Reacción a "Reactions: Pollution aggravates water scarcity problem"

All forecasts on the current and future impacts of climate change warn that they will be associated with increases in temperatures, decreases in precipitation and a greater incidence and severity of extreme natural effects. In this context, the management of water resources and the adaptation of societies and economies to a context of scarcity of these resources is one of the main environmental challenges of today. The pressure on water resources will be particularly severe in arid and semi-arid regions of the world. In fact, in 2022, Europe experienced the most severe drought in the last 500 years. The problem is particularly worrying in Spain, where, for example, in Catalonia, the Plan Especial de Sequías (PES) has been activated with reductions in water use and extraordinary measures to guarantee the supply of this resource.

In this context, the article by Wang et al. (2024), recently published in Nature Communications, makes a major contribution to the scientific debate as it warns that water scarcity will be aggravated by pollution problems that will lead to further reductions in water availability. Water scarcity situations will be worsened by resource pollution that will further reduce freshwater availability.

In general, water quantity and water quality issues have been studied separately. However, the high concentration of pollutants in many river basins may render these resources unusable, aggravating the problem of water scarcity. Probably one of the most impactful results of this study is the fact that the authors state that by 2050 the number of river basins with extreme water scarcity situations could triple if we consider scarcity and pollution problems together. As the authors state, the regulation and control of pollution problems in water bodies is urgent, not only to protect ecosystems and human health, but also to avoid further exacerbating the problems of scarcity of these resources.