¿Es Colombia potencia mundial del agua?

0:06 I' m Roberto Pombo. Welcome to my questions. An average rush program sponsored by CAFAM family compensation box. We are going through a critical moment of global warming and a particularly aggressive child phenomenon. Several reservoirs in the country are in red numbers. It' s Colombia, a world water power. We are ready to face a possible water crisis. For this chapter we spoke with Representative Julia Miranda, with former Minister of Environment Carlos Correa, with Santiago Matamala, water manager, with Erica Castro, PhD in environment and land planning and professor at the University of Medellín, with Felipe Valderrama, water management coordinator of the Wetlands Foundation. This is chapter eighty- five of my alleged welcome.

1:03 A friend recently made me realize that this year marks the 30th anniversary of the football World Cup that he organized in the United States, a country that will once again host the next one. Colombia came as a favorite to that World Cup, something that had never happened. It was inevitable not to get excited that summer, that 18th June, when the selection commanded by Carlos in Pie Valderrama was going to debut against the Romania of George Harlie. That team was one of the best we had, with several players in clubs abroad, on the floor of Europe and at its best and as if it were not enough, it was in that illuminatory that Colombia scored Argentina five to zero in Buenos Aires. Conditions were given. There was a quality team and, at least, in the role the rivals of the group Romania Switzerland in the United States were not a matter of much concern. We were favorites for the first time I peeled myself as favorites. However, as we all know, the illusion lasted little and that balloon crashed into our faces very quickly. The debooth party was against Romania, which the coup de facto was immediate. Only at sixteen minutes. Romania is the first goal. Then, in the thirty- four minute, Cagui made us that famous golazo from outside the area at forty- three, the trentes counted head and kept us in the game, but of two minutes the final Romania made the third goal. The second match was against the host team in the United States, a country with little football culture and

2:34 that part of the story is even more tragic. The first goal was a goal car. After thirteen minutes of the country defense, Andrés Escobar, the party remained one. Colombia lost, was eliminated from the World Cup. But the worst thing was that because of that autogol Escobar' s fate was sealed forever and he was killed shortly afterwards. There are many conjectures, hypotheses and explanations of how that sequelation ended up, Colombia ended up eliminated and last in its group when it arrived as a favorite. However, I believe that the favorite label can do more harm than good if it is not managed with maturity and responsibility, and I think something similar could be happening to us as a country. But this time we are not talking about football, but about something much worse has he heard of Colombia as a world power of water. Suddenly not with those exact words, but for a good time we have been breast - feeding for our water resources, our rivers, moors, wetlands, etcetera.

3:34 The non- governmental organization for the conservation of the environment WWF emphasizes that Colombia has six snowfalls and more than forty- eight thousand wetlands between rivers, lakes, lagoons, swamps, reefs and others. What we have seen in recent weeks in Bogotá, a city with several water sources, can give us an idea of what awaits us. According to the World Water Association, nearly one third of renewable water resources are in South America. Colombia ranks third in the list of countries with the highest amount of water. The country also has five large water areas, the Pacific, Magdalena and Cauca, Orinoquia and Amazonas, each with a great ecosystem variety. There is also the fact that in the country there are fifty percent of the world' s moors from which the main river bodies on which eighty- five percent of the water for human consumption, irrigation and electricity generation depend are born. That is, we have half of the ecosystems in which there is vegetation, like the frallejones, which are a kind of sponges that take the fog and transform it into water, a unique species that even has its own cartoon. The Frailejón Ernesto Pérez Hello.

4:50 My name is dance On Ernesto Pérez Tequero. Greeting doesn' t know me. According to National Parks of Colombia, the moors provide 70 percent of the drinking water that the whole country has, but despite all this, they are at risk. The closest example we saw earlier this year, when forest fires consumed several parts of the country. According to the risk management unit, the flames consumed something, as well as eighteen thousand hectares of vegetation. The images of burned friars caused me deep sadness. They are plants that take many years to grow grow by an inch each year. Unfortunately, that is not the only damage that global warming has done to moors. According to Carlos Rivera, director of the Biology Department of Javeriana University and one of the researchers of a study on the lakes of the moors of the country, the temperature of these waters is rising and this makes organic matter decompose faster and this water is no longer drinking. But fires are the only predators of those moors or there are older ones. Mining, livestock, agriculture are also invading their territories and destroying that ecosystem. According to figures from the National Mining Agency, in only two thousand sixteen there were four hundred and fifty- one mining titles on moors, without counting the unregistered and those made in the shadow of illegality. According to Conrado de Jesús Tobón, professor at the Faculty of Agrarian Sciences of the National

