Episode 39: Slow Water Movements
“People are trying to think much more holistically about the system and how it functions and how we can accomodate water’s relationships in that way. That leads to all these co-benefits, rather than fixing one problem and creating others. in this way we can solve flooding and water scarcity together, we can support biodiversity and human health, we can support carbon storage and natural systems”
A conversation with Erica Gies (Author, Reporter, National Geographic Explorer) about water detectives, slowing down the movement of water, controlling water, and giving water space. Released May 6, 2022.
guests on the show
Erica Gies
Erica Gies is an award-winning independent journalist who writes about water, climate change, plants and critters for Scientific American, The New York Times, Nature, The Atlantic, The Guardian, National Geographic, The Economist, Washington Post, bioGraphic, Wired, and more.
Her stories hail from North America, especially California and British Columbia, and the wider world. In a quest for commonalities that bind us and innovations that inspire, she has reported from many intriguing places: Iraq, Peru, Cambodia, India, Syria, Kenya, China, Qatar, Laos, the United Kingdom, Guyana, Vietnam, France, and Indigenous nations and territories, including those belonging to Navajo (Diné), Kwiakah, Makushi, Kitasoo/Xai’xai, ‘Namgis, Heiltsuk, and Native Hawaiian peoples.
Her book, Water Always Wins: Thriving in an age of drought and deluge, is about what she calls “Slow Water” innovations that are helping us adapt to the increasing floods and droughts brought by climate change. Learn more about Erica Gies here and follow her @egies
Transcript
Faith Kearns
Welcome to Water Talk. Today we're excited to have the opportunity to talk with Erica Gies. Erica is an award-winning independent journalist who covers science in the environment. Her work, which spans the globe, appears in The New York Times, Scientific American, Nature and Sia, The Economist, National Geographic and many other outlets. Her new book, Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge is available now. We are really looking forward to talking with Erica today.
I'm really interested in the topic of her new book, which she calls “slow water.” And I don't totally know what she means by that. So I'm looking forward to hearing more about it. I think it's a little bit like the slow food movement. But I am interested in hearing more of the details. And I've always really enjoyed Erica's writing about water. She writes a lot about things that we care about at Water Talk: groundwater, saltwater intrusion, things like beavers and restoration. So yeah, it should be a super interesting conversation and I'm really interested to hear more about her new book. How about you Sam and Mallika?
Sam Sandoval
Yeah, I am very interested to listen to Erica. It seems that she's now changing the perspective and one of the comments about her book is, what does water want? And it is rather not focusing on the human needs, but about how water has been working for a lot of time and then using that knowledge or that perspective to start generating or to start thinking more in green infrastructure. Slowing down water and what all the gray infrastructure has caused to the system.
I read a couple of articles of hers related with groundwater aquifer recharge, also some articles related to the actual cost of energy and how we are not fully accounting the costs or energy related with building hydropower. Also we're using coal in and a lot of these infrastructure that we're using to generate energy. So for me, I want to listen to Erica because she's a very versatile journalist. So anyway, I'm really looking forward to talk to her. What about you Malika?
Mallika Nocco
Yes, I'm so excited today too to talk to Erica. And I feel like I need to share with our listeners where I am. So you know where I'm coming from right now. I am at the International Symposium on Managed Aquifer Recharge right now. So I'm coming to you from that Conference in Long Beach. And I am very excited to know what slow water is and a little bit and understand it more, I feel like I have some understanding of the slow food movement. And I’m suspecting that I might be in a fast water environment right now and this is why I wanted to share where I was because it's actually I think, gonna be a really interesting foil to just my general surroundings at this meeting. I do feel like some folks here also are just kind of pushing too slow.
I'm hearing some positive things like related to more community partnerships and kind of slowing stuff down in this way. But I am looking on Erica site, Slow Water World. And one of the things that is on here that's interesting is that she says, “what water wants… water detectives exploring this question is a kind of an engineering that reclaims these slow cycles and offers us greater resilience.” And the un-engineering is definitely not the scene here. So it's just kind of neat for me to take a pause from like a very much, you know, engineered kind of human dominant story thinking about managed aquifer recharge, and think about maybe a very different context. So I'm super interested in just hearing more about what slow water is.
