Skardu, Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan – As we make our way towards Pakistan’s first organic village, an intense one-hour trek along the rugged, steep and unfenced mountainside pathway from Mindoq-Khar, near Kharpocho Fort, my legs are shaking with a mix of fear and strain.
The sharp mountain edges stick out threateningly, and I am reminded of the soulful lyrics of Ali Zafar’s Paharon Ki Qasam (Oaths of the Mountains), a tribute to the late Pakistani climbing hero, Muhammad Ali Sadpara from Skardu, who tragically lost his life in February 2021 while climbing the notorious Bottleneck gully which is just 300 metres (984 feet) below the summit of K2.
Above us, the sky is a brilliant shade of blue, adding to the surreal beauty of the landscape. As we gain a wider view of the Indus River Valley below us, our 44-year-old guide, Abbas Jaan, stops and draws our attention to the colour of the water.
“You can see the water turning a murky grey, carrying with it the particles from the retreating glaciers,” he says, his eyes scanning the slow-flowing waves of this vital drinking water supply. “And even though it’s grey,” he adds, “the glacial water is mineral-rich and incredibly pure.”
“But, year by year, these glaciers are melting fast. They are decreasing,” he says, pointing towards the thousands of smaller glacier peaks that surround us in the far distance; some mountains are snow-covered while others are dry and brown.
The city of Skardu, from where we have departed, sits some 2,228 metres (7,310 feet) above sea level. It is the gateway to the Karakoram mountain range and some of the world’s highest peaks such as K2, Broad Peak and Gasherbrum, making it a popular destination for trekkers and mountaineers who come to marvel at the breathtaking scenery.
Following the rugged, fenceless path to the organic village, Khari Nangsoq [Anam Hussain/Al Jazeera]
With a population of more than 200,000, the city boasts a rich cultural blend influenced by Tibetan, Balti and other Central Asian traditions, where diverse Islamic sects, including Noor Bakshi, Sunni and Shia, coexist.
But this region of Pakistan is also home to more than 7,000 glaciers – the largest number outside the earth’s polar regions.
These icy giants are far more than just a breathtaking natural spectacle; they are vital to the local ecosystem.
They serve as a crucial source of freshwater, sustaining agriculture and powering electricity generation through the meltwater that feeds into rivers.
Now, however, their existence is under threat.
A 2019 study (PDF) published in the Pakistan Geographical Review by Lahore College for Women University, highlights the increasingly unusual behaviour of glaciers in the Karakoram range, compared with glaciers in other parts of the world.
The Baltoro Glacier is a particular example. Spanning some 63km (39 miles) in length, the Baltoro is one of the longest glaciers in the world outside the polar regions. Its width varies, but generally ranges from two to three kilometres. The meltwater from the Baltoro Glaciers feeds the Shigar River, which is the main right-bank tributary of the Indus River Valley in the Skardu Valley.
It is an essential source of freshwater for this region and beyond, but the study showed that the glacier has been decreasing in size by 0.9 percent each year between 2003 and 2017.
The immediate effect of the shrinking glacier is a rise in water levels and even dangerous flooding in the Shigar River.
The position of the Baltoro and Sachien glaciers in Pakistan (AJ Labs)
Locally, roads have been known to have become completely submerged when water levels rise too high, says Chris Lininger, founder and director of US-based travel company Epic Expeditions, who has been travelling across Pakistan’s intricate terrains, including the Baltoro Glacier, since 2018.
“I actually had a problem coming out of a trip when the floods happened in 2022 because the road was just gone,” he says over a Zoom call. “Many [locals] are already in a low socioeconomic state, and when this happens, it’s catastrophic for them.”
But the extreme long-term effect will be even more deadly – the water will eventually dry up when the glacier is gone.
Mexico City, Mexico – Walking through Mexico City’s historic Zocalo district, Dario Solano-Rojas points to signs of a subterranean catastrophe that is under way.
The roads are uneven in the city’s central plaza, the streets and walkways are sloped and twisting. Many building foundations have sunk dramatically while others have a visible lean, resulting in cracks in the surrounding pavement. Two of the city’s most iconic structures – The Palacio de Bellas Artes and the Metropolitan Cathedral (built from the stones of the Aztec temple that once stood there) – seem to be disappearing into the earth.
Inside the cathedral, Solano-Rojas, a professor of geological engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, points to a glass-encased box connected to the ceiling by a taut wire. At the centre of the nave hangs a heavily-weighted point, which charts a line indicating how the cathedral has shifted unevenly over the centuries, with the worst-impacted section dropping by some 2.5 metres (8.2 feet).
At the centre of the Metropolitan Cathedral’s nave hangs a weight that tracks the cathedral’s motion across the centuries [Nick Hilden/Al Jazeera]
Mexico City is sinking, as are its greatest monuments. Parts of the city of nearly 9 million people are descending into the earth by as much as 40cm (15 inches) annually – all driven by a deepening water crisis with roots that go back 500 years, and that reveals itself today in stunning ironies.
One of Mexico City’s most renowned attractions, the canals of Xochimilco, with their lush lagoons and colourfully decorated boats, date back to the precolonial lake that once satiated the city’s thirst. Today, its adjacent neighbourhoods have run out of water.
To its north is Iztapalapa, one of the city’s most notoriously impoverished, dangerous colonias (neighbourhoods), where the water supply has been inconsistent for years. It frequently slows to a trickle or stops entirely for days and even weeks.
While it is, sadly, not surprising that a disenfranchised district would experience breakdowns in essential services, perhaps more unanticipated are the water shortages in the adjacent region of Coyoacan, an upper-crust neighbourhood best known as the once-home of painting power couple Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.
