The Stream, October 18, 2023: Amazon River at Lowest Level in More Than a Century

The confluence of the Rio Negro and Amazon River, near Manaus, Brazil. Photo courtesy of Flickr/Creative Commons user Sherpas 428 under CC BY 2.0 Deed license

YOUR GLOBAL RUNDOWN

• As Brazil’s drought continues, the Amazon River has fallen to its lowest level since records began in 1902.
• UNESCO has approved a $5 billion dam downstream from Victoria Falls for both Zambia and Zimbabwe.
• Along Kenya’s Lake Victoria shores, flooding attributed to climate change has contributed to water-related disease and destroyed villages.
• Melting glaciers have been a boon for Peruvian farming communities in need of water now — but insecurities in the long-term are a major concern.

In Gaza, an ongoing shortage of water supplies, cut off by Israeli forces, have reached a breaking point. 

— Christian Thorsberg, Interim Stream Editor

Recent WaterNews from Circle of Blue

• The $58 Trillion Value of Water: A Conversation with Stuart Orr of WWF — New WWF report estimates the economic value of freshwater ecosystems.
• Water Migrants: Rising Death Toll in the Mediterranean — Circle of Blue Graphic Journalism

The Lead

The Negro and Amazon rivers meet in Brazil’s port of Manaus, a city of 2 million people located in the country’s northwest region. At this spot the Amazon’s water level is now the lowest ever recorded, Reuters reports. 

“We have gone three months without rain here in our community,” Pedro Mendonca, a rainforest villager, told Reuters. “It is much hotter than past droughts.” In some areas of the Amazon, communities are experiencing their worst drought in more than 40 years. 

The state of Amazonas’ civil defense agency has said that 481,000 people — those who rely on the river for transportation, resources, fishing, and “access to food and medicine” — have been affected so far by the drought, attributed in the region to the El Niño climate pattern. The effects of such weather are expected to last until at least December, according to state scientists.

Water shortages have additionally strained water quality. Two weeks ago, the deaths of more than 100 river dolphins in the Amazon were attributed to drought and hot water. As the lack of precipitation persists, children are falling ill with diarrhea, fevers, and vomiting.

This Week’s Top Water Stories, Told In Numbers

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The number of villages in Kenya near the shores of Lake Victoria that were submerged after an unexpected surge of water flooded the lake’s banks, destroying communities and leaving many children orphaned, in 2019, Mongabay reports. Experts have attributed the flooding to climate change, unpredictable amounts of rainfall, and a “lack of vegetation to control runoff.” In the years since the flooding, makeshift communities have become a breeding ground for diseases related to poor water and sanitation. Many children have been forced to become the heads of their families. Meanwhile, experts warn that unprecedented flooding will persist as a climate-related crisis into the future.

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Percent of Peru’s glaciers lost to climate change over the past 50 years, the country’s National Water Authority reports. This high-altitude melting, however, has created immediate opportunities for valley farming communities. They have been using the melt to grow water-intensive crops including strawberries and sugar-snap peas, The Guardian reports. Hotter temperatures and drought across Peru’s Cordillera Blanca region had put agricultural livelihoods at risk — if not for glacial melt and the freshwater reservoirs the phenomenon created, agribusiness would have been unsustainable. But when the communities look up into the Andes peaks, they see little snow. And by the year 2111, Peru’s Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation predicts, the last snow could disappear. When that happens, residents are unsure where their water will come from.

On the Radar

UNESCO has granted permission for a $5 billion hydroelectric dam to be built downstream from Victoria Falls, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and where Zambia and Zimbabwe are separated by the Zambezi River, Business Insider reports. 

The countries had been pushing for the dam’s approval as a way to make money and limit domestic power outages, though they remain apart on issues such as construction cost. 

Environmental activists have been pushing back on the project, saying that the complex will harm the waterfall and river health, but UNESCO was satisfied with the proposed dam’s design. According to Business Insider, “the project is built as a run-of-river project, which means there would be little water storage behind the turbines, limiting the impact on Victoria Falls.”

Christian Thorsberg

Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer from Chicago. He is passionate about climate and cultural phenomena that often appear slow or invisible, and he examines these themes in his journalism, poetry, and fiction.