Maria Reyes, Mexican climate justice activist at Fridays for Future
Since I was 6 years old, I have experienced water shortages. One day I woke up in the morning, walked to the kitchen, tried to turn on water tap to wash my hands, but there was no water. So my grandmother would go up to the roof of our 4-floors building, up two very small stairs, and check the water tank. Almost empty. At that time, I did not realize that these were the circumstances for more than 40 million Mexicans, nor the connection of that incident with the climatic emergency that was advancing on us.
I remember seeing my grandmother organizing with the neighbors of our neighborhood on the southern periphery of the city to raise money and order water trucks, which are large trucks that supply us with the vital liquid, but this could take several days and meanwhile we had to endure. To date, there are some buildings in which the neighbors have been without water for months and even years, and ordering these water pipes has become a recurring expense. Those who have the resources to pay do so, but those who do not live in precarious conditions of scarcity.
The southern periphery region in Puebla is very polarized, a river divides the richest neighborhoods from the working class neighborhoods, but since they are in the same area, they get their water from the same aquifers, what happens is that people in the rich neighborhoods have the resources to buy and store large quantities of water, while our working-class neighborhoods can barely afford to build small water tanks or cisterns. When there is a shortage of water in the area, they hoard the resource. This is how the water crisis becomes a crisis of inequality.
Water scarcity as part of the climate emergency
Since 2014, a large part of the aquifers that supply the Puebla region have been short of water, a problem exacerbated by droughts. But this is not an isolated circumstance, because 70% of the Mexican territory is close to day zero. According to the monitoring of the National Water Commission, the increase of the temperature in Mexico has been greater than the world average during the last decade. The country is heating up faster, heat waves are intensifying, glaciers on volcanoes are melting. We ran out of water because there is no more. And what little there is, is poorly distributed.
Official publications such as the UNICEF report on the climate crisis and its impacts on children, or the latest IPCC Working Group II report, endorse these circumstances under the lens of science. However, it is also important to listen to the communities and learn about their experiences, which is why I spoke with people from different regions to delve into the problem of water for this piece.
Access to water is especially threatened when natural disasters, induced by the climate crisis, hit the territories. During the last three years, various hurricanes and cyclones have hit the coasts in the southeast of the country, mainly affecting states such as Veracruz, Yucatán and Quintana Roo. According to Vanessa Gamboa, who works for food security in the Yucatan Peninsula, floods are one of the most devastating impacts, destroying crops, washing down hills, dragging waste and polluting bodies of water.
Gerardo Romero, a peasant and member of the Poblano Environmental Movement, told me that the impacts of the cyclones do not stay on the coasts, they reach the neighboring states by disproportionately increasing rainfall, between this and the drought, the crops are seriously affected by the instability of the climate, and in the long run it means that the peasants can no longer cultivate rainfed crops.
Similarly, droughts have caused soil moisture to decrease, making forests more vulnerable to forest fires, Brenda Hernández, a resident of the state of Tlaxcala, told me. According to her, the presence of water in the subsoil goes beyond its availability for consumption, it impacts the entire ecosystem: vegetation and fauna, which are also part of the water cycle.
The water crisis as a result of anthropogenic actions
The water crisis is also exacerbated due to hoarding by industries. Various companies have settled throughout the country, many of them belonging to transnational companies from the Global North. Most of these are located in rural areas and in the peripheries. Their activities vary from automotive assembly, textile management, extensive livestock, fossil fuel power generation, mining, etc. Most of these have "permits" to extract water from rural communities, displacing populations to take advantage of their wells and drying up their underground reservoirs.
Gibrán Mena from Data Crítica has investigated how massive extraction increases the release of fluoride and arsenic in groundwater, elements that in high concentrations are harmful to health, causing diseases such as cancer. This is the reality of states like Baja California, in the north of the country.
The presence of the industry near bodies of water usually leads to their pollution, either due to irresponsible management of their production processes, or due to the deliberate discharge of their waste into rivers and springs. This causes communities to be exposed to contamination, and farmers have to use polluted water for irrigation of agriculture, which can cause serious illnesses, something that I myself have experienced. This allows us to see how the problem is not reduced to the availability of water in general, but to access to clean water.
Hope as a result of community organization
In the face of crisis and scarcity, communities organize ourselves to keep hope alive. As an example of this, Vanessa told me how after the impacts of the tropical storms on the peninsula, they organized to strengthen the networks of seed guardians, in which Mayan peasants shared their practices and knowledge for the preservation of crops. On the side of Tlaxcala, Brenda mentioned how the community maintains its strength through the collective care of the forest, and how generating ties between women is essential, since being in direct contact with the water due to the cooking and care work that they carry out, they can more quickly notice irregularities,
In the end, collectivity is what keeps us strong, whether from the frontline organization against the effects of the climate crisis, which strengthens local networks, or in the youth climate movement that amplifies the problems at a global level. Fighting collectively is what keeps hope alive.