A boy carries home buckets filled from barrels of drinking water loaded from tanker trucks in the Mexico City borough of Iztapalapa [Yuri Cortez/AFP]
At the heart of the city’s struggle – and its sinking – is its reliance on underground water. As the underground aquifer drains and the ground above it settles, the city sinks deeper and deeper. “There’s one solution: Stop taking water from underground,” says Solano-Rojas. “But that’s not going to happen.”
The situation in Mexico City shows how the rich and the poor are both ill-prepared for when water supplies run dry – and money can only go so far.
A problem for the ages
“I was born with this problem existing,” says Solano-Rojas. “I thought it was normal everywhere, but it’s not.”
To understand the “subsidence” of the city and the water shortage causing it, it is necessary to look back half a millennium. The Aztecs had already erected a civilisation atop and amid the local network of lakes, most notably the capital of Tenochtitlan, which stood on the site of Mexico City’s present-day central district.
Had the penultimate Aztec ruler Moctezuma’s empire been allowed to continue expanding, it is possible that it would have eventually run into similar water supply issues. But the arrival of the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes and his colonial forces disrupted all that – they levelled Tenochtitlan and built their own city in its place.
“It’s a historical problem,” explains Elena Tudela Rivadeneyra, a professor of architecture at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the co-founder of the Office of Urban Resilience, which develops strategies to help cities weather climate change. “Ever since we decided to dry out the lake system that we had here – and that started [shortly after the Spanish arrived] around 1608 – we started having a difficult relationship with water.”
Draining the lakes and building over them created two major issues. First, it diminished the local water supply, requiring the city to import much of its fresh water – a significant portion of which must be pumped at great expense more than 100 metres (328 feet) up the sierra where the city perches. Second, as the city grew and consumed what water remained, the subsidence began. Problems snowballed from there.
The camera is level but the buildings in the Zocalo are not. Riot police stand at the bottom behind the barriers – the building to the right is the National Palace where protests are frequent [Nick Hilden/Al Jazeera]
A sinking city
One of the first things you notice as you land in Mexico City is that the airport runway is unusually bumpy. The increasingly uneven tarmac is a consequence of subsidence.
Listing buildings and uneven roads may be the most obvious impact of the subsidence, but bigger problems lurk out of view.
A recent study found that the integrity of the metro is progressively compromised – and there is more, “It also breaks the pipes,” says Tudela Rivadeneyra.
When Mexico City began modernising its municipal water supply during the 1940s – an event that Diego Rivera celebrated with the creation of stunning underwater murals you can visit at the Cárcamo Museum in Chapultepec Park – its population was only a few million. As that number exploded to the 22.5 million living there today, the water infrastructure not only failed to keep up with the rising demand, but was continually torn apart by subsidence.
Now, the city is losing some 40 percent of its water due to leaks in broken pipes.
The murals of Deigo Rivera commemorating the construction of the municipal water system at the Cárcamo Museum in Chapultepec Park in Mexico City [Nick Hilden/Al Jazeera]
“The leakages are quite difficult to deal with,” says Tudela Rivadeneyra. “Even if you replace them with new materials and more elastic and technical and technological solutions, you still have quite an issue.”
Water infrastructure has become a top consideration among voters in the city’s upcoming mayoral elections, and while candidates have made bold claims about fast fixes, Tudela Rivadeneyra says these are unrealistic. She notes that even if the city had the money for it – and it does not – the sheer amount of construction required for a rapid infrastructure rebuild is untenable in a city where people are forced to commute sometimes for hours each day. The increase in the city’s already notorious traffic would grind it to a standstill.
As Mexico City runs out of water, for many, the taps are already running dry.
The stones around Bellas Artes are cracking and require frequent repair [Nick Hilden/Al Jazeera]
Day Zero is already here
In the discussion of the city’s water crisis, the term “Day Zero” is frequently thrown around to describe the presumed date when wells will run dry. Many have set it for late June. But the situation is complicated.
“I don’t think a Day Zero is going to come,” says Solano-Rojas. “Day Zero has already happened.”
While popular central districts like Condesa and Roma are still relatively unscathed by the situation – though many of their once-majestic fountains now stand dry – residents in areas like Iztapalapa and Coyoacan will tell you that the concept of Day Zero is practically meaningless.
“Day Zero has been here for a lot of people around the whole metropolitan area,” says Tudela Rivadeneyra. “Twenty-five percent of the population does not receive enough water. Technically speaking, 98 percent of the population has the infrastructure to get it, but that doesn’t mean that you open up the tap and there’s water.”
The issue extends beyond Mexico City proper.
“We don’t have water at home on Saturdays and Sundays,” says Israel, a resident of the nearby town of Toluca. “Monday to Friday, the situation is irregular. There may be a day or two with water and the rest of the weekdays, we only get a very small amount.”
And in Cuernavaca, roughly an hour south of Mexico City, residents have blocked the highway to protest water shortages.
Standing at the high rear of the Church of San Francisco, it is clear that the nave floor is sinking [Nick Hilden/Al Jazeera]
The situation has forced the use of stopgap solutions that can only go so far. “People can ask for trucks with water in those areas in which the situation is critical,” says Israel. “But the common solution with some people and local businesses I’ve talked with is that they are paying for private trucks to deliver them water.”
These water trucks – frequently accompanied by armed guards – are becoming ubiquitous throughout the city. Unsurprisingly, there has been talk about the cartel moving into the private water racket. In Mexico, if something can be commodified, the cartel runs it.
So, Day Zero has already come for many in the city, and for those who have not yet experienced it, the issue is more complicated than a date on a calendar.
This theoretical timeline refers specifically to the depletion of the Cutzamala Water System, which draws from neighbouring basins that are currently at approximately 30 percent capacity and provide about 30 percent of the city’s water. But that represents less than a third of the water supply: The rest is in the aquifer directly beneath the city.
“What’s really scary is the possibility of Day Zero for the aquifer, because it provides 70 percent of the water we consume,” says Tudela Rivadeneyra. “That is catastrophe. Right now, people are suffering and it’s not something to take lightly. Thirty percent is like 5 million people – a quarter of the population of the metropolitan area – not having enough water”, she says, adding that “the aquifer is not replaceable. That is not something you can pull off with water trucks”.
