‘We must unite against those who want to monopolise water’

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The people were told that it was because the rain had failed to come. That the spring from which the river rose had almost dried up and that this was why the harvests had failed. But then it came to their attention that the maize cobs on a large estate were flourishing. That water could indeed be found there. Citizens protested against this unfair control over water.

A month earlier, riot police had forcibly dragged the inhabitants of a centuries-old village – one that was to be wiped off the map by a reservoir – from their rooftops. They, too, protested against this control over water.

These stories took place in Riaño, in the Cantabrian Mountains, and in Villanueva de la Fuente in Castile-La Mancha, in 1987 – the year Virginia Mendoza was born there – and where, as a child, she became fascinated by both too little and too much water. It led to her non-fiction epic Thirst: A History of Humankind in Search of Water.

Without water, there would be no humans. But also: without drought, there would be no humans. Our ancestors turned out to be best adapted to the droughts of East Africa. They evolved into Homo sapiens.

The rest of history, too, is a story of thirst. Some 2.8 million years after our species began walking upright, drought in East Africa once again became a defining factor. This led to the ‘Out of Africa’ migration. Homo sapiens spread across the planet, began practising agriculture, founded settlements such as Jericho, and eventually built great civilisations between rivers, from the Tigris and Euphrates to the Indus and the Yangtze.

Rethinking ourselves as a species

Mendoza shows that our ability to think as a group, to make collective decisions, has made us more resilient to climate change in the past. Who we are today is the result of how humanity has adapted to this. Why shouldn’t we be able to do that again now? Why don’t we make collective decisions any more today?

‘Because humanity has fallen victim to a crisis which, without fully realising it, it helped to create itself,’ replies Mendoza. ‘Collective decision-making is our survival mechanism. We need it today more than ever, but at the same time it has become more difficult.’

‘The human community used to be much smaller, which made it easier to reach joint decisions. Now, billions of people, spread across the entire planet, need to become aware of the same problem. We must learn to think as a species once again.’

In small communities, people are still capable of thinking collectively, says Mendoza. ‘It’s interesting to see how people cope with disasters. Last year, Spain experienced a nationwide power cut. There was no electricity and no light. People took to the streets, met their neighbours and shared what they had with others.’

‘Drought is not purely a natural phenomenon. Those in power help determine its causes and consequences. And victims can also find solutions.’

‘Whilst writing this book, I discovered that communities which had survived historical droughts were precisely those communities which understood that cooperation was essential.’ That is why Mendoza does not want to lose her faith in Homo sapiens. ‘If I have to choose between a naïve view of humanity – based on trust – and a distrustful one, I choose trust. Until the contrary is scientifically proven.’

‘After conducting interviews with the inhabitants of my village, I broadened my perspective. I turned my attention to other cultures and other eras. I discovered that rain dances serve a similar purpose to the processions in honour of the saints in which my grandmother took part. It is not about the belief that a saint can make it rain, but about sharing fear, about being part of something greater than oneself, about seeking a connection with that, but also with one another.’

According to Mendoza, religion therefore means connection. And the rituals are the collective consciousness that we need. ‘When you realise that we have been sharing in suffering for millennia, it becomes easier to rediscover a collective consciousness,’ she says. ‘And hope.’

Who benefits from this?

By controlling nature, you project power. During General Franco’s fascist dictatorship in Spain, the construction of dams became a symbol of progress and state power. Socialism, too, promised prosperity through them.

‘Many Spanish dams were neither necessary nor proportionate,’ says Mendoza. ‘A large proportion of the water from the reservoirs that swallowed up villages in Aragón went to industry in Barcelona, to projects presented as being in the public interest. The real questions, therefore, are: where does that energy go? Who benefits from it? What do you sacrifice for it? And for what purpose?’

‘On television, people saw propaganda. Ribbons were cut at celebrations marking major infrastructure projects. But nobody spoke of the people who were forcibly driven from their homes. Near where I live, there was a village where, one night, the water began to rise whilst the people were asleep. Someone told me how, at three o’clock in the morning, he had to carry a sick woman’s bed out onto a balcony.’

‘We owe a debt to the people who were forced to leave their homes, to those who saw their family graves disappear beneath the water. Sometimes the remains were moved to a new cemetery, but often not even that happened. I cannot imagine how painful that must have been.’

Scarcity

We must also keep reiterating that we are heading into a period of water scarcity. ‘Humanity is what it is thanks to scarcity and challenges. Scarcity and inventiveness go hand in hand,’ explains Mendoza. ‘Throughout history, humankind has learnt to appreciate what it does not have, or what is lacking. Because of today’s abundance, we have lost the connection with the scarcity that shaped us.’

‘We have reached the point where we can no longer completely avoid droughts. Yet we continue to use water as if we have forgotten what is going on. Not only us, but also those in power – the people who can take action in good time – tend to forget. We forget history and find it difficult to think about the future. That is why we must keep repeating these lessons.’