UN warns fresh water supplies under threat
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What is the UN’s new warning about global fresh‑water supplies?
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This is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Valerie Sanderson and at thirteen hundred hours GMT on Thursday the seventeenth of September, these are our main stories. The United Nations is warning of a serious decline in the amount of fresh water stored on the Earth's surface, increasing chances of flooding and drought. In South Africa, police discover the body of a woman to the east of Johannesburg, the ninth killing in two months. Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney welcomes the European Union's proposal of associate membership. Also in this podcast.
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We find out how people on the streets of Moscow view Russia's upcoming parliamentary elections. We begin with a stark warning from the United Nations about the earth's dwindling water resources.
Less year was one of the driest years for river discharge in thirty five years. The past seven years have been abnormal river flows. Water related extreme events continue to devastate communities and economies.
Celeste Silo, the Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization. The organization's annual report says water storage, including groundwater, fresh water on land, and the water in rivers and lakes across the Earth's surface is declining. Extreme weather patterns caused by climate change are predicted to cause more floods and drought, and unreliable water resources disrupt the balance of Earth's natural water cycle by altering how water moves and evaporates. Our global affairs reporter Paul Moss told me more.
How is climate change causing both droughts and floods according to the UN report?
The water cycle sounds simple. It's the process by water evaporates from the earth and then comes down again as rain. But what this report says is that it's become increasingly erratic, and that's because what can change is where the water comes from and how it falls. What happens is because we've got increasingly high temperatures because of climate change, fresh water is vanishing up into the sky from lakes and rivers Many a people of course depend on lakes and rivers for fresh water, both for drinking and for crops, and those levels in lakes and rivers the report shows have fallen. But then there's the question of how and when the water falls. What goes up of course must come down, and if there's more water in the sky in terms of clouds and humidity, more water will fall, and that can cause flooding.
And and I think this sometimes causes problems for people to understand. How can climate change cause both drought and flooding? Well that's because first of all the water may go up slowly and then all fall in one go. Or of course there may be more water loss in hot places, more water loss through evaporation, which then falls in colder countries as flooding.
The UN report is focusing particularly on the changes to glaciers. Why are they so important?
Glaciers, it explains, work as a buffer, and in fact, in a rather good graphic phrase, what it says is glaciates operate as the world's savings account in terms of water. They freeze, obviously, when the weather's cold, more water freezes, and then when it's warmer in the summer, that water is released again.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the UN’s new warning about global fresh‑water supplies?
0:00–2:50
2
How is climate change causing both droughts and floods according to the UN report?
2:50–6:49
3
Why are glaciers described as the planet’s “water savings account” and what’s happening to them?
6:49–11:03
4
What is the latest development in the series of murders of women near Johannesburg?
11:03–15:52
5
How is Canada’s prime minister positioning the country for EU associate membership?
15:52–19:01
6
What are Microsoft’s AI chief’s concerns about a new “silicon species”?
19:01–22:23
7
How are Russia’s parliamentary elections being used to project support for the war in Ukraine?
22:23–26:00
8
Why is the presence of crocodiles at the 2032 Brisbane Olympic rowing venue controversial?
26:00–28:54