From artificial glaciers to irrigation projects in rainy areas, authorities are shifting towards a water policy with a regional focus and emphasis on water security. The goal is to mitigate the effects of climate change, while rethinking the way the resource is accessed.
Before an audience of about 200 people, the general director of Concessions of the Ministry of Public Works (MOP), Juan Manuel Sánchez, announced a tender this year for a new multipurpose desalination plant for Coquimbo (north-central Chile), under the current Concessions Law.
“We are convinced that this contract will be able to meet different demands, including, for example, addressing agriculture or industry in their future. It is even likely that it will allow us to bring water to Ovalle [a neighboring town],” Sánchez said on Thursday, March 21 in Santiago, the Chilean capital.
The work will expand the area's water supply by 1,200 liters per second, as promised by President Boric last January.
Water has been at the center of the South American country's concerns for more than a decade, while an intense drought season began in most of its territory with only brief interruptions.
With almost 20 million inhabitants, Chile currently has 1.5 million people without access to drinking water. They are supplied by cistern trucks, while the weather seems to be changing rapidly, featuring increasingly hot and long summers and a dry winter season with occasional episodes of intense rainfall for a few hours, which cause extensive damage in cities and harm agriculture.
“Chile is very uneven in terms of water and the abundant waters that rain, flow and dwell in the southern areas positively distort the national averages, and deceive us regarding the growing water scarcity that is occurring in most of our country” , describes Juan Pablo Orrego, ecologist and director of the NGO Ecosystems.
The advance of the desert from the extreme north towards the center, soil erosion and the loss of arable land worries the authorities. The population is also migrating to the south and, with it, agriculture.
To make prospects worse, a few days ago a report from the World Resources Institute (WRI) warned that Chile is in the 25th place among the nations that will suffer serious water shortages by 2040. Higher up are countries in the Middle East, such as Bahrain, UAE or Saudi Arabia, but Chile ranks first in all of the Americas.
Peru and Argentina also appear on the list of South American countries that will face considerable challenges due to water scarcity in the coming years, but they are further down in the ranking. For Peru, water stress is expected to be exacerbated by the El Niño phenomenon, which will affect, as it does today, mainly coastal and Andean areas. Argentina, meanwhile, will see the drought effect in the reduction of its arable area.
Chilean authorities know that it is urgent to advance in water security.
“We are developing the Climate Change Adaptation Plan in Water Resources, collecting the opinion of citizens and experts to create strategies and measures to reduce vulnerability and increase resilience in the face of extreme events. Also, we launched the Innovation, Research and Education Fund, focused on new water sources,” detailed Rodrigo Sanhueza Bravo, general director of Water at the MOP.
The DGA is one of the main institutions in charge of water in Chile, with the power to grant user rights -- a perpetual way of giving permission to individuals and companies to use the resource. Similar legal instruments are also used in Australia and two US states, Arizona and California.
However, the DGA is one of more than forty organizations with power over water in the country, something that a 2010 World Bank study determined was partly to blame for the lack of effective water management in Chile.
For some years now, pilot experiences by the DGA and other entities have sought to change this.
“We are moving towards a different governance that includes views and visions of various actors in basins and territories. This is why we are summoning the Strategic Water Resources Roundtables to prioritize actions within the framework of the Strategic Water Resources Plans and thus, have an instrument for integrated water management that identifies gaps and actions,” said Sanhueza.
ENSURING WATER OR WATER AVAILABILITY?
Despite how positive it sounds for some sectors, especially for the union of desalination plant builders, the announcement of the MOP for Coquimbo is a central government decision.
On the other hand, other areas of the country rely on regional decisions, agreed upon and discussed locally.
This is precisely what will be revealed this Friday in the southern region of Los Lagos: the first Regional Policy for Water Sustainability, an action plan “that seeks to guarantee water security for people, productive activities, and protect ecosystems against extreme events in the next decade,” indicated local governor, Patricio Vallespín.
The region - like the entire south of Chile - has excess water, with a supply that is 120 billion cubic meters, and a local demand that does not exceed 400 million.
“But it is one thing to have water, and another thing is to be able to reach people with that water. That is the difference between water balance and water security,” says Claudio Reyes, engineer in charge of the regional policy project for water sustainability in Los Lagos .
The problem is that problems arise when it does not rain in the area and with the ongoing effects of climate change the probability of summer drought will rise from 15% to 35% over the next 30 years. This will hamper dryland production, which represents 50% of Chile's milk production, as well as the people's water supply.
The proposal for water was discussed with 1,500 actors over eight months, with a cost of US$300,000 and with a long-term horizon. The search for the construction of hydraulic infrastructure associated with commercial production was one of the ideas included.
