The water crisis is here to stay and it will only get worse if the consumption habits of industry, agriculture and the population do not turn around, while currently 49% of Mexicans face some condition of drought .

This was explained by specialists consulted by 24 HOURS , who assured that factors such as climate change and poor management of water resources are some of the factors that have caused this crisis.

Rosario Sánchez Flores , a researcher at the Texas Water Resources Institute , maintained that 80% of the water crisis that is currently being experienced is the result of mismanagement of the resource, that is, not because of the amount of water available, but rather the amount of water used.

The specialist from Texas A&M University commented that now is not the time to prepare for the desertification faced by various regions around the planet, but now we must focus on adaptation.

In the southern United States, he indicated, they have begun to replace old infrastructure as a response to this process, which requires a large investment of money, but must also rethink what the water is going to be used for now, how much and who has it. priority, in addition to the quality of the liquid.

“The problem is quality, because the less quantity, the lower the quality of water. The investment that will be needed in treatment, in reuse, in circular water, green infrastructure, microclimates, in conservation, incentives for conservation, not only from the domestic point of view, but that will make the industry.

“Are they going to continue giving them drinking water to produce or are they going to encourage everyone to use wastewater? As it should have been for a long time. Like agriculture, are they going to continue exploiting, are they going to continue with their subsidies for the exploitation of aquifers, or are they really going to pay? If they start to pay, then it will stop being totally unsustainable economically speaking, ”he pointed out.

In Mexico, the National Water Commission ( Conagua ) considered the expert, it is dismembered, totally fractured and incapacitated. The first step to deal with this situation, said Sánchez Flores, is to recognize the problem, despite strong reluctance on the part of the Mexican authorities.
Secondly, it is to stop thinking that everything can be attended from Mexico City , which demonstrates a complete ignorance of the problem, its magnitude and the scope of the results.

He criticized that from the political point of view it is preferable to “kick the boat” and that it is the turn of the next, since the priority is not to address the water problem, and it is not even on the binational agenda.

The researcher pointed out that another serious problem in this sector is transparency and the lack of information, since the little that exists on the subject is scarce and unreliable, since even the Conagua website was hacked a few months ago.

“There is a lot of resistance to acknowledging that there is a problem… The information they have is not very reliable and they don’t share all the information they have. The levels of the dams are not even public or in real time. They don’t even help you make decisions.

“And neither do they help you to help the community to be part of the solution, then chaos ensues, as happened to Monterrey, due to misinformation and a lack of transparency in effective communication with society. It is another problem that must be addressed urgently: communication and transparency ”, he pointed out.

He stressed that we are facing a problem that the Federation , the states or society will not be able to solve, since in reality it requires all sectors, including academia and industry.

The situation is serious, he emphasized, and to this is added the legislation in the country that is based on the time of the Revolution and is based on its principles of land, freedom and subsidies.

According to data from Conagua as of July 31, 49% of the population in the country faces some type of drought condition, with regions of the states of Michoacán, Jalisco, Durango, Zacatecas, Guerrero, Guanajuato, Colima and Aguascalientes being the most affected. .

In this regard, the specialist in Environmental Systems and Energy and National Environment Leader of the Tecnológico de Monterrey, Delia Gutiérrez, mentioned that this is totally responsible for the impacts that human beings have on the environment, climate change that has affected precipitation patterns and the way water resources have been managed.

“If we do not reduce our consumption of water or other natural resources, we are also impacting climate change. Higher temperatures are generated, even by the use of fossil fuels or processes that generate more CO2 and we are generating an increase in temperatures. It is a combination of many factors,” Gutiérrez said.

The crisis that this has generated, as occurred in Nuevo León , continued the expert, has not been overcome, since exploiting wells or bringing water from new sources does not solve the problem.

“The root problem involves changes in our consumption, reducing our consumption, reusing water, managing water resources sustainably, even circular water management that allows us to spin that water so that we can use it as many times possible and thus be able to reduce our impacts on our water footprint”, he explained.

The challenge, he continued, is not only the scarcity of water, but also the contamination of what is available of this resource.

“The message is that the crisis has not passed, the crisis continues and unfortunately the crisis is going to continue and if we continue with our same consumption habits we are going to make it worse,” warned the researcher.

He explained that temperature changes affect sectors such as tourism, food, agriculture, industry and obviously people’s quality of life.

Currently, he added, it is no longer enough to think about mitigation actions, but rather we have to think about adaptation actions, how we adapt to these new changes, the longer periods of drought, high temperatures and reducing vulnerability in the face of these ravages of climate change.

Finally, he regretted that the candidates for the Presidency of the Republic do not include water in their presentations, since it is an issue that must be “yes or yes” on the agenda of all of them, since access to this resource is part of what a community is prosperous or not.

PHRASES

“The change we have to make is drastic, it is dramatic from an institutional point of view, from a legal point of view, from a social point of view, from an economic point of view. It is going to be very expensive and nobody likes to assume that responsibility”
Rosario Sánchez Flores, researcher at the Texas Institute of Water Resources

“We are altering those patterns and we are seeing consequences that we were not experiencing in other times; It is definitely related to climate change and the impacts that we are generating with our activities”
Delia Gutiérrez
Specialist in Environmental Systems at Tec de Monterrey