6:25 University of Colombia. I open Comillas. Fifty- seven percent of wasteland ecosystems have been lost in the country. The rest are detrimental where the soils have been lost, the vegetation has disappeared, which some are with low degradation. I close quotes. In order not to lose hope, I sought the representative to the Chamber and former director of Natural National Parks, Julia Miranda, to tell me what we can do to protect them from the country. That' s what he told me. We all know that moors receive the moisture from the Amazon rainforest that stores it in their ecosystem. Everything is designed for that wonderful phenomenon to happen, to capture the humidity of the clouds that come from the Amazon, to collect it and drop by drop, to store it and distribute it in small streams and streams and rivers, and to make it that ecosystem that succeeds in making the distribution of the water that comes from the Amazon a reality. Then, without a doubt, we must take care of the receiving ecosystem that fauna, which contributes to the dispersion of the seeds and that the vegetation is maintained. Both fauna and flora are indispensable for the moor to fulfill its function of water retention, storage and subsequent water release. But, of course, preserving the fundamental ecosystem, that of the moors. But,

7:59 without a doubt, actions aimed at protecting the Amazon rainforest, preventing its deforestation, preventing logging, fires and the loss of the Amazonian biome. It is crucial to achieve the water resource on which we all depend, especially in this country, which has its source of energy in water and which, in addition, we need it for all productive activities and for the well- being and quality of life of all citizens. The increase in temperatures that the planet has experienced, beating a historical réfort, has made the channel of important rivers like Magdalena and Cauca, the red numbers according to the monitoring station of the IDAAM at the point where the Nique Canal is born. Magdalena levels have fallen since last November by more than four meters. In February, the National Risk Management Unit warned that two hundred and thirty- three municipalities in sixteen departments had a shortage of drinking water and that of those sixteen there was a rationing of the liquid and another six hundred and two municipalities were susceptible to damage. According to the Diario de la República, the regions of the east of the country, among which are the reservoirs serving Bogotá and Antioquia, are those that have the lowest levels, with twelve comma sixty- seven percent and thirty comma ninety- six percent, respectively. It is followed by calgas with thirty- one zero

9:31 seven percent occupation in its Valle reservoirs with thirty- three comma twenty- seven percent, the Caribbean region with forty comma thirty- four percent, and the Central region with forty- two comma sixty- eight percent. It seems that rationings are the last resort to be taken and, of course, it is not a guarantee that reservoirs and rivers will recover. In fact, while recording, this chapter completes a week of rationing in Bogotá and the goal of reducing water consumption from eighteen thousand liters per second to fifteen million per second has not been met. According to the meteorological authorities. The phenomenon of the girl, that is, the rainy season, should reach maximum in July, but, assuming that the rains began this same weekend, there is no guarantee that the Chingasa dam, one of which is supplied to the city, will be filled.

10:18 This explains it to the middle zero seventy. Juan Guillermo Saldarriaga Valderrama, professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and expert in water distribution and drainage systems. According to Salvarriaga, Chinga dams the water that comes from the river oratiques a body of water that flows into the orine and therefore has an Amazon rain regime different from the Andean rain regime of Bogotá. And the phenomenon of the girl brings rain to the Andean region, but it can mean less rain to the Amazon region. For the teacher salt of Arriaga, the administration of the Galan Mayor let himself take the night to take action because the problem of water shortages could be foreseen for about eight months, when the phenomenon of the child began. To that reflection of the professor Sal de Arriaga, I would add that the national government and already has a good time and the national unit of risk management also chose the night and they delayed to act on a problem that was growing throughout the country. In fact, in March of two thousand twenty- three, in the debate of political control to the then Minister of Mines, Irenebeles, Senator David Luna warned about the impact of the phenomenon of the child. Former Minister Belis responded in her account from x to urocomillas.

