by Robert Hunziker / February 27th, 2015
From Dissident Voice
Imagine this scenario: The following is a Public Service Announcement by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, Division of Water, July 4, 2015: Because of low water levels in state reservoirs, the Division of Water proclaims a statewide water-rationing program. Starting next month, on August 1st, 2015, water service will turn off at 1:00 P.M. on a daily basis for an indeterminate period of time. Service will return the following morning.
Now, imagine a city the size of the State of New York with its 20 million people subjected to the same water-rationing plan. As it happens, São Paulo, capital city of Brazil, home to 20 million, is such a city. The water is turned off every day at 1:00 P.M., as reported by Donna Bowater.1
Brazil contains an estimated 12% of the world’s fresh water, but São Paulo is running dry.
Fatally, the city’s Cantareira Water Reservoir (water resource for 6.2 million of the city’s 20 million) is down to 6% of capacity, yes, six percent! The city’s other reservoirs are also dangerously low. Perilously, São Paulo’s days of water supply are numbered.
What’s the Problem?
Deforestation, the nearly complete disappearance of the Atlantic Forest and continuing deforestation of the Amazon, that’s the problem. Forests have an innate ability to import moisture and to cool down and to favor rain, which is what makes “regional climates” so unique.
According to one of Brazil’s leading earth scientist and climatologist, Dr. Antonio Nobre, Earth System Science Centre and Chief Science Advisor, National Institute for Research in the Amazon, Brazil: “There is a hot dry air mass sitting down here [São Paulo] like an elephant and nothing can move it… If deforestation in the Amazon continues, São Paulo will probably dry up.”2
According to Dr. Nobre: “Vegetation-climate equilibrium is teetering on the brink of the abyss. If it tips, the Amazon will start to become a much drier savanna, with calamitous consequences.”3
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