Ciudad Juarez.- On July 31, the state of Chihuahua completed one year with all 67 municipalities in some degree of drought.
According to the National Water Commission (Conagua) Monitor, as of the first half of July 2023, eleven municipalities remained with the box blank on the scoreboard of the different levels of drought.
At the end of the following month, however, eight entered the D0 level, which means “abnormally dry,” and another three entered the D1 level, which is “moderate drought,” and have maintained some degree of drought measurement since then until the end of July 2024, the date of the most recent report from the federal government.
The first group includes Aldama, Aquiles Serdán, La Cruz, Delicias, Julimes, Meoqui, Rosales and Saucillo. The second group includes Santa Isabel, Gran Morelos and Praxedis G. Guerrero, in the Juárez Valley.
The municipality of Juárez, according to the information, entered into an ‘abnormally dry’ condition since April 2023 and, at the end of last July, Conagua placed it in ‘extreme drought’.
Other municipalities have been experiencing shortages for even longer, such as Manuel Benavides and Ojinaga, since April 2020; Ascensión, since June of the same year, and Guadalupe and Coyame del Sotol, since August 31, 2021.
An analysis based on data from the Conagua Monitor also shows that this is the first time in the last 12 years that all municipalities in the state have experienced some level of damage for a year.
According to Conagua data, as of July 31 of this year, 54 percent of Chihuahua’s territory was in “extreme drought,” 27.6 percent was in “severe” drought, 11 percent was in “exceptional” drought, and 7.1 percent was in “moderate” drought.
Along with Sinaloa, the monitor adds, within the rest of the country’s entities, only Chihuahua has 100 percent of the surface area affected.
Asked about the impact, the Rural Development Secretariat of the state government reported that it has surveillance over 43,320 hectares in 544 risk areas and has acquired an agricultural insurance policy for more than 8.5 million pesos to protect seasonal corn, bean and oat crops, especially in the mountainous area.
“Climate change represents a major challenge; extreme temperatures and lack of rainfall affect agricultural productivity (…) This phenomenon not only threatens food production, but also puts water security, biodiversity and the economy of the entire world at risk,” said Rural Development.
The state office of Conagua, separately, added that “the challenge” is “to achieve consensus with producers for irrigation programs in accordance with the availability situation, prioritizing the Human Right to Water.”
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