11:35 There is no risk of electric energy reasoning in Colombia. We do not understand with what interest some people want to generate panic the reservoirs of the country are above the average of two decades ago, even those of two thousand fifteen, when the phenomenon of the child was presented. I close Comillas and while global warming and the child phenomenon have a very important part of the blame in this serious episode, the population growth of cities has also done their thing. In two thousand and twenty, the World Bank published an article in which it states that I open Comillas as a result of climate change and population growth, the availability of water has been decreasing over the last two decades, from extreme droughts to severe floods. Colombia is already presenting symptoms of water insecurity throughout its territory that reflect its problems of excess, scarcity and contamination of the water I close quotes. I see these data and think they will reach the water sources available today for Colombia of two thousand thirty. After asking the question to the former Minister of the Environment, Carlos Correa. Colombia is a hydric power.

12:46 Today reservoirs have the capacity. What happens is that the reserves are below thirty percent. Here we have to do studies and update the demand. Seventy percent of the population is in commodity cities growing. What capacity is needed. What we are seeing today are effects of climate change. This drought, the phenomenon of the child we have suffered, will not improve. Next year' s probably gonna get worse. According to the forecasts. Then we need data, measurement, projection, planning, a lot of environmental education. These are two important issues. One is the water resource, the water source, and the other is the public service and water use. But we can' t say if in the year two thousand thirty we' re going to have the resource or not, if we don' t do something now. The problem is now that we can project and have the water source conserved in all those protected areas that we have and the use of water, which will be fundamental.

13:46 From now on, where we, the citizens, have to have greater responsibility, but public policies must also be in place. In the year two thousand twenty- two the resolution of water refusal was signed. It must be seen which sectors are now using the most water, for example, the agriculture sectors, and with that resolution, they have the possibility of refusing water for irrigation districts, maintaining other uses and not being wasting water using it from the sources that are currently supplying cities across the country. And if, on the one hand, population growth does not help, on the other hand, the amount of water we consume, much less attentive to this fact. According to an OCD report, Colombia is the country that spends the most water per capita in the world, in a thousand nine hundred eighty- eight cubic meters per person, and that in the country access to water is not yet a guaranteed right for everyone. According to the Dane In two thousand twenty- three three million people had no access to drinking water, of which two six million live in rural areas and zero six in urban areas. Last year, within the framework of the United Nations Water Conference, the Ministry of Housing, City and Territory published this fact. In Colombia, 12 million people have inadequate access to drinking water, that is, twenty- five percent a quarter of Colombians and in Colombia, about one point, five million people perform their physiological needs in the

15:20 open air and only fifty- two percent of waste water is treated. We heard what the Minister of that portfolio, Catalina Velasco, said, but we know that the worst forms of backwardness in water and sanitation occur in a context of poverty, inequality, exclusion. We face critical situations of deprivation in rural areas and in small municipalities for indigenous and Afro- Colombian communities, about women and children. We are only six years away to meet the deadline set for the achievement of the sustainable development goals that were set at two thousand and fifteen.

16:00 Last year, Tania Santos, coordinator of the Water Group at the Stockholm Environmental Institute, and David Zamora, associate researcher at that same institute in Latin America, published an article in El Espectador in which they show that we are far from meeting goal six, which proposes to ensure access to water in terms of quality, quantity, sanitation and sustainable management for all. According to the authors of the text, by the year two thousand and twenty, only seventy - three per cent of its population had access to safe and managed drinking water services. Eighteen per cent of the population uses safe sanitation services and only twenty - one per cent of domestic waste water is treated in the National Water Survey of two thousand twenty- two done by the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, and the ideam found that water demand occurs especially in the region of the country where less water is available, that is, in the Magdalena Cauca basin, where sixty- four per cent of the resource is distributed and seventy- four per cent of the country' s population is settled. A sample of this can be seen in Bogotá, where, according to data from the Planning Secretariat, in sectors of strata six, two commas are consumed six times more water than stadoun. Why, if we have so many water sources, it has been so difficult and purple to guarantee access to water. To all Colombians the question tells Erica Castro, a doctor in Environment and Territory Planning, innocent from the University of Medellín. This answered me well. This is a rather

