#groundwater-depletion

Across semi-arid regions, falling water tables and erratic rains leave villages dependent on distant sources or seasonal supplies, driving distress migration and crop failure — from Rajasthan to Brazil's Semiarido and rural Kenya.

Pump water hundreds of kilometres or mine non-renewable aquifers to supply cities. A high-risk approach: systemic risk concentrates in a single artery, and fossil-aquifer mining is non-renewable by definition — making both patterns cautionary as much as options.

The Great Man-Made River, begun in 1984, is a roughly $25bn network pumping fossil water from the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer across hundreds of kilometres of desert to coastal cities. Before 2011 about 70% of Libyans depe…