I do think that there may be is like a physical hydrological component to it that I'm excited about just like literally slowing the water down. And it reminds me of, you know, when I was working on my Master's with a stormwater infrastructure and trying to see, you know, what would slow down those peak flows? It just, it does kind of remind me of a hydrograph a little bit, but then I wonder, when we think about reducing peak flows, and we think about, you know, that hydrograph what are all of the other components that go with it? So, in the case of what I was looking at, it was vegetation and vegetation types and, you know, how does prairie reduce those flows and capture some of that water and do that remediation. I'm really excited to slow down today.
Faith Kearns
So Erica, welcome. We're so excited to have you on Water Talk. And we want to start by asking you a bit more about you and your background. What led you into journalism into your current focus on water?
Erica Gies
Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm a longtime listener, first time caller. Yeah, I've been listening to her talk since the beginning, almost, I think, and you've had so many wonderful episodes. So I'm really thrilled to be here. My interest in water, I guess, began in childhood. I grew up in California, which is a place where water is a big focus primarily, or our worry about its absence. And you know, I was a kid during one of the big droughts in the 70s. And in our school assemblies, they were teaching us all about water conservation.
On the more fun side, I suppose, my family did a lot of camping. Especially with another family whose girls were all swimmers. And so my friend and I had a competition with each other that every body of water we came across, we would swim in. So yeah, water has just always been very important to me, as I think it is to many people. So when I got into journalism, that was just sort of natural that I would want to cover it.
Faith Kearns
What made you become a journalist to begin with?
Erica Gies
I always loved words, and I always loved writing. And I was an obsessive reader, I guess I still am. So I really wanted to tell stories. I did a Master's in Literature, with a focus in Ecocriticism, which is an actual thing. But I realized that I did not want to write for the very narrow audience that that sort of was setting me up for. I wanted to try to communicate with the public at large. Environment issues have always been really important to me. I hope that through my journalism I can expose more people to some of the most pressing issues of our day.
I particularly like solutions journalism, where I'm focusing on people who are trying to come up with new ideas and strategies to address the many problems that we are facing, and many of which we've created for ourselves.
Faith Kearns
Great. Thank you so much. So your book, Water Always Wins, which is a really great title by the way, congratulations, focuses on the concept of slow water, which I assume is a little bit like the slow food movement. But can you maybe tell us a little bit about slow water and what it means for how we might need to change our water management approaches?
Erica Gies
Yeah, sure. I did coin the term “slow water” with slow food in mind. I think the two movements share some commonalities, which I'll talk about. All of the projects that I looked at around the world in this book, are basically trying to slow water in some respect. The reason for that is that the kind of mainstream standard development that we've done over the last 150 years, for the most part, really is beating water up. Particularly, I think of it in terms of John McPhee’s Control of Nature, this is the control of water. And so many of the things we do like dams and levees, you know, we are trying to subvert water’s innate tendencies to control it in some way. We've filled in 87% of the world's wetlands, we've dramatically changed with dams and other interventions, two thirds of the world's largest rivers. The area of land covered by cities has doubled since 1992. So in all of these ways, we are interfering with water’s natural slow phases. And so these innovative projects that I looked at in my book, the water detectives, as I call them, are all basically trying to reclaim some of water’s slow phases.
The slow water movement is focused on to a large extent, conserving or restoring wetlands, floodplains, water towers, wet meadows, high altitude forests, or in a city you know, something like a bio swale, places where water can slow and interact with the land. Other facets of slow water include systems thinking and that's very important. So many of our solutions in current development is kind of a single minded problem solving focus. So if we have water scarcity, we build the dam and make a big pool of water. If we have flooding we build the levee to keep the water in the river. But water is its own entity, it has agency. It has relationships with soil and rock, and microbes, and beavers and humans. And when we ignore all of those interactions with the system, that's when we create a lot of unintended consequences for ourselves.
