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00:00 Some alarming words in that report were staying with climate matters Arizona, Nevada, California,
00:06 US of course, saying this week that they're willing to cut back on their use of dwindling
00:12 Colorado River. Now this would be in exchange for money from the US federal government
00:17 and to avoid forced cuts as drought threatens the key water supply for western states. The 1.2
00:23 billion dollar plan, a potential breakthrough in a year-long stalemate, would conserve an
00:27 additional three million acre feet of water through 2026 when current guidelines for how
00:33 the river is shared expire. Let's get some analysis. Carmen de Jong joins us, professor
00:38 at the University of Strasbourg where she is an expert in river management. Carmen,
00:43 thank you very much for being with us. How has the situation become so serious
00:47 along this Colorado River? Well it's a combination of different factors. First and foremost it's
00:55 climate change. The Colorado is a very special river because it depends extremely heavily
01:01 on the mountain water towers, that means the Rockies, and it's about 90 percent of its
01:08 discharge that it obtains from snow and water and rainfall from the mountains. So any trigger
01:15 of climate change, any change in the snow, amount of snow falling in the snow cover,
01:21 will cause a reduction in the discharge. And further down the basin is extremely dry,
01:28 so the entire discharge depends on what is happening in the mountains. And the Colorado
01:33 is really being hit very strongly by climate change. It's had a reduction of 20 percent of
01:38 its discharge in the last hundred years, of which 16 percent reduction in only the last 20 years
01:47 during this extreme drought. So first and foremost it's the lack of snow that is causing this
01:53 decrease. Then of course a very large population, 40 million people that depend, and it's still
01:58 increasing. And then agriculture, irrigated agriculture. So it's incredible that 90 percent
02:05 of the discharge of the Colorado is used for irrigation agriculture. So these are very big
02:13 numbers. Please excuse this, I don't mean this as a pun, but this seems like a perfect storm
02:19 in terms of what is happening to the Colorado River. Is just changing man's use in the general
02:26 sense, people's use of the water, enough to change it? Or do we need more things to happen?
02:30 Yes, well first definitely the water footprint has to be changed. There is an overuse of water for
02:39 irrigation and also for household use. The household use of water is much higher anyway
02:48 in the States than in Europe. And of course climate change is hitting so hard. I mean some
02:55 of the predictions show that the Colorado River will have a 40 percent reduction of its discharge
03:01 by 250. So that is a reality. And it may be that this change is going to accelerate with the El
03:08 Niño effect that has been predicted for the next five years. So of course it would be good to
03:14 mitigate climate change, but even then the change, the temperature increase will be so high that
03:20 the states have to really change their way of using water and of using water in extremely
03:29 arid catchment that has a lot of evapotranspiration. So a lot of water loss also due to climate change.
03:37 Indeed. Carmen, I hope you don't mind, indulge me. I'm going to ask you about France,
03:41 the River Seine, the problems we've been talking about, the temperature rising here in France,
03:45 apparently quicker than anywhere else. Do you foresee similar issues for, for instance,
03:49 the River Seine and the other great rivers in France?
03:51 Yes, because if you look at the Paris Basin, there are two problems. There's the River Seine
03:58 and water quantity and quality, but there's also groundwater. There's groundwater overexploitation.
04:03 So the groundwater is being overexploited at a rate that is already half that of Saudi Arabian
04:12 basins. And of course, if there's less water, less rainfall coming in, the Seine basin will be
04:20 heavily impacted. And it's also a basin comparable with the Colorado where most of the water is used
04:26 for irrigation, the rest, of course, for industry and for the population, for household water.
04:32 Indeed. It's not that long ago, I can recall the Seine bursting its banks
04:36 and places being under underwater. It's, it seems as the balance, it seems to be sort of going from
04:42 our climate, which is clearly an alarming factor. Carmen de Jong, thank you very much indeed for
04:47 giving us your insight, not only in Colorado, but the situation here in France too. Really
04:51 appreciate it. Carmen de Jong, Professor at the University of Strasbourg and expert,
04:54 as we've heard, in river management. Carmen, thank you very much indeed.