Experts disagree on how much longer the aquifer can last at current consumption rates, placing the number anywhere between five to 20 years. What is certain is that dramatic action must be taken to avoid a total water disaster.
“It’s like a glass where you sip water every day,” says Tudela Rivadeneyra. “Eventually, it will run out.”
The iconic Bellas Artes Palace is sinking to its left. Here, the camera is level and flat but the ground is not [Nick Hilden/Al Jazeera]
The need for long-term solutions
While the city scrambles for quick solutions like water rationing, water trucks, individual conservation advocacy and rain-collecting (collection setups have been distributed to many businesses and homes but only recently, Mexico City saw its first drizzle in months), the crisis has been a long time in the making and solutions cannot happen overnight.
“There’s not much that can be done in the short term,” Tudela Rivadeneyra admits, “because there’s not enough time or money for it”. She is more hopeful about longer-term solutions but does not “think politicians are being practical about them or investing in them enough”.
Many significant changes must occur, but according to Solano-Rojas, one of the key adjustments is mental. “We’re using water thinking it’s a renewable resource,” he says. “We had this big push against single-use plastic like straws but we still have single-use water.”
In addition to pumping in tremendous quantities of fresh water, Mexico City also pumps out the vast majority of its used water as sewage to the nearby state of Hidalgo. This pipeline – a huge infrastructure undertaking called the Tunel Emisor Oriente – required substantial resources to build, and critics argue that it exacerbates rather than palliates the water crisis by evacuating water from the city rather than retaining it.
“We only treat 15 percent of the water,” says Tudela Rivadeneyra. “That’s a very low percentage, and almost all of the water we use goes to the sewage. So we’re just importing water and exporting all of the problems without dealing with it locally.”
Soldiers place a water treatment plant in San Lorenzo Park in Mexico City, on April 11, 2024. The inhabitants of a sector of Mexico City have been affected by the contamination of a water well with an oily substance, in the midst of an extreme drought that affects several parts of the country [Alfredo Estrella/AFP]
With a presidential election looming, the incumbent Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s (AMLO) party, Morena, is desperate to appear to be addressing the growing water emergency. One of its primary proposals involves establishing new water wells in the hardest affected areas, but Tudela Rivadeneyra is doubtful, agreeing that in order to construct actual solutions, there must first be a major shift in mindset.
“If we do end up getting all of the water wells, bringing water trucks from wherever we can, from other basins – people will suffer anyways. The demand is too high,” she explains. “What we should be focusing on is what to do next and how to change the way we understand water in the city, and the way that water relates to urban development.”
Privatisation and climate change
One oft-cited contributor to the dearth of water is privatisation. Beer, soft drink, paper and chemical manufacturers have significant operations throughout Mexico City and the adjacent State of Mexico, and are granted enormous water concessions. What water regulations they do face are lax in enforcement or circumvented by corruption.
Experts note that these water rights can be revoked legally and that a precedent has been set by similar actions taken in the past.
“What they should be doing is what they did with the fossil fuel industry,” says Tudela Rivadeneyra. “Just make them go out of the city, because there’s not enough water for them here. They should move to other parts of the country where they have more opportunities to obtain water without drying out the few resources we have.”
She’s referring to a plan established by López Obrador to decentralise the government by relocating Mexico City-based agencies to less populated areas across the country in an effort to ease pollution and infrastructure strain in the megalopolis. While critics have pointed out that this goal was only partially met, it did move the state-owned Pemex petroleum company from its 51-storey tower in the city to the more sparsely populated coast of the state of Campeche, where most of Mexico’s fossil fuels are produced.
This sort of decentralisation, emphasises both Solano-Rojas and Tudela Rivadeneyra, is essential to solving the water crisis. Unfortunately, says the latter, relocating water-intensive industry will require prodigious political capital, but there is little willingness to expend it.
She notes that while the government has engaged in campaigns to raise awareness for the need for individual responsibility – shorter showers and the like – these efforts are not sufficient.
“But even if we all did that, it wouldn’t be enough if we still have these concessions,” she says.
And then, of course, there is climate change. On April 15, Mexico City saw its hottest day on record, amid a historic drought.
Rain is essential for renewing the aquifer and leveraging the city’s catchment strategies. In recent years, Mexico City has received less rain but more intense bursts of it. This complicates harvesting because sudden, short-lived eruptions of precipitation require larger gathering surfaces.
At the same time, it makes the city more prone to flooding, exacerbated by a lack of open and green spaces that would otherwise allow moisture to seep into the earth.
“We should be removing asphalt from parts of the city that don’t really need it, like peripheries,” says Tudela Rivadeneyra.
Asphalt blocks water seepage, which not only drives flooding but prevents rain from reaching the aquifer. The removal of asphalt is especially important in areas like Iztapalapa, which rests on porous basalt rather than an impervious lake bed like the rest of the city, and may prove vital to replenishing the underground reservoir.
“We need to be recharging the aquifer in order to not have a general Day Zero,” Tudela Rivadeneyra emphasises.
On the right of the Metropolitan Cathedral, it is evident that its foundation is sinking [Nick Hilden/Al Jazeera]
Collective action
Recently, it rained in Mexico City for the first time in a long while. This correspondent watched a tiny, very wrinkled elderly woman gaze up at the sky with unguarded delight that verged on relief, her arms spread towards the heavens.
If Mexico City is going to overcome this crisis, she and everyone else who lives there – industrial inhabitants in particular – will have to change how water is considered.
According to Tudela Rivadeneyra, that means “focusing on solutions that have more to do with collectivity. So, instead of having a building just demanding water because it exists, it’s like, what kind of water is it producing? How can we connect it to another building or area that requires that type of water?”