So the slow water projects, in my book, people are trying to think much more holistically about the system and how it functions and how we can accommodate water’s relationships. And that way that leads to all of these co-benefits, rather than fixing one problem and creating others. In this way, you know, we can solve flooding and water scarcity together. We can support biodiversity and human health, we can support carbon storage, and natural systems.
And then there are two other facets, which I think are also related to the slow food movement, which is slow food is ideally local food. And slow water is also ideally local water. And that idea is rather anathema in California, where we have so much water transported over very long distances. But there are many benefits to slow water, which is that you're not creating an environmental justice issue. There was a really interesting study a few years ago that looked at dams and other big interventions on rivers over a 40 year period. And those interventions brought more water to 20% of the world's people, and decreased water to 24% of the world's people.
So you know that water isn't magic water, it comes from somewhere, and it comes from other people, and it comes from other beings. And so the extent to which we're using local water, you know, we're learning to live within our water means, we're learning to, you know, we're learning more about our local hydrology and how it actually works. And slow water projects also tend to be distributed across the landscape across the watershed, unlike our kind of centralized water systems that we have now. And so that means a lot more people are likely to come into contact with them. And so there's an education component, but it can also bring a sense of community responsibility and investment and engagement.
Mallika Nocco
So I had a little follow up question, just because I was trying to think about what fast water would be, like what is the other side, I guess, how to compare it. I was thinking of fast water, as you know, more engineered systems. But can you also have slow water in habit be you know, engineered?
Erica Gies
Can we engineer slow water? Is that your question?
Mallika Nocco
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Erica Gies
I mean, I think some of the restoration projects are pretty heavily engineered. There's one I talk about in a stream, an urban stream, in Seattle. But that type of engineering is trying to mimic natural systems. Whether it's a beaver activity, or you know, natural tree fall and things like that. Certainly, natural water is capable of fast phases as well. And, you know, something like a dam is definitely, you might think of it as slow water, the reservoir that's created. But in fact, that type of slow water is extremely unnatural, you know, it's much deeper than it would be, it tends to be a lot warmer, the water is released on a cycle that is geared toward human needs, water or for electricity, and not the needs of the critters who live in the river, who rely on you know, natural cycles of higher and lower water, of warmer and cooler water to stimulate various phases of their life cycles. Even though reservoir is technically slow water, it's not slow water in the way that I'm talking about it here.
Fast water is a very common phenomenon, particularly in cities people have built into floodplains and then floodplain flood and then they want to get water off the land as quickly as possible so they straighten creeks or streams and armor the walls, and that creates a scouring effect, which creates all kinds of problems in the ecological system.
Sam Sandoval
Erica, one follow up question on that one and on the title of your book that I was reading some summaries. So water always wins, regardless if we build the largest levee or reservoir, I mean, the levee will be at some point overtopped or demolished. Reservoirs, regardless of how high we build it, at some point it will be empty. I mean, if considering the cycles that we're going through, so is that what you were trying to mention in that water always means that we are just these kind of human centric and seeing it from the water side, the water perspective, at some point we are we are managing these perhaps a the wrong way or mistaken way.
Erica Gies
Yes, I have come to believe that we definitely are managing things the wrong way. I'm sure you guys know that old joke about levees, you know, there are two kinds of levees, ones that have failed, and the ones that are going to fail. But we're seeing failures more and more often. And that's for a couple of reasons. Partly it's because of climate change, we have more water in the atmosphere, we have these bigger rainstorms, and we also have longer drought. Another reason that we are overlooking, I think, is that our development choices are making these problems much worse. When it comes to water, the reason is because we have disrupted the natural water cycle so dramatically.
So we're not asking what water wants, we're trying to control water. And we're not giving water space to do its thing. One example that I think is really interesting for Californians is, you know, we've come to think of streams as winter phenomenon. You know, it's dry in the summer, it's often dry by early spring. And we think that that's natural. And in some cases, that is how certain water bodies work. But in many cases, before we dramatically altered the hydrology, when we were allowing much more groundwater recharge, there was much more evenness of flow between winter and summer because groundwater would be supplying those streams throughout the summer. So that's just one example of how our interventions are exacerbating these problems. Why do we want to make things worse? Why don't we try something different and try to make them better?
