The American news channel, CNN, on August 20 carried a report on the drying rivers of our dear planet, Earth. The report is heartbreaking. It shows how 'patches of riverbed (are) poking out above the water'.
The ancient civilisation of Mesopotamia grew on the banks of the mighty rivers Tigris and Euphrates. Egypt grew along the Nile and so did the Harappan civilisation in the Indus valley. If communication is the key, then it is again the rivers that built our modern technological civilisation. But are we serious enough to protect our rivers?
Let us then see how, according to this CNN report, the rivers that gave rise to some great centres of modern civilisation, for example, the Rhine, the Po, the Loire and the Danube are now doing.
The Rhine, which emerges from the Swiss Alps and flows through Germany and Netherlands until it reaches the North Sea, is now 'a nightmare to navigate'. Why? Because, the river has bared parts of its bed making shipping very difficult. Water levels in some spots of the river such as in Kaub, west of Frankfurt, have gone down to as low as 12.6 inches. It is bad news not only for shipping, but for life that thrives in its valley. So, this vital channel of communication and a sustainer of life in Europe is in its death throes.
The Po, the longest river of Italy, which flows eastward across northern Italy from the southwestern part of the Alps on the border between France and Italy, and finally joins the Adriatic Sea, is also following in the Rhine's footsteps. The worst drought in the last 70 years has visited the region Po nurtures. Without the snows and the rains feeding it, the river Po has alarmingly dried up leaving farmers who depend on this river for their livelihood in desperate straits. At the same time, close to one third of Italy's food supply that comes from the farmlands along the banks of Po is under serious threat.
Stories are similar for the Loire, France's wild river, which sustains the vineyards, renowned for some of the world's finest wines. The Danube, the Western Europe's longest river and a crucial shipping channel is also in an existential crisis.
Why it is so even a child knows if only from the wildfires that raged through a dozen European countries this summer. Extreme heatwaves, a phenomenon attributable to anthropogenic climate change, triggered the wild fires. The extreme heat and lack of rain have been behind the forest fires, the dried up rivers and the accelerated melting of glaciers.
The unprecedent drought in the US's west has dried up the Colorado River and one of its reservoirs, Lake Mead, formed by the Hoover Dam on the river. As a fall out from this, some 40 million people of seven US states and Mexico who get their water for drinking, agriculture and electricity from this river are facing an uncertain future.
Similarly, a severe dry spell said to be the longest in six decades affected 2 million acres of arable land across the Yangtze basin in China. The water levels of the main trunk of the Yangtze and its flood basin lakes have dropped to around 16 feet, lowest on record during this period.
In South Asia, too, the droughts accompanying heatwaves and downpours are leaving their deleterious effect on life. Though melting glaciers in the Himalayas are feeding rivers causing frequent floods, the opposite trend is going to dominate the scene as soon as they (the glaciers) melt away.
In the Chenab basin of Indian Himachal Pradesh, for example, sizes of the small and large glaciers were found to have decreased by 38 per cent and 12 per cent respectively in 42 years between 1962 and 2004. Needless to say, the trend has further worsened since. That puts the Ganges basin country, Bangladesh, in double jeopardy. Dry riverbeds are already a common sight in many of our rivers both big and small. It is long past time for the world leaders to wake up to this extreme emergency.
