8/11/2019 DROUGHTS AND ITS INFLUENCE ON LA GUAJIRA.docx

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DROUGHTS AND ITS INFLUENCE ON LA GUAJIRA

Nowadays the environmental impact on the earth its more than obvious, day after day we hear on

the news people talking about natural disasters and natural phenomenon which affects both

territories and its population, the more common or repeated ones we see involve problems such as:

global warming, tornados, earthquakes, hurricanes, and tsunamis but an special and really

mentioned one that its giving troubles in lots of places including our country, a problem that

concerns everybody, at least everyone who thinks of water as an essential part of life, of course I'm

talking about droughts, just listening to local news you hear this a very delicate issue but what it's

actually this phenomenon ? ; well according to the National Drought Mitigation Center droughts are

defined as a protracted period of deficient precipitation resulting in extensive damage to crops,

resulting in loss of yield, but this it's just a conceptual definition because what may be considered a

drought in, say, Bali (six days without rain) would certainly not be considered a drought in Libya

(annual rainfall less than 180 mm). In the most general sense, drought originates from a deficiency

of precipitation over an extended period of time--usually a season or more--resulting in a watershortage for some activity, group, or environmental sector. Its impacts result from the interplay

between the natural event (less precipitation than expected) and the demand people place on water

supply. Because drought cannot be viewed solely as a physical phenomenon, it is usually defined

both conceptually and operationally.

Now we understand the concept as subjective as it is, we can emphasize on the impact that

generates on people this hazard of nature, being water the principal supply of crops and cattle which

are the main way of sustention for many people a drought basically affects people's nutrition and

obviously their need for water to drink and cover basic their basic needs, but the problem its

aggravated when the population that it's going through a drought does not have access to running

water, as we all know La Guajira it's one of the places mostly affected not only in the country butworldwide however this problem doesn't stay on a premise like the conceptual definition I gave you

or a simple impact as I summarized before when you analyze this current phenomenon in La

Guajira you have to take many factors into account such as the presence of mining industry there,

particularly El Cerrejon which according to an article taken from londonminingnetwork.org this

company extracts 17 million liters of water from Rio Rancheria each day, so this it's an aggravating

factor since people doesnt have drinking water services, river are the first option and with the new

natural factor, specifically, the drought this irrational use of water by El Cerrejon should be

controlled by a governmental entity, so now the government takes in as an important actor of this

problem, another factor to note it's the nature influence because this phenomenon may be result of

other and bigger one called el Nio that according to experts it's the principal cause of lack of

precipitation. So as I said before this concept has to be operational and also integrated ergo to attack

and try to fight against this phenomenon sometimes as result of other natural and socioeconomics

causes every sector of the country or region affected has to put energy together to work on and

integrated solution and mitigation of this inevitable reactions of nature.