Faith Kearns
Thank you so much. So your book includes a really interesting cast of characters, which you've already referred to as water detectives. Can you maybe introduce us to a couple of them? And tell us how you found them and decided to tell their stories?
Erica Gies
Yeah, my goal with this book was I wanted to tell stories that everyone could read and find something that they could relate to in their own area. One thing about slow water solutions is that they are unique to every place. So you can't just stamp them out cookie cutter style–it depends on the local geology, ecology, the local community and culture, every patient requires a different approach. But by giving a variety of different examples, I hope to show people, you know, if you're struggling with water scarcity, and you live near the mountains, here's something you can do. Or if you are having too much urban flooding, here's an approach that might work.
The idea was to inspire a dialogue. And then people could look in their own area to see what specifics might be required. So with that in mind, I cast an eye around the world. Of course, I started with California, which is my home place, and there are some key California examples in there. But one that really was intriguing to me, were the Mesopotamian marshes of Iraq. I found that about 10 years ago, the Goldman Prize is an environmental award that I used to cover with some regularity. And one year the winner was a guy named Azam Alwash, who is Iraqi, and who had done a lot of work to try to conserve the Mesopotamian marshes.
So I wrote about that in the New York Times. I wasn't able to travel to Iraq at that time. It was a little bit of a dicey security situation. So I reported it remotely. But then a number of years later, I was reporting another story about Persian leopard conservation in Kurdistan. And because of various politics between Kurdistan and the central government of Iraq, I was required to say that I was going to the Mesopotamian marshes, and to go there, which was a wonderful, wonderful opportunity. And I met a guy named Jassim Al Asadi, who is from Tobash, which is a town on the marshes. He is born and raised there, and has done a ton of work with the NGO Nature Iraq to conserve the marshes.
So I met some of the marsh dwellers who are from a variety of different backgrounds and speak different languages, but they share this common culture that is about 9000 years old. And what was really amazing to me about the marsh dwellers is, you know, we've filled in 87% of the world's wetlands. You know, we tend to look at wetlands and think that's wasteland, and we could build there, it's flat, like, let's put some dirt in there. Let's build on it. But of course, those buildings tend to flood. So that's one problem. And the other problem is wetlands, of course, are incredibly important, not just for absorbing floodwater, cleaning water, storing water, but also for biodiversity. And for 9000 years, people living in the marshes have realized that the true value of the marshes is the incredible richness of life. They have figured out a way to live with the marshes. It's just such a different perspective than, you know, seeing it as a swamp that needs to be drained. So I found that to be really valuable and inspiring.
You asked for a couple of examples. Another example that really impressed me was in India, I've been to India a few times. And I particularly like Chennai, and the South. For some years, I've been following Dutch efforts to sort of educate people around the world about better water management. And of course, the Dutch have many hundreds of years of experience. And so when I saw the Dutch were working in Chennai, because of my interest in Chennai, I was attracted to that.
And so I went there, and I met this woman named Jayshree Vencatesan. She is a biologist who founded an NGO called Care Earth Trust. She's really a remarkable woman. She is in a field that is not super open to women in India. She is middle aged, so she's been at it since that was very much not the case. And she's just kind of fearless. Also a little contrary, you know what she said, when she started trying to conserve wetlands, people told her it was the stupidest thing she could possibly do. And she said when people tell me, I cannot do a bit of work, I will take it up. So she's just a really fierce and wonderful woman.
So that's one aspect of what's happening in Chennai, she's really working to get the state government and the national government to recognize the importance of the many different types of wetlands in the area and the role that they play. Chennai ran out of water a couple of years ago, but Chennai also had a terrible flood that was arguably more impactful to local people. And in fact, there has been this pattern of flooding and running out of water over the last 20 years or so, directly in line with the dramatic expansion of the area (the city has just sprawled and in many cases into these many wetlands that surround the city). One fascinating thing about Chennai is it actually gets one and a half times the quantity of water that it consumes. It gets it via the monsoon and via rain. So the fact that it's running out of water doesn't make any sense other than the fact that they're rushing it out of the city.