“We are proposing to transform the agricultural production of the region, which has 500,000 hectares mainly of rainfed land, and to incorporate some 50,000 hectares of irrigation within 30 years. And that is mainly not with reservoirs, but with 750 kilometers of canals,” detailed the engineer.
Due to the abundance of water in the winter period, irrigating those additional hectares requires an extra 500 million cubic meters of water. “That is just 0.5% of the available water. Here in the region we still have a lot of water. Therefore, watering had never been required. And that's what we have to do. Ultimately, climate change is what causes production areas to move from the north and center to the south,” he explained.
"The opposite alternative is to do nothing and lose 4%-5% of the region's GDP in three decades. On the other hand, if we make this investment of almost US$ 1 billion, it would allow us to increase GDP by 5% in 30 years,” said the professional who works for the Hidro Gestión firm.
In the process, the local agricultural producer is protected so that he is not forced to sell, as happens today, his land for vacation homes for the wealthy population of the central area that seeks the views from a home near the forest.
Gloomy global panorama
According to the UN, when water is scarce or contaminated, or when people have unequal or no access, tensions between communities and countries can increase. This is why it is said that water - or rather, the lack of it - will be the cause of future wars.
“As the impacts of climate change increase and populations grow, there is an urgent need, within and between countries, to unite to protect and conserve our most precious resource,” says the UN in its World Water Day 2024 message, which has the motto Water for Peace.
Years ago, the issue stopped from being an exclusive concern to environmental NGOs and academia, and it now is a top topic for the future of business.
“Moody's analysis shows that water management is increasingly relevant: nine sectors representing $1.8 trillion in rated debt face increased exposure to credit risk related to water management. This exposure can also affect the general population, as poor water management in countries facing extreme heat can restrict access to drinking water,” said Ram Sri, vice president and senior analyst at Moody's Ratings.
Without water, there is no economic development either. The candidates for mayor of Mexico City know this as the country's entire water reserves have dropped by almost half in a month. Further, an Axios Latino report delivered a more than pessimistic message: CDMX neighborhoods are being forced to ration water.
The severe drought that affects much of Mexico, and that has generated an unprecedented water shortage in Mexico City, is reaching politics, modifying voter intentions. Polls show the opposition alliance's candidate, Santiago Taboada, getting critically close to the ruling party's standard bearer, Clara Brugada.
Taboada, a former mayor of one of the capital's zones, could capitalize on popular discontent over water scarcity, a long-standing problem, but one that has worsened in recent years.
The water supply systems for metropolitan Mexico City and several other Mexican cities are at historic lows, according to the National Water Commission (Conagua), due to the lack of rain and other effects of El Niño.
IRRIGATION AND GLACIERS
Back to Chile, the Nilus Project aims to create artificial glaciers in the Andes Mountains.
Although it may sound counterintuitive in a country that will run out of water in less than two decades, Chile holds the continent's largest water reserves with more than 26,000 glaciers, covering 2.8% of the national territory, and with estimated ice volume of 2,710.7 kilometers of fresh water in solid state.
Inspired by the ice-stupas that exist in the Himalayas in India, a group of experts seeks to reserve rain winter water for use in the warm months by utilizing real ice grafts to protect the resource in glaciers in the country's central area.
“Today we are moving forward with the objective of creating the first water park in Chile, which allows us to investigate and evaluate the real impact of this innovation on high mountain ecosystems,” said Sebastián Goldschmidt, CEO of Nilus . The project had receive financial support from Coca Cola Chile and The Coca Cola Foundation for two years for its scaling phase in 2023 and 2024.
Coca Cola also financially supports Kilimo, a technology platform that uses climate, satellite and artificial intelligence data to provide recommendations to farmers to improve irrigation performance by up to 30%, in the Maipo River basin, one of the most stressed in the world, according to WRI.
40% of the Chilean population lives and 50% of the GDP is produced there.
"Agriculture has a central role in facing the water crisis in Chile," said Andrea Ramos, vice president of Climate Adaptation at Kilimo.
To avoid reaching the rationing scenario, several entities have defined certain cost-efficient water solutions that offer the best value in terms of cubic meter returned to the environment in relation to cost incurred.
In the case of the Maipo Basin, the implementation of irrigation systems to optimize water consumption in agriculture falls into this category. The idea is that investing in this industry generates high returns in terms of basin restoration because it is one of the most intensive activities in water use, with 86% of the country's fresh water, and still shows great opportunities for optimization, said Ramos.
“In times of emergency, acting on what will have the greatest impact in the short and medium term, not only for the availability of water but also for the productive development of the country, is key. Therefore, if you think about investing in Chile's water security, my advice is clear: start with agriculture," he concluded.
