Tag Archives: dried up

Water shortage already effecting Mexico as the summer begins to heat up

Revelation 16:9 “They were scorched by the fierce heat, and they cursed the name of God who had power over these plagues. They did not repent and give him glory.”

Important Takeaways:

  • Dams, taps running dry in northern Mexico amid historic water shortages
  • Two of the main dams that supply the metropolitan area, Cerro Prieto and La Boca, could be empty, according to the head of the water and sewage agency, Juan Ignacio Barragan. A third dam, El Cuchillo, stands at 45% capacity.
  • MONTERREY, Mexico- The taps across this working-class neighborhood of Sierra Ventana dried up over a week ago amid a historic shortage that’s gripped the most important industrial city in Mexico.
  • More than half of Mexico is currently facing moderate to severe drought conditions, according to the federal water commission CONAGUA, amid extreme heat
  • The city in June began limiting water access to six hours a day, forcing schools to adjust class schedules and sparking panic buying of bottled water that emptied supermarket shelves.

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Malian villagers battle advancing sands after lake dries

DAKAR (Reuters) – Since Lake Faguibine in northern Mali dried up, communities on its parched shores have had to defend their homes from encroaching sand dunes while finding new ways to scratch a living from the degraded soil.

The lake – once one of the largest in West Africa – used to be fed by annual flooding from the Niger River. But it started to disappear after catastrophic droughts in the 1970’s, forcing more than 200,000 people to abandon their traditional livelihoods.

“All this area was covered by water,” said farmer-turned-herder Abdul Karim Ag Al Hassane, pointing to the desert horizon in a video shared by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Now he and other inhabitants of the formerly lakeside villages west of Timbuktu have to walk long distances to find water for their livestock and build barriers out of sticks in an effort to keep the dunes at bay.

The shrinking population of Lake Faguibine is set to come under further pressure from climate change. Average temperatures are expected to rise over 3°C in West Africa by 2100 and up to 4.7°C in northern Mali, according to the U.N. climate body.

Efforts to boost resilience by restoring Faguibine’s wetlands and the area’s role as the breadbasket of the Timbuktu region have been derailed by waves of conflict, most recently a years-long Islamist insurgency, according to a 2016 study in the African Journal of Aquatic Science.

In the village of Bintagoungou, the advancing dunes have buried a schoolyard and cracked the empty buildings’ foundations.

“This is a school for almost 400 students,” said mayor Hama Abacrene. “That’s an entire generation. A lost generation, a generation condemned to flee or be recruited.”

(Writing by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Giles Elgood)