So the other interesting thing about India is that people across the country have innovated different ways of managing the water that came to them, and making it available throughout the year. But in South India, the people who live in Tamil Nadu, the state where Chennai is, are called Tamil people. They have this ingenious system that they innovated at least 2000 years ago called Eris. There's a mountain range that runs down the north south of the subcontinent and starting up in the mountains going down to the Bay of Bengal, they have these series of ponds that they have built. Each pond runs into the next pond, and some of them are connected to streams and rivers, those are called system Eris. And then some of them that are in places where there is no surface water, and those are called non system Eris, but they are connected to each other. And they're all connected to Temple tanks, which are kind of bringing water into the heart of religion and culture. And this is a communal resource.
They had strict rules regulating upstream downstream equity and routines for maintaining the system. It wasn't just like digging ponds for irrigation, because it was connected with the natural hydrology and the underground. They really inserted themselves into the natural ecosystem in this way. And what's so fascinating is like, if you look at a satellite view of South India, you see all of these lakes scattered and the Tamil word Eris, which means tank, is basically interchangeable with lake or a water body. And at this distance in time, like nobody remembers whether it was a human built water body or a natural lake. So it's just really interesting. Under colonization, the British had other ideas of how to manage it and they basically destroyed the system. But now people in Chennai are starting to reclaim some of the Eris system and restore it in conjunction with the work that Jayshree is doing to restore the natural wetlands as well. It's a recreation of an ancient system within the parameters of the modern city.
Faith Kearns
Thanks for sharing those, those are really inspiring stories. And I know for sure, I'll be thinking about what the sort of local component of slow water might mean for quite a while. And I'm just wondering, is there one thing that you feel most excited and hopeful about when it comes to the possibility of slow water?
Erica Gies
One thread that connects almost all the stories in my book is groundwater. I think we have really had sort of an out of sight out of mind, and when I say we, I mean, modern developed society. Because we can't see groundwater, we've tended to largely ignore it. And that means, you know, we haven't regulated it, we haven't incorporated it into our models. That is a gross oversight. The extent to which we can help restore natural hydrology by moving water underground, again, I think can be really helpful to so many of the ways in which we manage water and the problems that we're having with water.
You know it wasn't always the case that people ignored groundwater. The Tamils definitely understood that water was moving underground, they used the water level in the pond as a visual signal for themselves of how much water availability they had and when they should be selling crops. There are people I write about in the Andes mountains of Peru, who move water underground to slow it down to make it available later in the season. Those folks know water put into this area will emerge in that spring downstream. So they have a visual picture in their minds of how the water is moving underground.
So I'm not sure if that exactly answers your question. But I do feel hopeful that people are starting to pay a lot more attention to the underground. And it really feels to me like such an intriguing place where all kinds of wonderful things can happen.
Sam Sandoval
And Erica, you have written about groundwater, the radical groundwater storage test, that will be a document for our listeners to read from Erica. You actually went really into the deep details of it, which I appreciated that you took the time to write.
One of the things that I'm seeing as a common thread between India, Iraq, and the groundwater, is the reconnecting of the community with the water bodies. Reconnecting communities with rivers or with their environment. I'm not sure if that comes also from your experience in childhood.
Can you mention how being aware of the surroundings and the environment in the different cases that you've seen or talk, how that connection of water and the community can help future slow water movement?
Erica Gies
There are two articles I've written in recent times that talk about California's groundwater issue. One was in Scientific American, and I think that's the one you were talking about. I wrote another one more recently, in Bay Nature that was about the hunt for paleo valleys in the underground and how those can help us restore groundwater health, capture the atmospheric rivers. So I think those might be of particular interest to California listeners.
In terms of the community aspect, it was really interesting to see in the Peruvian Andes, the ownership that people took over their water management. One woman told me, if we plant the water, we can harvest the water. They assume a responsibility for procuring the water that they need at the time that they need it. Because they are actively engaged in that work. They are aware of changes in the natural variability and what that means for their own lives and how they might need to adapt in that particular year.
