. Like giant pumps, the trees soak up the water and release it back into the atmosphere. This way, the forest produces a large part of its own rainfall.
But some of the moisture the trees transpire also travels past the Andes to central and southern regions of Brazil and on to Argentina and Paraguay through humid air currents known as “flying rivers.”
“If you transform the Amazon rainforest into a giant cattle pasture, those flying rivers won’t be there,” said Philip Fearnside of Brazil’s National Institute for Research in Amazonia (INPA).
That could have disastrous consequences for cities like Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, where the “flying rivers” act as a vital rain source.
“There is no more leeway to lose water when it comes to that part of Brazil,” Fearnside added, remembering how Sao Paulo struggled during the 2014 crisis.
“The city almost ran out of water,” Fearnside said. “If that drought had lasted a little longer, it would have been a huge catastrophe.”
Climate change intensifies the problem
Some of the droughts Brazil has experienced in recent years were made many times more likely by climate change.
Of course, growing water consumption and natural phenomena like El Nino also played their part. But when emissions heat the atmosphere, that can raise temperatures and change rainfall in complex ways. It often falls in intense and spaced-out bursts rather than moderately over a longer period. That’s how one part of Brazil could go through crippling drought and the other through devastating floods last year.
These types of extremes make it ever more important for Brazil to manage its freshwater well.
“Brazil’s economy and policies have been built around the idea that it’s a water rich country. Water management has focused on hydropower,” said Getirana.
That means that protecting water sources from pollution, drainage or overuse often takes a backseat politically. To step it up, Brazil urgently needs to collect more data, says Getirana.
Source : https://www.dw.com/en/why-brazil-faces-a-water-crisis/a-72243220