She encourages understanding where water originates and where it goeswhy streets become rivers.
“Know what’s going on below your feet,” she urges, “because water is very invisible. Making it visible changes the way we relate to it. Dealing with water in different ways that are more circular makes a lot of sense, and it’s not that tough.”
Can Mexico City achieve the ecosystemic circularity necessary to surmount its water emergency? With the worst yet to come, it seems it is not a matter of can but must.
Viewed from above, it is difficult to tell, but the iconic Bellas Artes Palace is sinking to its left [Nick Hilden/Al Jazeera]
The surfing community in Mexico has paid tribute to the American and two Australian tourists who were killed while on vacation in Baja California. They also held a protest to demand safety and accountability.
Abu Abbas knew more about the Iraqi Marshes than most, having lived there his entire life.
So when the Iraqi government of former dictator Saddam Hussein drained the wetlands of southern Iraq in the early 1990s, Abu Abbas witnessed the devastation.
Then a decade later, as young men with picks and small water pumps began knocking down the embankments that kept water out of the former wetlands after Hussein’s fall, he was among those who watched water re-enter the marshes.
It has not been plain sailing since. The marshes are struggling as a result of climate change and mismanagement. And yet, Abu Abbas’s optimism has remained.
Early last year, lying in bed with his health failing, he received a visit from his nephew, Jassim Al-Asadi.
“What is the status of the marshes?” Abu Abbas asked.
“Things are miserable,” Jassim replied.
Before Jassim could continue, Abu Abbas cut him off.
“Do not be afraid for the marshes,” he said. “They will survive, even if the water is salty, as long as there are people like you who will defend them.”
The marshes were once among the largest wetlands in the world, covering 10,500sq km (4,050sq miles) in 1973, an area roughly the size of Lebanon.
They were home to a diverse range of flora and fauna and by the middle of the 20th century supported a human population estimated at 500,000.
The great cities of Ur, where most biblical scholars believe Abraham was born, and Uruk, the largest city in the world in 3200 BCE, lay adjacent to the marshes.
While most of the wetlands lie within Iraq, a smaller section known as Hawr al-Azim is in Iran.
During his lifetime, Abu Abbas observed the natural cycles of creation and destruction of the wetlands as floods and drought affected traditional livelihoods based on fishing, hunting, reed production and farming.
At the same time, he experienced the increasing impact of human activities on the marshes: war, upstream dams, oil development and agricultural pollution.
Last summer, temperatures in the southern Spanish city of Seville hit more than 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). The heatwave was so intense it earned itself a name: Heatwave Yago, the city’s second named event in two years.
Seville, among other cities in Europe and around the world, is facing temperatures that it was not built to handle. In the summer of 2022, extreme heat melted railway lines and airport tarmac in London, England. In July 2023, Germans started considering midday siestas to escape the sweltering heat.
As temperatures soar, cities accustomed to cooler temperatures are seeking ways to adapt that avoid relying on energy-intensive solutions like air conditioning.
A small research group in Seville is taking inspiration from ancient Middle Eastern cultures that learned to live with the heat before electricity could provide respite.
Some see their efforts as honouring the wisdom of ancient thinkers, while others say that these old systems are far more than a technology – they reflect a mindset of sustainability that today’s world is desperately trying to resurrect.
‘Special relationship between humans and nature’
Majid Labbaf Khaneiki is one of a handful of experts helping bring 3,000-year-old underground aqueduct technology, called qanats, to the modern world.
Early qanat tunnels, which were built manually with picks and shovels, appeared in China, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Afghanistan. However, scholars estimate the first qanat was born in the early first millennium in Persia, and then spread to arid regions throughout the world.
The ancient system is made up of a network of underground canals – 20 to 200 metres below the desert’s surface – that transport water from higher altitudes to lower ones. Built on a slight slope, the canals use gravity to transport the water. A series of well-like vertical shafts allow for access and maintenance.
From above, the system looks like thousands of lined-up anthills winding through the desert. The real excitement happens underground where the water is collected before it travels through the canals.
A qanat near Timimoun, Algeria. Qanats often look like anthills in the desert [DeAgostini/Getty Images]
Khaneiki, a 49-year-old professor in archaeohydrology at the University of Nizwa in Oman, has spent his entire career studying ancient tunnels that carry water under the surface of arid and semi-arid environments. He grew up in a house filled with history books and a father with a passion for archaeology.
Khaneiki’s family hails from a small arid village in Eastern Iran called Kanek – the linguistic root of his last name. Khaneiki spent some summers there growing up. “The only water that supplied that village was the qanat,” he says, adding that it ran directly through the village, allowing it to become an oasis of green in the middle of the desert.
“The qanat was actually a congregation point for people. I remember I met other children exactly at the place and we used to play there,” he says. “The qanat system goes hand-in-hand with social interaction. Maybe that’s why I’m so interested in it, because it is sort of an intrinsic part of my identity and personality.”
Khaneiki has kind eyes, and his conviction in qanats as systems of the future — not just the past — is emphatic. “My last name should have been qanat builder,” he says with a laugh. In the course of a few minutes, he rattles off modern qanat projects in Azerbaijan, Spain and Pakistan.
He explains how different the process of building these qanats is compared with the collaborative effort of ancient systems. For example, in Azerbaijan, the government built a new qanat using modern machinery in order to bring more jobs and resources to communities outside the populated cities and assuage internal migration. “This was a very top-down managerial way of doing it,” he says. “In the past, it was bottom-up”.
“The qanat system is not only tunnels in the ground,” Khaneiki says. “It is a lifestyle.”
A qanat (underground water channel) in Shafiabad village near Kerman in Iran. Qanats have been used to supply water in Iran since the 1st millennium BC [Leisa Tyler/LightRocket via Getty Images]
The ancient qanat system enabled irrigation in desert environments, allowed for agriculture to flourish and fostered community cooperation. It is seen as the basis for decentralised water management in Iran, and a more sustainable solution to modern pumping and dams.
