Consequences Will Be Dire’: Chile’s Water Crisis Is Reaching Breaking Pointhttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/01/chiles-water-crisis-megadrought-reaching-breaking-pointUnprecedented drought makes water a national security issue as more than half of Chile’s 19 million population lived in area with ‘severe water scarcity’ by end of 2021.
From the Atacama Desert to Patagonia, a 13-year megadrought is straining Chile’s freshwater resources to breaking point.
By the end of 2021, the fourth driest year on record, more than half of Chile’s 19 million population lived in an area suffering from “severe water scarcity”, and in April an unprecedented water rationing plan was announced for the capital, Santiago.
“Water has become a national security issue – it’s that serious,” said Pablo García-Chevesich, a Chilean hydrologist working at the University of Arizona. “It’s the biggest problem facing the country economically, socially and environmentally. If we don’t solve this, then water will be the cause of the next uprising.”
... Chile’s economy, South America’s largest by per capita GDP, is built on water-intensive, extractivist industries principally mining, forestry and agriculture.
But its growth has come at a price.
Supported by the private rights system, around 59% of the country’s water resources are dedicated to forestry, despite it making up just 3% of Chile’s GDP.
Another 37% is destined for the agricultural sector, meaning only 2% of Chile’s water is set aside for human consumption.
“It’s Not Drought, It’s Theft”
... Many called for a rewrite of Chile’s 1981 water code, a relic of Gen Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship (1973-1990) which enshrines one of the most privatised water systems in the world, allowing people to buy and sell water allocations like stocks.
Chile is also the only country in the world that specifically says in its constitution that water rights are treated as private property.... Just 50km south of Santiago, Lake Aculeo – meaning “where the waters meet” in the indigenous language Mapudungun – and once a tourism hotspot, was wiped off the map in less than a decade, disappearing altogether in 2018. Now, jetties sit uselessly metres above the dry mud, and boat launch ramps trail off into a dusty thatch of dead stems.
In 2010, the rights to the water feeding the lake were legally acquired by large agricultural plantations and private estates, which siphoned off the main tributaries. Valleys around the basin passed from annual crops to summer homes and water-intensive fruit tree plantations.
As the area transitioned from agriculture to tourism and then went into steep decline, locals were forced to find work in the gated holiday communities – or move to Santiago.
... Across central and southern Chile, watersheds are in danger of suffering the same fate as Lake Aculeo.
“There’s a fundamental problem here: the end goal for our water is to make money, not wellbeing for people,” said Caru, who retains hope that the lake will return one day.