Human-caused climate change seems to be worsening some droughts, prompting the world to confront a daunting challenge: how will we live with limited freshwater? For cities, this feels like a new problem. In reality, communities around the globe have been living with drought for millennia — and there is much that modern planners can learn from them. The key is understanding that drought is more than just the amount of freshwater available. It is also about how much water is used. From the beginning of modern science, we’ve seen that water (over)use and (mis)management cause drought, not merely reduced rainfall or snowmelt. Countering drought means adapting water supply systems and reducing water demand. Much is being made of currently low precipitation and river/lake levels across the US southwest, but it matches previous megadroughts. Given the region’s long drought history, as well as large cities being built across these arid lands, constrained supply is to be expected. Yet demand remains high. People plant water-intensive manicured lawns with non-desert vegetation in Nevada, and support water-intensive cropping such as almonds in California. Los Angeles developed presuming plenty of freshwater. The city pumped from Owens Lake, 300km to the north, depleting the lake, and undermining the Indigenous culture and local environment. Leaky pipes are a problem globally and 3 to 4 percent of Los Angeles’ annual water supply is lost to leakage, although not all suppliers monitor their loss rate. From the other side of the world, Bangladesh’s northwest offers lessons. The indigenous Santal people live where drought is continual. They carefully select crops and livestock to match water availability. Households also collect and store rainwater. Such lessons could be applied more to Los Angeles.
Other Santal strategies include seasonal migration to areas with more jobs which reduces local water demand. But migration, however temporary, transplants water use elsewhere, while taking people away from their homes and families. Often, migrants are exploited for low-wage, insecure labour.
And water must be stored carefully. Aside from the cost of purchasing and maintaining tanks, and keeping them insect-free, in Bangladesh water can be polluted and can support microbes. In the Sahel, in Africa, societal changes have undermined local approaches. Nomadism combined with farming helped people manage major rainfall variations. They preserved and stored foods during water abundance, to live on ‘famine foods’ during water deficits.