“Qanats are one of the oldest notions of a company in the world,” says Negar Sanaan Bensi, a lecturer and researcher in the faculty of architecture at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. “They are based on a huge shareholding system” that requires different people living in a region to work together and use the water resources available.
It worked similarly to how a startup does today. A couple of people came together to start digging with hand-held tools for water. Once they got what they needed, more people would join and expand the tunnel, and take their share of the resources. Over time this spread throughout the country, with each municipality managing their local qanat. “They started with four or five people,” says Khaneiki. “But in the end they had hundreds of people cooperating.”
Khaneiki is now looking at how qanats are being used for new purposes and new forms – not for irrigation and cultivation, but for tourism and architectural purposes, he says, pointing to their traditional design and cultural significance, and the designation of some qanats as UNESCO tourism sites. China, which has 800 qanat systems, has built a museum explaining the history and engineering of the different systems. There are also statues of qanat builders digging tunnels with a pickaxe or collecting soil.
“They [qanats] are also coming back to life for the purposes of climate change,” Khaneiki says.
A shade structure in a sitting area at the unopened CartujaQanat pilot project, an architectural experiment in cooling solutions inspired by Persian-era canals [Angel Garcia/Bloomberg via Getty Images]
How the old is being made new
Thousands of kilometres away from the arid regions of the Middle East, and even farther away from China, scientists Jose Sanchez Ramos and Servando Alvarez are using the concept of qanats to provide an oasis in the city of Seville.
As part of a city initiative to find solutions to rising temperatures, Ramos and Alvarez were given the opportunity to choose a location to experiment with bringing down temperatures in an outdoor space without relying on energy-intensive technologies.
One of those options was on La Isla de La Cartuja, an area northwest of the centre of Seville. The neighbourhood was once the location of the 1992 Seville Exposition, which drew 41 million visitors. Although the city has made some attempts to urbanise the space, these days it looks largely abandoned, with overgrown shrubbery, cracked sidewalks and a decrepit monorail station.
However, the area is home to a research and development complex that employs 15,000 people, a football stadium and the International University of Andalucía (UNIA). An abandoned amphitheatre used in the Expo has become the centre of Ramos and Alvarez’s work.
An auditorium at the unopened CartujaQanat pilot project [Angel Garcia/Bloomberg via Getty Images]
The project, named CartujaQanat, is modelled after the Persian qanat system and seeks to cool the ground temperature of a space the size of two soccer fields by 6 to 7 degrees Celcius within La Isla de La Cartuja.
Partially funded by the European Union’s Urban Innovative Actions (UIA) office, this 5-million-euro ($5.1m) project involves a channel 20 metres underground that will carry water – but the purpose is not to transport that water.
Vertical vents along the canal drive the coolness of the water upwards, allowing it to reduce the ground temperature. “The key to the climate control techniques is the day-night cycle,” says Ramos.
During the nighttime, the water underground – about 140 cubic metres [36,984 cubic gallons] – cools off with the naturally low temperatures. Some of the water is pumped up and sent to the roof of the amphitheatre, which is covered in solar panels. Nozzles fan out the water on top of the panels, creating what’s called a “falling film”. This mechanism helps expedite the cooling process by reducing the depth of the water and allowing it to cool faster in the low outdoor temperatures.
During the day, solar-powered pumps push cooled water above ground where it gets funnelled through small pipes and pushed in front of fans that spray the cool air into the ground floor of the amphitheatre. Outside, a separate set of nozzles in small pools of water spray mist into the air, cooling by evaporation.
A pump room at the unopened CartujaQanat pilot project [Angel Garcia/Bloomberg via Getty Images]
Other elements help to keep the temperatures down: Vegetation planted on the inside walls cools via transpiration (excess water from leaves evaporates into the air), trees provide shade outside, and the roof is painted a heat-reflecting white.
The creators are hoping the space will become a communal point for university students and people who work at nearby companies. “The project aims to bring life back on the street,” says Ramos. “This will provide climatic refuge while allowing both shelter in the middle of the summer and the possibility of continuing to organise outdoor activities in the hot months.”
Alvarez says that the area should be completed by June, just in time for the summer when Spain experiences its highest temperatures.
The creators are hoping the space will become a communal point for university students and people who work at nearby companies [Angel Garcia/Bloomberg via Getty Images]
A cool future
Ramos and Alvarez met more than 30 years ago when Ramos was one of Alvarez’s students at the University of Seville. “He asked good questions,” says Alvarez. “The people that pose interesting problems to me in the classroom are the people who I try to recruit for the future.”
Since then they have been working together to cool down Seville. In the 1990s, they developed wind tunnels along Seville’s avenues, taking inspiration from a Persian wind catcher called a bagdir, a tower with openings at the top that catch the wind and channel it downwards.
Alvarez says that they often look to other countries for solutions, especially those that have been dealing with intense heat for centuries.
For example, modern Moroccan buildings are being designed to include large north-facing windows and smaller south-facing windows that bring in natural light while maximising cooling. Los Angeles in the United States, and Ahmedabad in India, are using a new type of white paint to reflect up to 98.1 percent of sunlight and absorb UV light, which helps to combat urban heat and reduce energy consumption. White reflective paint has been used for centuries in Morocco and Greece, earning one famous city the name “Casablanca” (white house).
“[The Arab world] did it because they needed to … either you move or you die or you find something to cool your buildings. And they found something,” says Alvarez. “[CartujaQanat] is really a tribute to them,” he adds.
The team has already started applying some of their learnings to other parts of Seville.
