📊 Water Crisis in the Andes

Latin American cities are battling water scarcity in a warming world.

Welcome to Latinometrics. We bring you Latin American insights and trends through concise, thought-provoking data visualizations.

Climate 🚰

Of all the dangers climate change poses, the one posed to water is no doubt the most serious.

Water is the most essential need to sustain life, and our interactions with it are changing across the globe, from dried-up reservoirs to melting glaciers to flooding. Where water goes, humanity follows—just think of how all the great cities and civilizations of the world were built near water access.

But what happens when water gets harder to obtain after a society’s already been built?

Well, some Andean countries are experiencing precisely this, as a mixture of rising regional temperatures and low rainfall has led to record-low reservoir levels, mandating drastic measures.

The Colombian capital of Bogotá, for example, has experienced severe water rationing in recent months, with different sectors of the city giving up any access to running water for different 24-hour stretches. Mind you, this is a city of nearly 10M people.

As the recurring El Niño climate phenomenon wreaks havoc on global temperatures, climate change, and rapid urbanization have also been cited as contributing to ongoing droughts.

Water use in Colombia and Peru: Double the OECD average