What Do We Do When The Water’s Gone?

When one water-based headline hits the International news feed, the primary concern goes to how many people are affected. When a second water-based headline arrives from the geographic opposite of the first, we look to compare and contrast the two situations. When the third water-based headline hits, alarms start going off. Sure, we all know that water is a precious resource and that its distribution isn’t exactly fair, but when so many stories hit at the same time, we have to take a look to see what’s at the root of the problem.

The frightening answer: Earth is running out of water. We’re not just talking about the availability of fresh water for drinking, but all water. There simply isn’t as much of it as there was as recently as 2002, and the supply continues to shrink.

International water rights are a significant point of concern for a number of countries, and the US faces those concerns at both its North and South borders. At the North is the Columbia River, which is Canadian at its source, but runs along the border between British Columbia and the state if Washington. Under the original 1964 treaty, Canadian officials agreed to build storage dams that hold back the water to reduce the threat of flooding. This followed a 1948 flood that devastated Vanport, Oregon. In return, American officials granted British Columbia a share of the value of hydroelectric power generated downstream. That treaty was in the process of being renegotiated by the Biden administration. Now, Felonious Punk’s administration has dropped the negotiation.

Demonstrating complete ignorance in how water works, Punk said last year, “You turn the faucet and it takes one day to turn it, and it’s massive, it’s as big as the wall of that building right there behind you. You turn that, and all of that water aimlessly goes into the Pacific, and if they turned it back, all of that water would come right down here and right into Los Angeles.” He thinks the Columbia River can solve all the water woes that the western states experience.

Certainly, water from the Columbia could help, but right now, that’s a pretty big ask for Canada to share their water while Punk’s administration keeps adding to the list of tariffs they’re wanting to impose upon our Northern neighbor. Tricia Stadnyk, an expert in hydrological modeling at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, is concerned the treaty has become “a tool for negotiating broader issues. If everyone acts in their own interests, ecosystems will lose out,” Stadnyk told Le Monde. “As with the ongoing trade war, nothing good will come of a water war.”

A water war? Yes, that could happen, and if Canada were to completely turn off the tap, Western US states would be in a world of hurt.

The Southern border has a different problem. The water-sharing responsibilities between Mexico and the United States regarding the Rio Grande and Colorado River water resources are directed by the 1944 treaty both nations established. As part of the treaty, Mexico transported Rio Grande basin river water to the United States, which receives Colorado River water from America for Mexico. In theory, it should be a win/win for both countries, and until recently, that has been the case.

Unfortunately, Mexico is experiencing difficulties fulfilling its water delivery responsibilities because a severe drought has affected its northern drought areas. American farmers in the Rio Grande Valley face severe agricultural difficulties because they depend substantially on water deliveries that Mexico fails to deliver. Current tensions regarding water rights have led to what experts consider the most significant test of the treaty since its creation several decades ago.

On March 20, 2025, the U.S. State Department refused to deliver additional water to Tijuana when Mexico requested it. The State Department justified the denial by stating that Mexico’s failure to fulfil its water delivery obligations caused substantial damage to American farms. Western Hemisphere Affairs under the State Department reported that Mexico’s water delivery problems under the 1944 treaty agreement destroyed US agricultural operations.

Tijuana, a major city on the U.S.-Mexico border, relies on the Colorado River for about 90% of its water supply. Tijuana faces critical stress on its water systems because refusing a supplementary water supply worsens the problem. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum admitted honestly, stating, “There’s been less water. That’s part of the problem.”

So, that puts the US in the middle of two significant water discussions and the administration has pulled back from both while simultaneously threatening heavy tariffs to both Canada and Mexico. As usual, there are those within the Punk administration who seem to think that the US can re-direct its own water and that everything will be just fine. Let Canada and Mexico fend for themselves.

There’s a significant problem, however, that wasn’t made public until today when University of Melbourne hydrology professor Dongryeol Ryu and his collaborator Ki-Weon Seo published a paper today in the journal Science finding that global warming has notably reduced the amount of water that’s being stored around the world in soil, lakes, rivers, snow and other places, with potentially irreversible impacts on agriculture and sea level rise. The researchers say the significant shift of water from land to the ocean is particularly worrisome for farming and hope their work will strengthen efforts to reduce water overuse.

Understand, this isn’t just a US problem or a North American problem. This situation is global and it will take unprecedented global cooperation to address any solution, assuming one can be found.

The abstract from their paper reads:

Rising atmospheric and ocean temperatures have caused substantial changes in terrestrial water circulation and land surface water fluxes, such as precipitation and evapotranspiration, potentially leading to abrupt shifts in terrestrial water storage. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Reanalysis v5 (ERA5) soil moisture (SM) product reveals a sharp depletion during the early 21st century. During the period 2000 to 2002, soil moisture declined by approximately 1614 gigatonnes, much larger than Greenland’s ice loss of about 900 gigatonnes (2002–2006). From 2003 to 2016, SM depletion continued, with an additional 1,009 gigatonne loss. This depletion is supported by two independent observations of global mean sea level rise (~4.4 millimeters) and Earth’s pole shift (~45 centimeters). Precipitation deficits and stable evapotranspiration likely caused this decline, and SM has not recovered as of 2021, with future recovery unlikely under present climate conditions.

Holy… WHAT? Crunch those numbers, and what you come up with is a global loss of over 2,000 gigatons in roughly the last 20 years! ‘Critical’ doesn’t begin to describe the severity of the situation. This has the potential to set off a large-scale extinction event for all life on the planet.

Ryu and his colleagues used three different data sources to verify that Earth is storing less water on land than it once did. When a big, dramatic rainfall event comes after a drought, sometimes leading to huge floods, that doesn’t mean the water stored underground has recovered. “It seems that lands lost their elasticity to recover the previous level,” he said. In that scenario, the amount of rainfall does not provide relief for drought-stricken areas at all.

“There are long-term climate changes that have happened in the past and presumably could occur in the future that could reverse the trend described, but probably not in our lifetimes,” said Katharine Jacobs, a University of Arizona professor of environmental science who wasn’t involved in the study. “Because greenhouse gases will continue to cause global warming well into the future, the rate of evaporation and transpiration is not likely to reduce any time soon.”

Not surprisingly, any solution requires the human species to adjust more than just their water use. The increasing heat stress on plants means they need more water. Agriculture, particularly irrigated agriculture, continues to draw up more water than it can afford. Humans are continuing to emit greenhouse gases without a strong effort to reverse course.

Given all the political turmoil at the moment, it seems doubtful that anyone can coerce even the smallest agreement out of the major power players. Reducing greenhouse gasses requires heavy investment in new technologies and enforcing severe alterations into how much water is used by non-farming industries. There are few countries in the industrialized world where such restrictions are welcome.

Luis Samaniego, a professor of hydrology and data science at the University of Potsdam, wrote, “It’s a wake-up call. Imagine the planet’s wobble like an electrocardiogram for the Earth. Seeing this result is like detecting an arrhythmia. Choosing not to listen to the doctor — that’s what we are playing around with at the moment.” 

Think of the people in your life who are unable to function without their morning coffee. Now, imagine everyone on the planet behaving the same way.

We’re in trouble. People are going to die.