17:34 complex question. Why the problems of drinking water in some municipalities of Colombia can be due to a combination of factors in the first place, the diverse geography of the country, which has mountainous regions and tropical forests, can make it difficult to implement drinking water infrastructures because they are very remote or difficult to access. Also the lack of adequate investment and infrastructure and the maintenance of poor infrastructure that contributes to water scarcity. Other factors may be water pollution due to industrial agricultural or mining activity, which affect the quality of available water. We can also talk about deforestation, environmental degradation, which has a negative impact on the country' s water resources. We must not forget the lack of adequate regulation, corruption and unequal distribution of water resources. We can also talk about the impacts of climate variability, which in many cases can lead to both floods and drought, which can affect the availability of the resource. It also turns out that there are problems on the issue of inefficient water distribution and, in that case, including a problem of discrimination. In any case, it should be addressed through a comprehensive approach and the inclusion of water resources and traditional water sources.

19:00 They' re going through a critical moment. According to experts, the future is in underground water. In the National Water Survey of two thousand twenty - two mentioned a moment ago, despite the fact that seventy- eight percent of the territory could take advantage of groundwater. Only 15 per cent of aquifer systems are known to be fundamental to the production of drinking water, that is, a water source that has seven times more potential for water availability than surface water, but we do not know it. The paper also notes that these water sources are safer than reservoirs because, among other reasons, they do not have pollution or evaporation problems. We could say that better than standing in gold is that we' re standing on water. I looked for Santiago Matabala, water manager, a company that has dedicated several decades to exploring groundwater. I asked him why if there are so many sources of groundwater in the country we haven' t been able to take advantage of them any more. This told me well, Colombia has a giant potential around groundwater. That' s for sure. However, the use has not been the right one because we mainly need information. And there are several reasons for this ignorance. First, therefore, the lack of hydrogeological information, which is a complex, difficult technical task, but which has to accelerate. And the second is that groundwater is not a well- known or very famous solution for many people in Colombia. Despite

20:30 this, there are super successful examples. For example, in the Cauca valley, the cane companies and environmental authority, the BC have worked as a team, they have already developed many very successful solutions where, therefore, they have shown that knowledge and collaboration are key. A corporation, let' s say agile, that empowers and controls and regulates. But in order for us to achieve the real potential, we must overcome some barriers in the corporations to support and it is easy to have more qualified technical personnel, with resources and with will in terms of processes, so that it is easier to have permits to drill and for water concessions, because in many cases they are permits in most of Colombia they are permits that last more than a year to get them out.

21:15 And that makes people even skip the process and not legalize their wells or their good water solutions is a resource that we have to finish understanding to be able to exploit it, deepen the research, speed up the procedures and with a social and political will that allows us to deepen. In these solutions we have an opportunity to maintain ourselves as a water power and groundwater, without a doubt, plays a fundamental role in that objective to an activity that already uses this method is agriculture, the sector that has the most water consumption. According to the National Water Survey, forty- three point twenty- five percent or thirteen thousand eighty- four million cubic meters per year are used in agriculture and post- harvest activities, followed by hydroenergy, pisicle activities. Then the household use that only uses two thousand eight hundred and fifty- seven million cubic meters a year. According to an article on the treatment of wastewater and environmental problems in the textile sector published by scene, the volume of water used by the manufacturing industry, according to the dane in the two thousand twenty, was two hundred seventy- eight comma one million cubic meters from a sixty comma seven percent of surface water, twenty- one one percent of water supplied by aqueduct companies, fifteen comma one percent of groundwater and three percent of rainwater, sea water and water in a tank cart, where the industrial activity of textile head clothing and furs records a consumption of eleven comma seven million cubic meters. The world

22:55 in general is going through a water crisis, excuse me in advance, but the figures that you are going to hear below are not encouraging. According to the last water risk by the World Resources Institute, twenty- five countries that house one quarter of the world' s population face an extremely high water stress each year that regularly consume almost all of their available water supply and at least fifty percent of the world' s population, about four billion people, live in conditions of great water scarcity for at least one month a year. And if water is not better managed, population growth, economic development and climate change are destined to worsen the cynical stress and to close the lapidary conclusions. For two thousand and fifty, an additional billion people are expected to live with extremely high water stress, even if the world limits the rise in global temperature by one coma by three degrees Celsius and two comma by four degrees Celsius for two thousand One hundred an optimistic scenario, and although it is not within countries with three major cydics, there is a close example from which we can learn.