I think people really love water. You know, there's something innate in us, you know, people love oceans, they love rivers, they're drawn to them. I'm sure most of us really appreciate turning on the faucet and having clean water available to us. But I also feel like people might be open to more engagement and ownership and protection of their own water availability. The way that might work in a modern city might be a little different. It might be sewage recharge ponds, you know, where sewage is cleaned to a certain level, and then it goes into a sort of natural pond area, which can be a feature for wildlife, it can be a place for people to walk and enjoy nature.
Then that water is also going into the aquifer, and it's been further cleaned, and then might eventually come around to the drinking water. So in that scenario, you know, a person who lives in a city might not personally be involved in procuring that water, but they are more exposed to it, and they have a better sense of what's happening with it. I think that can be valuable. I think people do care about water. And if you give them the opportunity to be involved in various ways, I'm hopeful that that might be meaningful to people.
Faith Kearns
I wanted to ask you just a couple of questions related to sort of your process as a journalist. So you know, you've covered so many issues that us sort of self-identified water nerds are very interested in. Some of the things we've already talked about: groundwater, but also nitrates, green infrastructure, and many other things. And I'm just wondering if there's something unique about water, that you feel like allows you to tell the kinds of stories that you're interested in telling as a journalist?
Erica Gies
When I first started writing, and covering the environment, I got feedback from editors. I would write about some animal that was endangered in a conservation effort, I would write a pitch, literally, they would say nobody cares about that. And so I came to realize that energy and water are things that are sort of wonky, but everyone has to care about them on some level, because they're so fundamental to all of our lives. So I covered renewable energy for quite a while. And then I started focusing more on covering water. But I feel, because water is so fundamental to our lives, also, because we sort of have an innate attraction to it, I think it's a way in to tell stories that are compelling to many people. The way we manage water really has everything to do with how happy and successful we are as a species going forward.
Faith Kearns
That’s so interesting that the editorial feedback that you got was that animals are less, less interesting than water, because I feel like a lot of us get the opposite feedback, but I do appreciate the point. So another just process question is, you know, there's just been a lot of emphasis on diverse sources and news reporting over the past several years. So I'm just wondering how you address these issues in your own reporting? And if you have advice for those of us who are really interested in helping to get more diversity, people, geographies, ideas, into water stories?
Erica Gies
Good question. I've done a good bit of international travel. I think the first place I went that was radically different than the United States was Asia. It really was a wake up call for me to realize that there were billions of people doing things fundamentally differently than the way that I had been raised to do them and to think about them. And it really showed me that there was arrogance or ignorance in presuming that we have the one true way. The West really does export that arrogance and pressing other places to abandon sustainable ways that they're doing things in favor of ways that we've deemed qualify as development. And one of the sources in my book called that hydro colonialism, which I really liked.
And so I think my international travel has really shown me that there are many ways to address the many problems that we face as humans, and that we can learn a lot from each other. To me, it was always very important to make this an internationally focused book, because water, like climate, is very local, but also very international. Our whole water cycle around the globe is connected. I just felt like there was so much that we could learn from each other. In terms of finding diverse sources, the handy thing about going to Kenya or India or Peru, is that you're going to meet lots of Kenyans and Indians and Peruvians to be your sources in terms of finding diverse voices.
I think many of the approaches in my book do have some commonality with values that Indigenous peoples in those places have espoused forever. So I think, you know, checking in with local Indigenous peoples and learning from them about their management strategies and replays can be really valuable.
Mallika Nocco
I have a follow up if that's okay. I was just thinking a little bit about one of the things I noticed Erica, about how you're describing kind of slow water and some of these projects and these systems that you've seen, it's very embodied. You're using a lot of embodied language and just kind of the sensory experiences of water. Right now, I'm at the International Symposium for Managed Aquifer Recharge and there aren't a lot of women in the room. There are not a lot of different kinds of people here. And this is something that we always are talking about in water.
I'm wondering if you can think or if there are ways that flow water could maybe help us to try to bring diverse leadership to the water sector? Are there any kind of ways that you can think of that we might be able to use some of these slow water ideas to change who's doing the water infrastructure work? And who's doing the, you know, who's making the decisions?
