Notes V

San Juan Argentina, about 1910Image via Wikipedia

Several weeks ago I posted a piece on the Guaraní aquifer and commented on cooperation through Mercosur between the four South American states under which the vast underground deposit of water is found. On 2 August 2010 in the city of San Juan, Argentina (a pleasant city well outside the boundaries of the aquifer), Brasil, Paraguay, and Uruguay signed an agreement for use and management of that aquifer  (the website of the Brasilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Ministéio das Relaçoes Exteriores) posts the text of the agreement in Portuguese and Spanish). From an outsider's perspective, this is a remarkable achievement, for the agreement has been reached before there is any serious problem with the aquifer, and the agreement has been concluded between a set of states often at odds with each other, including open warfare in the 19th century and threats of war in the 20th. Whether the agreement is truly meaningful remains to be demonstrated, and at least one commentator has raised questions about its application once ratified.

Map of the Guaraní Aquifer

Source: Guarani Project

Those who, like an antediluvian and prehensile senator from the benighted state of Oklahoma (a state with what is apparently an early stone age Kultur), like to point to the hideous cold and snow of last winter as refutation of climate change, need to be corrected. A recent piece from Scientific American online should put their pseudo-argument to rest as it clearly demonstrates the cold and snow were evidence of short-term trends and not of any longer term phenomena. Climate change can never be shown by the events of a single season, and a period of colder than normal temperature with greater than normal snowfall in one season points to nothing in a long term pattern. The same can be said for the current hideously hot summer, though it is in line with the long-term trend for ever warmer summers in the Northern Hemisphere.

Smoke over Western Russia, 9 August 2010

Source: NASA Earth Observatory

A price of the smoke in Russia has been a substantial increase in illness and in the death rate in Moscow. Wildfires in agricultural areas, brush lands and desiccated forests are all but inevitable with climate change.

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• Russia's wildfires cover Moscow in smoke (greenfudge.org)

The Guaraní Aquifer - Ground Water in South America II

Despite containing some of the driest areas on earth in Peru and Northern Chile and large arid zones in the vast expanses of east of the Andes, in Patagonia and in Northeastern Brasil, South America is well endowed with water supplies. Five huge river systems – the Amazon, the streams of the Rio de la Plata estuary, the Orinoco, the Magdalena, the São Francisco – and numerous smaller ones along the western slope of the Andes and the Caribbean and Atlantic Coasts make South America a water rich continent. Unlike Asia and Africa where a large fraction of the water supply is already in use, South America has water resources hardly tapped for human uses other than transportation. Hidrovia, noted in an earlier posting, is mostly a transportation proposal

The Guaraní aquifer is one of the largest known underground water deposits. Some even think it is the largest fresh water body on earth, larger in total volume than either Lake Superior or Lake Baikal! It is estimated to contain more than 35,000 cubic kilometers of water (the estimates on the map above are at the high end of the range) in a basin that stretches from tropical Brasil south into Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay with a surface extent of well over a million square kilometers. At present, water from the aquifer directly supplies about 30 million people, though it is estimated that it could sustainably support the water needs of 10 times that many. Outflow from the aquifer supplies some of the water in several major rivers including the Paraná and the Uruguay. Among the major aquifers of the world it is one of the least utilized, and except locally around a few communities using the water, there is little evidence pointing to the draw down and even exhaustion of groundwater familiar in large aquifers elsewhere.

With increasing demand for water throughout the world, there will undoubtedly be increased demand for the water in the Guaraní Aquifer. The booming economy of Brasil has increased water demand for urban uses, industry, and especially for agriculture in the recent past. Much of the Brasilian population lives near the aquifer, and the immense metropolitan area of São Paulo is only a few kilometers from its edge.  As with many large aquifers, much is unknown about the quantities of water and patterns of flow below the surface. A large research project by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) is attempting to discover more about the aquifer in hopes of improving management as water demands increase. All of the countries are members of Mercosur, the Common Market of the South, and there is an effort to use it as a foundation for management of the aquifer as demands for water increase.

During the Cheney-Bush administration the United States held military exercises in Paraguay, and there was a rumor that Bush or members of its family had purchased 100,000 hectares in the northern part of the landlocked country. While there is no compelling evidence to support the contention, local critics argued that the US was engaged in military exercises in a preliminary move to claim water from the aquifer. That is probably incorrect, at least for now, but the Guaraní is likely to be a major focus in debates about the world's water in the very near future. A documentary film about it is currently in production by the Guarani Project.

Hidrovia and Water in South America I

Evening view of the junction of Rio Iguazú (right) with Río Paraná from Argentinian Bank, Brasil to right and Paraguay left (Ciudad del Este high rises in distant background), 2007

©EOP

Water transportation is not going to be a topic for discussion in the course, nor will wildlife conservation issues be emphasized, but they are both related to human water use. At the moment I am also preparing to lead a course on the Southern Cone of South America where the Paraná and its tributaries are important for transportation, for wildlife, and for water supply. The Paraná is navigable for small ocean going ships upstream as far as the Argentinian city of Corrientes, and its branches can be navigated further upstream into Brasil and Paraguay by shallower draft vessels. Landlocked Paraguay has long been dependent on the river for transportation access, and inland Argentinian cities including Corrientes and Rosario are also dependent on river transportation for access to world markets. More recently the commodity production boom in Brasil has greatly increased transportation demand as that country extends its ecumene into the interior.

The Rio de la Plata river system, including the Paraná its largest single stream, is one of the world's great river systems with a flow second only to the Amazon in the Americas.Its flow comes mainly from rainfall in the humid zones of subtropical and tropical southern Brasil, though it is not an exotic river for there is an excess of precipitation over evapo-transpiration in normal years along much of its length. Several huge hydroelectric projects on the Paraná provide much of the power used by Brasil, Argentina and Paraguay and have converted large segments of its upstream basin into slackwater lakes. As yet the Paraguay, a major tributary to the Paraná and navigable in some years into Brasil, has not been dammed.

A problem for navigation is the uneven flow across the year and from year to year. Hidrovia is a project to even out the flow of the Parana by manipulating water in the Pantanal, the immense marshland on the boundary between Brasil and Bolivia. While the project is apparently moribund at the moment, it is likely to be revived. The problem is the Pantanal is one of the world's great wetlands, and one of the largest still largely untouched by human activity. Known for the diversity and density of its wildlife, conservationists argue that it should be preserved in its current state.

In future postings I shall examine Hidrovia in greater detail and look at other aspects of water availability and use in South America.