Environment

Climate change and water supply

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Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert about how climate change is likely to exacerbate problems of water supply.
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LISA MULLINS: The water issue is being held hostage to climate change. Elizabeth Kolbert is the author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change. She’s at her home in Williamstown, Massachusetts. We’ve just heard Elizabeth from Linda Gradstein about how water shortages are straining Israeli and Palestinian communities. I wonder if you could tell us now what climate scientists know about how the Middle East climate is changing now, and how that’s likely to further affect water supplies there.

ELIZABETH KOLBERT: Well, the predictions for the Middle East, and in fact for the whole, you know, what’s called the Mediterranean [INDISCERNIBLE] are that that area is going to dry out, continue to dry out as the world warms up. So, would expect to see an increasing risk of draught in that area.

LISA MULLINS: And in terms of the larger picture, how are world wide water supplies going to be affected by climate change to the extent that we know?

ELIZABETH KOLBERT: Well, what we have a pretty strong idea of is, the places that are already dry are gonna get dryer, and places that are already wet, are likely to get wetter. That’s the sort of general rule. Now, when you go down and boor down into individual areas, it gets much more complicated to do the prediction. In general what we’re seeing is Northern Latitudes seem to be getting rainier, and Southern Latitudes seem to be getting dryer.

LISA MULLINS: So for instance, looking at an atlas then, would there be a graphic way that you can describe how things would be changing?

ELIZABETH KOLBERT: Well, one thing that we know, for example, is that in the region called the Sub Tropics is expanding, so there are these two belts around the world, sort of, you know, roughly. You know, Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, and those are dry areas, so those are areas that rainfall tends to avoid. And those are moving, shifting towards the post, so that is affecting, that’s gonna affect places like the Mediterranean bases, places like the American South West, places like Australia. So, you see that those arid bands that are called the Sub Tropic are shifting towards the polls, by, you know, a significant distance.

LISA MULLINS: Are there places in the world where water supplies will actually be improved by the change that global warming might bring?

ELIZABETH KOLBERT: Yes, quite likely, you’re quite likely, you know, going to see parts of the world where overall rainfall is predicted to increase. Now, that doesn’t mean that you won’t also have trades of drought as a climate change. As in the other point that I need to make, and it’s a really important one, is that if your climate is continually changing, so you keep adding CO2 to the atmosphere and your climate just keeps changing, then, you know, you may benefit temporarily or your region might temporarily get more info, but eventually you might also to reduce rainfall. So, in general there’s this notion of draught sort of spreading from the equator toward the poles, as the world warms up. And one of the key things to remember, is unless we stabilize CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, we are not gonna stay above the climate, we’re gonna have a climate that’s continually changing.

LISA MULLINS: So, because the climate keeps changing, CO2 levels keep changing, your weather wherever you are might keep changing for better or worse?

ELIZABETH KOLBERT: Exactly.

LISA MULLINS: You have written so much about this issue, I wonder Elizabeth, if you can tell us of an area that you are particularly watching right now.

ELIZABETH KOLBERT: Well, I think one area that’s really interesting is Australia, where they’re having a very serious draught, very much predicted by the models of climate change. And people in Australia are very worried that this is the future, they’re seeing the future, and it really has had a big impact on politics in Australia. And it’s a country, that like the US, had decline [INDISCERNIBLE] protocol, but now has, and now is very, very robustly, you know, debating what to do about their carbon missions because they can sort of see how it’s affecting them right now.

LISA MULLINS: And they know for sure that the draught and the tremendous amount of fires that devastated much of the east in Australia last year are connected with climate change?

ELIZABETH KOLBERT: Well, you never know these things for sure because the weather is a complicated phenomenon, and until you get very long term data sets, you know, you can’t make these connections, as you say, for sure. But it is what you would predict, it is what was predicted and now you’re seeing it. So that’s considered pretty compelling by climate scientists, by any scientist.

LISA MULLINS: Elizabeth Kolbert is a staff writer for the New Yorker. Her most recent book is called Field Notes from a Catastrophe. Elizabeth, nice to speak with you. Thank you.

ELIZABETH KOLBERT: Thanks for having me.

LISA MULLINS: You can find links related to the connections among water, climate and security at the-world-dot-org.

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More information:

• International Institute for Sustainable Development
  Rising Temperatures, Rising Tensions: Climate change and the risk of violent conflict in the Middle East (2009)
• World Bank Assessment of Restrictions on Palestinian Water Sector Development (2009)
• Quenching the thirst: International water shortages?
• Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Environmental Change and Security Program
  Water Conflict and Cooperation: Looking over the Horizon
• National Intelligence Assessment on the National
  Security Implications of Global Climate Change to 2030, 25 June 2008
• Council on Foreign Relations
  The Race for Resources: Conflict in the 21st Century, March 28, 2008