Blog: In the year 2021, water crises took center stage worldwide
Communities rich and poor bore witness to horrific devastation in 2021. In July, floods in China’s Henan province trapped commuters in subway tunnels in the city of Zhengzhou, which received a year’s rainfall in just three days. That same month, raging waters in Germany’s Ahr Valley scoured farmland into canyons and submerged riverside towns. … Across the American West, intense heat and meager precipitation produced tinderbox conditions. Water systems were at the center of the story. Lake Oroville, the second-largest reservoir in California, dropped to a record low, too depleted to generate hydropower.