Climate of the future has arrived in South America
FROM the frigid peaks of Patagonia to the tropical wetlands of Brazil, worsening droughts this year are slamming farmers, shutting down ski slopes, upending transit and spiking prices for everything from coffee to electricity.
So low are levels of the Paraná running through Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina that some ranchers are herding cattle across dried-up riverbeds typically lined with cargo-toting barges. Raging wildfires in Paraguay have brought acrid smoke to the limits of the capital. Earlier this year, the rushing cascades of Iguazu Falls on the Brazilian-argentine frontier dropped to a relative drip.
The droughts this year are extensions of multi-year water shortages, with causes that vary from country to country. Yet for much of the region, the droughts are moving up the calendar on climate change – offering a taste of the challenges ahead in securing a precious commodity: water.
The region is one of many across the globe being struck by severe drought. Hot spots severe enough to cause widespread crop losses, water shortages and elevated fire risk are now present in every continent outside Antarctica. Farmers in Arizona are curbing water use amid a catastrophic decline of the Colorado River. California melons are withering on their vines. The drought in Madagascar is being partly blamed for what the UN is calling the world’s first climate famine.
For South America, that future is coming into view just as some of the economies hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic are struggling to rebound. The impact of the droughts are threatening to soar into the billions
of dollars. Across the region, the price of historic dryness is being measured in lost crops, a slowdown in mining, surging transportation costs and shortages of energy in a region heavily dependent on hydro power.
In Chile, a nation caught in the vortex of a 13-year drought, its longest and most severe in 1 000 years, a “blob” of warm water in the southwest Pacific the size of the continental US is disturbing rain patterns, pushing storm tracks southward over the Drake Passage and Antarctica. Scientists say greenhouse gases have exacerbated the drying trend, putting Chile at the
forefront of the region’s water crisis.
“We are one of the regions of the globe where you can see that climate models coincide in their predictions, that by the end of the 21st century, we’ll have on average 30% less rainfall than today,” said Duncan Christie, a paleo-climatologist at the Austral University of Chile. “What we’re seeing today is as if the future has already arrived in central Chile.”
The Chilean government has declared an agricultural emergency in eight of its 16 regions and is offering aid to stricken farmers. Agriculture Minister María Emilia Undurraga said some regions are registering rainfall losses of between 62% and 80%.
If conditions do not improve, Chile’s copper mining industry – responsible for 10% of the nation’s economic output, and heavily reliant on water for processing – could see a drop in production of between 2.6% and 3.4% this year, amounting to losses of up to $1.7 billion (R25bn), according to Manuel Viera, president of the Chilean Mining Chamber.
“Our economy very much depends on copper, and this is going to have an impact. Without water, there is no mining,” Viera said.
Francisco Sotomayor, head of the Chilean Ski Areas Association, said seven of the organisation’s 12 lodges opened late or suffered interruptions this year due to a lack of snow – compounding losses for a sector already hit hard by the pandemic.
“Before, we could always speak of having more than three metres of snow accumulated by this date, and now we are under two metres,” Sotomayor said. Bolivia’s drought is lingering after two brutally dry years that saw millions of acres burned by wildfires. Dairy farmer Demetrio Martínez said his family business lost two cows this year from drought after losing a total of six in 2019 and 2020.
Communities in Bolivia’s Tarija region are now depending on water trucks and impromptu groundwater wells to survive. Yenny Noguera Rodríguez, 29, an environmentalist activist, said the water shortage is affecting not only crops, but families who now often need to travel long distances to bathe.
“My family drives an hour to another place where there’s water every two days.
“Some families travel even farther; up to six hours to places where they can do laundry or take a shower. This means some people are showering only one day a week,” she said.
Analysts blame a combination of the La Niña weather pattern, deforestation in the Amazon and climate change for what is shaping up to be the worst drought in nearly a century in parts of Brazil.
Falling water tables are emptying hydroelectric reservoirs in a nation of 211 million that relies on water to power the majority of its energy grid. Brazil’s Vice-president Hamilton Mourão has warned that the drought could lead to energy rationing.
Brazil’s mines and energy minister, Bento Albuquerque, says hydro power losses now equal five months’ worth of energy consumed by the city of Rio de Janeiro. The ministry announced it would jack up energy prices.
“The rainy season in the South was worse than expected. As a result, the reservoirs of our hydroelectric power plants in the South-east and Midwest suffered a greater reduction than expected,” Albuquerque said in a televised address last month. He said federal government agencies had been directed to cut electricity consumption by 20%.
The drought, combined with frost from unusually cold temperatures, has damaged coffee crops in Brazil, the world’s largest producer and exporter. The result: in July, the price of Arabica beans touched seven-year highs, a spike that will filter into morning mugs globally in the weeks and months ahead. |