Erica Gies
Yeah, I think at an event like that, there's probably a lot of engineers, which historically has been a very male dominated field. I am seeing increasingly younger people who have studied environmental engineering or various ecological aspects of water management. So I think engineering is evolving/ I hope it is. Many of the sources in my book are women. Classical engineering training, sort of prepares you in a very specific way to solve a specific problem with a specific type of data. Now that more restoration is coming into it more ecology, biology, that tends more towards systems thinking and thinking of some of the unintended consequences of direct engineering approaches. And I am hopeful that that kind of thinking can attract maybe more diverse people to the work, and also that people with more diverse backgrounds and education can bring more creative thinking to how we're doing things.
The goal of my book is to really try to, you know, the IPCC report that just came out said that we need a radical overhaul in how we do basically everything. And water tends to be a very conservative field. Obviously we don't want people to get sick, which is important. But I do think, like the way we do everything else, there's a lot of evidence that the way that we've been doing it is not working. It's failing in many ways. And so with this book, I hope to encourage people to be more open to thinking about water from a quite a different perspective, by asking what water wants, rather than trying to control it. And I do feel like people from diverse backgrounds, both in their physical embodiment and in their educations, can hopefully help us get there.
Mallika Nocco
That really leads into the next question, which is about climate change. So it's, you know, as you mentioned, it's a huge issue when it comes to water. And we do need this radical shift in the way that we're thinking about water and climate. And I know you've touched on this a little bit, you know, already, but how are you addressing climate change in your water reporting? And, you know, how do you think the way that you're addressing climate change is itself changing? As climate change impacts are just becoming more obvious and concrete, you know, in our lives over time.
Erica Gies
I've been covering climate change for at least 20 years. And frankly, for most of that, people were barely paying attention. In the last five years, that's really shifted, and I'm thankful for that. But you know, it's also frustrating because, you know, if we had been paying attention to it earlier, we could have done a lot more with a lot less. But you know what you said is true. Part of the reason why people are paying attention to it is because they are suffering the impacts in their lives in their homes. And climate change is water change. That's one of the first ways that people experience climate change is when their neighborhood floods or when there's dramatic water scarcity.
There are reasons for that, with every one degree Celsius warming, the atmosphere holds 7% more water so that's why you have more rainfall falling in storms. We're already seeing increases in the quantity of water in storms across the United States, for example, 10% more in the southwest, which we don't really think of, 55% in the Northeast. And then warmer air also evaporates more water out of the soil and out of plants. And so that's why we're seeing more desiccated landscapes. And, you know, water scarcity or insecurity is already affecting 2 billion people around the world, soon expected to be affecting two thirds of us.
The climate impact on water is significant. And we don't fully understand how that's gonna play out. But what I really try to focus on in my book is that it's not just climate change, it's also our development choices. It's how we manage water in the ways that I've been talking about, but it's also how we build our cities, how we develop our industrial agriculture. We've altered 75% of land on Earth, that leaves very little room for natural systems and for the water cycle. That is bad news.
But it's also good news, because it means that there's a lot that we can do in our local communities and watersheds to make ourselves more water resilient, to make ourselves more climate resilient. And that is both from a mitigation and an adaptation perspective. So you know, sometimes it can feel overwhelming climate change. How are we going to get the world to dramatically reduce emissions? And of course, we need to do that. The water piece of it can be very empowering, because there actually is a lot that we can do locally and regionally, if we work together with our community.
Sam Sandoval
Thank you Erica. So we always like to finish our episode by asking you how the three of us, and how our audience can help the work that you're doing? Please let us know.
Erica Gies
Okay, well, thank you, I guess I would say buy my book. You can find out more about it at slowwater.world. I think also, you know, it's an opportunity for us to get involved in our local communities in various ways, like whether that's attending city council meetings, or various local planning initiatives. And just being aware of these options.
So many of us only know about dams and levees and gray infrastructure because that's what we've grown up with. But there are these alternatives. And so, you know, you can advocate for them in your local community, you can vote for them. If they become options on the ballot, you can talk to other people about them.