Opinion: Water insights for climate resilience from the global south

“If climate change were a shark, water would be its teeth.” The global south has been well aware of this adage for decades. But, in recent years, that shark has been biting many of the world’s high-income economies in the global north — and a new set of insights are emerging from the global south that is useful for their northern siblings.

In 2022, Europe saw extreme heat and drought, with the Rhine River’s role as an ancient conduit of trade at “crisis levels” during the potentially worst drought in 500 years. The Netherlands, a country famous for pushing back floodwaters for centuries, is facing its third extreme drought in two decades and is unsure how to prepare for both an over and under abundance of water. This pattern toward a hotter and drier climate has been taking shape over the past 30 years.

North America has not been immune either. The city of Seattle, in the mild Pacific Northwest of the United States, broke a daily record on Oct. 16 when temperatures reached 88 degrees Fahrenheit (31 degrees Celsius), becoming the second extreme summer in the region in three years. Salt Lake City, the capital of Utah, is at risk of seeing toxic dust storms from the exposed and still receding shorelines of the Great Salt Lake. Nevada’s Lake Mead, the reservoir behind the Hoover Dam, is at its lowest level since the dam was built in the 1930s, with water levels expected to fall below the level needed to generate hydropower, a first in its 88-year history, within a year or two.