Una abundancia que no era tal

escasez de agua potable en Uruguay

Abstract

The drought of recent years led to a limit in access to freshwater water resources in Uruguay, which unleashed socio-environmental conflicts over the use of water for irrigation and human and animal consumption, with shortages in the countryside and especially in the cities in the metropolitan area. This area depends for its supply on runoff in the 13,000 km² Santa Lucía River basin. The agricultural emergency was declared, first in 2022 and after 2 years of drought, due to the lack of water for rural uses and in 2023 the water emergency due to lack of fresh water in Montevideo and its metropolitan area. This article proposes to identify the most significant factors of this crisis, also showing a loss of water sovereignty. This appears degraded and diminished, due to a superposition of impacts of natural phenomena associated with those of the productive and consumption model, associated with post-pandemic situations and the changes that are occurring right now in trade, governance, global geopolitics .