“Bioclimatic” bus stops, which use a smaller-scale version of the CartujaQanat approach, are being installed in time for summer. Inside the shelter, air that has been cooled by a closed water system is pumped out via tiny holes, powered by solar panels on the roof – similar to a refrigerator,” Sanchez told local newspaper Sur last summer. He and Khaneiki say that they hope to have more citizen participation as the project moves forward
The efforts in Seville are a modern-day reimagining of the systems built thousands of years ago, Khaneiki says. “These are qanats built for modern people by modern people. This is a resurrection of qanats in the new era.”
Water resources under stress as economies and populations grow with 2.2 billion people lacking clean drinking water.
Increasing global water scarcity is fuelling more conflicts and contributing to instability, the United Nations warns in a new report, which says access to clean water is critical to promoting peace.
The UN World Water Development Report 2024, released on Friday, said 2.2 billion people worldwide have no access to clean drinking water and 3.5 billion people lack access to safely managed sanitation.
Girls and women are the first victims of a lack of water, said the report, published by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), especially in rural areas where they have the primary responsibility of collecting supplies.
Spending several hours a day on fetching water, coupled with a lack of safe sanitation, is a contributing factor to girls dropping out of school.
“Water shortages not only fan the flames of geopolitical tensions but also pose a threat to fundamental rights as a whole, for example, by considerably undermining the position of girls and women,” UNESCO chief Audrey Azoulay said.
While the report did not examine specific current conflicts, Israel has severely restricted access to fresh, clean water during its war on Gaza.
UN agencies have long warned that not only are children and women at grave risk of thirst and starvation, but the lack of clean water also has disrupted medical treatment and hygiene.
The lack of water security drives migration, and displaced people strain resources in locations where they settle. The report cited a study in Somalia that indicated a 200 percent increase in gender-based violence against a group of displaced people.
At least 10 percent of global migration is linked to water stress as the world faces a more erratic climate, the researchers found.
The report also said: “Global warming is projected to … further increase the frequency and severity of droughts and floods, with more wet and very dry weather and climate events.”
Titled Water for Prosperity and Peace, the report found that roughly half of the world’s population is experiencing severe water scarcity with some areas lacking water almost year-round.
Much of the consequences are felt in poorer countries, which find it harder to adapt. The report estimated that it would cost $114bn annually to provide safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene in 140 low- to middle-income countries.
Quentin Graft from Water Justice Hub, a UNESCO affiliate, told Al Jazeera: “It’s not just a water problem for people in Syria. It’s not just a water problem for people in Sudan. … It’s a water problem for all of us because we grow our food with freshwater whether it’s irrigated or whether it’s rain-fed, and when you have climate change on top of an already existing water crisis, then we have an inability to feed ourselves.”
While 153 countries share water resources, only 24 have signed onto cooperation agreements covering all of their shared water, UN chief Antonio Guterres said in a statement marking World Water Day on Friday.
More than 60 percent of all freshwater resources are shared by two or more countries, including major rivers like the Rhine and Danube in Europe, the Mekong in Asia, the Nile in Africa and the Amazon in South America, Sonja Koeppel, secretary of the UN Water Convention, told the Agence France-Presse news agency.
The convention was established in 1992 to help foster responsible joint management of water resources in Europe but opened up in 2016 to countries around the world. It currently has 52 state parties, mainly in Europe, Asia and Africa.
Bengaluru, the city of lavish headquarters of multiple global software companies in southern India, is drying up. Residents say they are facing the worst water crisis in decades as they witness an unusually hot February and March.
Water experts fear the worst is still to come in April and May when the summer sun is at its strongest in the city of 13 million residents.
In the last few years, Bengaluru has received little rainfall in part due to human-caused climate change. Water levels are running desperately low, particularly in poorer areas, resulting in sky-high costs for water and a quickly dwindling supply.
City and state government authorities are trying to get the situation under control with emergency measures, such as nationalising water tankers and putting a cap on water costs.
Authorities say 6,900 of the 13,900 borewells drilled in the city have run dry despite some being drilled to depths of 457 metres (1,500 feet). Those reliant on groundwater now have to depend on water tankers that pump from nearby villages.
Shashank Palur, Bengaluru-based hydrologist with the Water, Environment, Land and Livelihood Labs think tank, said El Nino, a natural phenomenon that affects weather patterns worldwide, along with less rainfall in the city, mean “recharge of groundwater levels did not happen as expected”.
A new piped water supply from the Cauvery River, about 100km (60 miles) from the city, has also not been completed, adding to the crisis, he said.
Another concern is that paved surfaces cover nearly 90 percent of the city, preventing rainwater from seeping down and being stored in the ground, said TV Ramachandra, research scientist at the Centre for Ecological Sciences at Bengaluru-based Indian Institute of Science.
The city has lost nearly 70 percent of its green cover in the last 50 years, he said.
The Indian government estimated in 2018 that more than 40 percent of Bengaluru’s residents will not have access to drinking water by the end of the decade. Only those that receive piped water from rivers outside Bengaluru are still getting regular supply.
“Right now, everyone is drilling borewells in buffer zones of lakes. That is not the solution,” Ramachandra said.
He said the city should instead focus on replenishing the more than 200 lakes spread across the city, stop new construction on lake areas, encourage rainwater harvesting, and increase green cover across the city.
Palur added that identifying other sources and using them smartly, for example by reusing treated wastewater in the city “so that the demand for fresh water reduces” could also help.
Until then, some residents are taking serious measures. S Prasad, who lives with his wife and two children in a housing society made up of 230 apartments, said they have begun water rationing.
“Since last week, we’ve closed the water supply to houses for eight hours every day, starting at 10am. Residents have to either store water in containers or do everything they need to in the allotted time. We are also planning on installing water metres soon,” he said.
Prasad said their housing society, like many others in Bengaluru, is willing to pay high costs for water, but even then it is hard to find suppliers.
“This water shortage is not only impacting our work but also our daily life,” Prasad said. “If it becomes even more dire, we’ll have no choice but to leave Bengaluru temporarily.”
