This text is taken from Courrier de la planete. To subscribe, click here.
The amplification of the climate crisis is causing more and more disruptions to water cycles around the world, the UN warned on Monday. Quebec is not immune to floods and droughts attributable to global climate warming.
“Water is becoming more and more unpredictable” and “the warning signs are impossible to ignore,” Celeste Saulo, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a UN agency, said on Monday.
In a new report, the WMO emphasizes a worsening of the insufficiency of water resources on a global scale. Examining 33 years of data, the organization found that the world’s rivers last year reached a level of drought never seen in this period. With 2023 being the hottest year on record, high temperatures and widespread low precipitation have contributed to prolonged droughts.
The WMO report also shows that the flow of about 50% of the world’s rivers was below normal last year. And inflow into reservoirs, such as dams, has been below normal in many parts of the world over the past five years.
Result of this increasing scarcity: 3.6 billion people have insufficient access to water at least one month per year and their number is expected to exceed 5 billion by 2050, according to the UN.
Conversely, floods have also increased on the planet: extreme hydrological events have been favored not only by natural climatic factors, but also by the climate crisis caused by human activity.
Risks in Quebec
Quebec is not immune to climate impacts on water, a resource generally considered to be inexhaustible in Quebec, underlines François Anctil, full professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and Water Engineering of the Laval University.
“Our rivers will experience low flows more and more often” in the summer period, he warns, in particular due to the reduction in snow cover which feeds the watercourses in spring and the continued rise in temperatures, which can be two or three times greater in Quebec than the world average.
These so-called low-flow periods also risk representing management challenges for which we are not prepared, adds Mr. Anctil. “We are very ill-equipped to manage droughts. We have practically no rules or procedures, for example to force citizens and businesses to reduce their water consumption.
According to a study recently published by Recyc-Québec and produced in collaboration with the international organization Circle Economy, an average Quebecer consumes more than 570 liters of drinking water per day, compared to 130 liters per day in a country like France.
Beyond the rules that would be necessary to better protect our water resources, Mr. Anctil believes that it is important to think now about the development of infrastructures that would help us deal with possible episodes of scarcity, for example example of reservoirs, in order to store water in the spring which could be used during the summer.
The risks mentioned by François Anctil have already been identified. The report Regional outlookfunded by the federal government and written mainly by experts from the Ouranos scientific consortium, concluded in 2022 that Quebec risked facing water shortages in the years to come.
“More severe and longer” episodes of falling water levels risk “affecting the availability and quality” of drinking water in Quebec, the report noted. “The increase in low water levels, particularly in the St. Lawrence River, could cause considerable damage given the fact that this river is the source of drinking water for nearly a third of the Quebec population. » The lack of water is also likely to have an impact on the irrigation of agricultural land and commercial navigation.
“Such a situation would add to the many already existing anthropogenic pressures, such as industrialization, urbanization, agricultural activities, vacationing and the absence or insufficiency of certain wastewater treatment systems which, over time, years, have deteriorated the quality of the water,” it is stated in the document.