24:04 Uruguay. At the beginning of July last year, the reserves of the Paso Severino dam, the main source of water for the Uruguayan capital and metropolitan area, were around two percent. Just reading that number makes me nervous. This is especially surprising because Uruguay is a country with good freshwater sources and was even recognized by the New York Times as a sustainable country with some advantage. In the climate change curve, deforestation in the Amazon and extreme heat, according to scientists, were largely responsible for increasing soil and plant moisture loss. This crisis resulted in losses that exceeded$ 1 880 billion and affected more than a comma seven million people. Between two thousand twenty- eight and two thousand twenty- three, the agricultural sector lost three percent of the PIP. The lack of severin dry water the main source of water, causing an unprecedented water supply crisis.

25:04 The country overcame the crisis. In December last year, Uruguay' s Minister of the Environment, Robert Beuvier, told the country' s daily newspaper that he highlighted the construction of an emergency dam in Verastiquí over the Saint Lucia River and the attention they paid to the most vulnerable population. According to Minister Bugué, some 500 zero people were helped between June and September to buy two liters of bottled water per day. I cannot fail to see the Uruguay crisis and ask myself what we can do to avoid a similar crisis in the country. I looked for Felipe Valderrama, water management coordinator of the Wetlands Foundation, to help me respond and he told me this. The future we have is very complex. The idea tells us that we will have temperature increases of more than two degrees, reductions in precipitation, that is, in the amount of rain that falls annually from ten to forty percent the more than thirty percent of the country and additionally that the frequency and intensity of the phenomena of climate variability, as can be the boy and the girl, because it will increase.

26:11 So every time we' re going to have more girls, we' re going to have more boys and they' re going to be harder and harder. For that reason, the country, because it has been armored, has tried to generate national climate change policies, a national policy for the comprehensive management of water resources that have their planning instruments and that must be developed, interpreted and applied by autonomous corporations and municipalities. This is taking place in a very poor way, that is, conceptualization and participatory approach based on nature and the communities it has. The Ministry is not reaching out to corporations and municipalities if, therefore, we are experiencing impacts in the territory associated with good planning or implementation of such planning, among other things, these breadmaking instruments lack impact indicators.

26:56 So we' re investing a lot of resources planning and running that planning, not having how to know if we' re doing things right or wrong. And that' s worse than doing things wrong, directly worse than doing things wrong, not knowing that we' re doing things wrong. And that is a little bit the reality of the implementation of environmental policy in Colombia. Then we have to change it drastically, because we have enough policy and instruments to do it right. And finally, because that has to be accompanied by massive educational efforts at the national level. We are then world power of water. If we refer to the number of ecosystems and tributaries, we could say yes. But it' s no good that we have this imaginary troforum, that we have seas, rivers, wetlands, moors and lagoons if we don ' t have a multi- point commitment to protect those ecosystems from activities that affect them, such as mining, livestock, hydrocarbon exploitation, to guarantee infrastructure so that all Colombians can access water safely, make responsible use of the resource and address climate change. Without that, the same can happen to us as the Colombia team in the US World Cup in a thousand nine hundred and ninety - four. I am Roberto Pombo, and this was chapter eighty- five of my questions. See you in the next chapter from now on. This chapter of my questions is available on all podcast platforms. This episode was made

28:26 possible thanks to Kafán, family compensation box, Roberto Pombo Directorate, General Production, juan Abel Gutiérrez, editorial advisor, Daniel San Pedro Espina, screenplays juan Abel Gutiérrez and Johnny Rodríguez, field production, Marcela Salazar and Lucía Beltrán. Post- production of audio Carlos Bernal