Tunisian villager Ounissa Mazhoud ties two empty jerry cans to a donkey and cautiously descends a stony hill towards the last local source of water.
The North African country, in its fourth year of drought, is grappling with its worst water scarcity in years.
Mazhoud – like other women in the remote village of Ouled Omar, 180km (110 miles) southwest of the capital, Tunis – wakes up every morning with one thing on her mind: finding water.
“We are the living dead … forgotten by everyone,” said Mazhoud, 57, whose region was once one of Tunisia’s most fertile, known for its wheat fields and Aleppo pines.
“We have no roads, no water, no aid, no decent housing, and we own nothing,” she said, adding that the closest source of water is a river about an hour’s arduous walk away.
Providing water for their families, she said, means that “our backs, heads and knees hurt, because we labour from dawn to dusk”.
Some villagers have felt pushed to move to urban areas or abroad.
Ounissa’s cousin, Djamila Mazhoud, 60, said her son and two daughters had all left in search of better lives.
“We educated our children so that when we grow old, they take care of us, but they couldn’t,” she said.
“People are either unemployed or eaten by the fish in the sea,” she added, using a common phrase for migrants who attempt the dangerous sea voyages for Europe.
Entire families have already left the village, said Djamila.
“Their houses remain empty,” she said, explaining that elderly people feel they have no choice but to follow their sons and daughters.
“Can an 80-year-old go to the river to get water?”
Mohammed Hamid Nour is only 23 but is already nostalgic for how Iraq’s Mesopotamian marshes once were before drought dried them up, decimating his herd of water buffaloes.
Even at their centre in Chibayish, only a few expanses of the ancient waterways – home to a Marsh Arab culture that goes back millennia – survive, linked by channels that snake through the reeds.
Pull back further and the water gives way to bare, cracked earth.
Mohammed has lost three-quarters of his herd to the drought that is now ravaging the marshes for a fourth consecutive year. The United Nations said it is the worst in 40 years, describing the situation as “alarming”, with “70 percent of the marshes devoid of water”.
“I beg you, Allah, have mercy!” Mohammed implored, keffiyeh on his head as he contemplated the disaster under the unforgiving blue of a cloudless sky.
As the marshes dry out, the water gets salty until it starts killing the buffaloes. Many of Mohammed’s herd died like this, others he was forced to sell before they too perished.
“If the drought continues and the government doesn’t help us, the others will also die,” said the young herder, who has no other income.
In the 1990s, Iraq’s former strongman President Saddam Hussein drained the marshes – which were 20,000sq km (7,700sq miles) – to punish the Marsh Arabs, diverting the flows of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers away from the land.
It was only after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 that people began to dismantle the Saddam-era infrastructure, allowing the marshes to refill slightly, but they are still only 4,000sq km (1,500sq miles) by the latest estimates – also choked by dams on the Tigris and Euphrates upstream in Turkey and Syria and soaring temperatures of climate change.
Iconic culture
Marsh buffalo milk is an iconic part of Iraqi cuisine, as is the thick, clotted “geymar” cream Iraqis love to have with honey for breakfast.
The buffaloes are tricky to raise and their milk cannot be mass-produced, and their rearing is tied to the marshes
Both the Mesopotamian marshes and the culture of the Ma’dan – Marsh Arabs – who live in them, have UNESCO World Heritage status. The Ma’dan have hunted and fished there for 5,000 years, building houses from woven reeds on floating reed islands where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers come together before pouring into the Gulf.
Even their beautifully intricate mosques were made of reeds.
Today, only a few thousand of the quarter million Ma’dan who lived in the marshes in the early 1990s remain.
Every fall, Barry McCovey, a member of the Yurok Tribe and director of tribal fisheries, takes his four children salmon fishing on the Klamath River, the second largest river in California.
A strong salmon run normally nets his family 30 or 40 fish. It’s a supply big enough to last them all year: They freeze, smoke and can the salmon to serve either on its own or on sandwiches and crackers.
But this year, the predicted salmon run was the second lowest since detailed records began in 1978, and the fall fishing season was cancelled.
The river’s salmon population has declined due to myriad factors, but the biggest culprit is believed to be a series of dams built along the river from 1918 to 1962, cutting off fish migration routes.
Now, after decades of Indigenous advocacy, four of the structures are being demolished as part of the largest dam removal project in United States history. In November, crews finished removing the first of the four dams as part of a push to restore 644 kilometres (400 miles) of fish habitat.
“Dam removal is the largest single step that we can take to restore the Klamath River ecosystem,” McCovey told Al Jazeera. “We’re going to see benefits to the ecosystem and then, in turn, to the fishery for decades and decades to come.”
Barry McCovey fishes with his family in northern California’s Klamath River [Courtesy of Louisa McCovey]
The die-off that sparked a change
The decades-long fight for dam removal began with a devastating fish kill.
For thousands of years, the Klamath River has been a cornerstone of Yurok culture, providing its people with a bounty of chinook salmon, coho salmon and steelhead trout.
But starting in the 20th century, the dams interrupted the river’s flow, pooling the water into reservoirs for use in hydroelectric power and farm irrigation.
Reservoirs, however, can cause the water to stagnate, warm and lose oxygen, according to McCovey. Those conditions, in turn, degrade the water quality and increase the spread of parasites that kill fish.
That threat ballooned into a crisis in 2002. Drought had racked the region, and farmers were pushing for more water for crops like potatoes and alfalfa. Some even wore ribbons and pins, denouncing the water restrictions as a form of “rural genocide”, threatening farmers’ livelihoods.
Facing pressure, the US Bureau of Reclamation diverted more water from the dams to agriculture. But that decision left river levels low. Soon, adult salmon were washing up dead, their gills brown with dead tissue and spotted from parasitic infections.
Critics estimate as many as 70,000 salmon perished as diseases spread through the population.
