Water securityWhat Will Communities Do When the Water Runs Dry?

Published 31 July 2019

Earlier this summer, the sixth-largest city in India, Chennai, ran out of water. Water crises are now global. Cape Town, South Africa, narrowly escaped Day Zero last year, but it’s still at risk, as are Sao Paulo and Mexico City. Iraq, Morocco and Spain also face water shortages.What we are seeing in Chennai right now is a devastating illustration of human-driven climate disruption,” says an expert. “It is hard for me to picture a near future where access to clean, fresh water continues in as plentiful a way as it is in most of our country at this moment.”

Earlier this summer, the sixth-largest city in India, Chennai, ran out of water. The cause wasn’t just a weak monsoon. Overextraction of groundwater, unmaintained reservoirs, runaway urban growth and leaking pipelines all played a role.

Chennai’s four reservoirs are puddles of cracked mud. Some parts of the city have not had piped water for five months. An Indian government think tank predicts Day Zero for 21 Indian cities next year.

Water crises are now global. Cape Town, South Africa, narrowly escaped Day Zero last year, but it’s still at risk, as are Sao Paulo and Mexico City. Iraq, Morocco and Spain also face water shortages.

Two years ago, eight Arizona State University students spent a month living in a Mojave Desert ghost town in the dead of summer, living on 4 gallons of water per person per day and no air conditioning. A hybrid art-science experiment, it started off as a water exercise and turned into a lesson on collaboration no one expected.

The idea was co-directed by two ASU faculty members: Marco Janssen, director of the Center for Behavior, Institutions and the Environment and a professor in the School of Sustainability, and Adriene Jenik, a professor of intermedia in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. They created a near-future fictional scenario and dubbed the experiment Drylab2023.

Recent news has transformed Drylab2023 into more of a training scenario than an experiment. ASU Now’s Scott Seckel talked to Jenik about the crises, the eerily prescient experiment and the nexus between the two. Seckel has edited the answers for length and clarity.