It was a turning point. The 2002 fish kill prompted tribes like the Yurok to spring into action to protect the river ecosystem and their way of life.
Salmon caught in 2002 are measured near the Klamath River as members of the Yurok Tribe advocated for measures to prevent further fish death [File: Rich Pedroncelli/AP Photo]
A ‘watershed moment’
Four years later, in 2006, the licence for the hydroelectric dams expired. That created an opportunity, according to Mark Bransom, CEO of the Klamath River Renewal Corporation (KRRC), a nonprofit founded to oversee the dam removals.
Standards for protecting fisheries had increased since the initial license was issued, and the utility company responsible for the dams faced a choice. It could either upgrade the dams at an economic loss or enter into a settlement agreement that would allow it to operate the dams until they could be demolished.
“A big driver was the economics — knowing that they would have to modify these facilities to bring them up to modern environmental standards,” Bransom explained. “And the economics just didn’t pencil out.”
The utility company chose the settlement. In 2016, the KRRC was created to work with the state governments of California and Oregon to demolish the dams.
Final approval for the deal came in 2022, in what Bransom remembers as a “watershed moment”.
Regulators at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) voted unanimously to tear down the dams, citing the benefit to the environment as well as to Indigenous tribes.
“A number of years back, I don’t think the commission necessarily spent a lot of time thinking about the impact of our decisions on tribes,” FERC chairman Richard Glick said in a public meeting to announce the decision. “I think we’re making progress on that front. Still a ways to go, but we’re making the right progress there.”
For Bransom, the chairman’s words were a “real revelation”, an acknowledgement unlike any he had heard from the commission.
“That was the first time that that agency of the United States government had ever made those comments,” Bransom said.
The Yurok Tribe has helped lead efforts to remove dams that interrupt fish migration routes along the Klamath River [Courtesy of Amy Cordalis]
Fighting a ‘core American value’
Amy Cordalis, a Yurok Tribe member, fisherwoman and lawyer for the tribe, credits the “colonial mindset and racism” with preventing the dam demolition from happening sooner.
“Nobody believed in dam removal,” she explained. It ran contrary to the ideals many Americans were raised with: that humanity was meant to tame the natural world.
“We fought this core American value that nature is here to serve humans at whatever cost to nature,” she said. “That was the biggest thing in our way. It wasn’t people or money or law. It was that mindset.”
For Cordalis, the Klamath River is more than a waterway: It is a relative, with its own spirit. In 2019, she helped push the Yurok government to grant the Klamath legal personhood, a designation that allows tribal members to seek remedies through the justice system if the river is harmed.
Around 2018, Cordalis also became a part of the KRRC’s board — but her family’s struggle for water rights stretches deep into the past. She said her relatives have long fought pressures that would remove them from the river.
Her great-grandmother, for example, was taken to an Indigenous boarding school — a residential system designed to stamp out Native cultures and force children to assimilate into white society. She resisted those pressures, though, and ultimately returned to her community.
Then there’s Cordalis’s great-uncle Aawok Raymond Mattz, who was arrested in 1969 for illegal fishing under California state law. He took his fight to the Supreme Court, successfully arguing that the state had infringed upon the tribe’s right to fish.
“We’ve been there since the beginning of time, fishing these same runs of salmon,” Cordalis said. “For us, our cultural way of life and everything that we do revolves around being a fishing people.”
Water flows over the Copco 1 Dam near Hornbrook, California, one of the structures slated for demolition before the end of 2024 [File: Gillian Flaccus/AP Photo]
Tears of joy
Destruction of the first dam — the smallest, known as Copco 2 — began in June, with heavy machinery like excavators tearing down its concrete walls.
Cordalis was present for the start of the destruction. Bransom had invited her and fellow KRRC board members to visit the bend in the Klamath River where Copco 2 was being removed. She remembers taking his hand as they walked along a gravel ridge towards the water, a vein of blue nestled amid rolling hills.
“And then, there it was,” Cordalis said. “Or there it wasn’t. The dam was gone.”
For the first time in a century, water flowed freely through that area of the river. Cordalis felt like she was seeing her homelands restored.
Tears of joy began to roll down her cheeks. “I just cried so hard because it was so beautiful.”
The experience was also “profound” for Bransom. “It really was literally a jolt of energy that flowed through us,” he said, calling the visit “perhaps one of the most touching, most moving moments in my entire life”.
Demolition on Copco 2 was completed in November, with work starting on the other three dams. The entire project is scheduled to wrap in late 2024.
Dam removal on the Klamath River is expected to lead to better water quality and improved conditions for the fish and other species that live in the waterway [File: Gillian Flaccus/AP Photo]
A return to family fishing
But experts like McCovey say major hurdles remain to restoring the river’s historic salmon population.
Climate change is warming the water. Wildfires and flash floods are contaminating the river with debris. And tiny particles from rubber vehicle tires are washing off roadways and into waterways, where their chemicals can kill fish within hours.
McCovey, however, is optimistic that the dam demolitions will help the river become more resilient.
“Dam removal is one of the best things we can do to help the Klamath basin be ready to handle climate change,” McCovey explained. He added that the river’s uninterrupted flow will also help flush out sediment and improve water quality.
The removal project is not the solution to all the river’s woes, but McCovey believes it’s a start — a step towards rebuilding the reciprocal relationship between the waterway and the Indigenous people who rely on it.
“We do a little bit of work, and then we start to see more salmon, and then maybe we get to eat more salmon, and that starts to help our people heal a little bit,” McCovey said. “And once we start healing, then we’re in a place where we can start to help the ecosystem a little bit more.”
Already, McCovey is looking ahead to the spring salmon migration – and the possibility of returning to his family fishing traditions with his kids.
“My hope is that next year, we’ll see a better fish run, and we’ll be able to go fishing and hopefully catch the fish that we need.”
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
Cookie
Duration
Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional
11 months
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
