[ VO ] Planet Earth is the planet of water.
Its inhabitants, humans in particular, can’t live without it.
Our daily lives, all human civilization, cannot be imagined without it.
People often settled by the water, and nowadays,
the majority of the Earth’s population lives by rivers, seas, and oceans.
For millennia, the planet’s enormous water resources
were more than enough to support us.
We didn’t think there was a need to know how to manage these resources wisely.
This began to change in the mid-20th century.
As populations grow, so does the demand for water.
60 years ago, one in four people around the world
didn’t have enough water to live comfortably.
Now it’s one in three.
The UN estimates that by the mid-21st century,
every second human will face water shortages.
It’s getting worse.
[ VO ] Noorkim is 40 years old.
He lives in Jakarta, Indonesia’s biggest city.
He was born and raised here.
It’s impossible to picture his life without water.
But living by the water has become increasingly dangerous.
[ Noorkim, Jakarta resident ] I used to come to this mosque back in the 1980s
The sea level wasn't this high then
There were houses down there, people lived there
[ VO ] The coastal part of Jakarta went under the water at the beginning of the century.
Now, the entire capital is at risk of inundation,
but one neighborhood in particular. Muara Baru,
a district in the northern part, historically inhabited by fishermen.
[ Noorkim ] All fishermen know that it's the law
of the sea: water levels rise every five years
This has been happening since time immemorial
[ VO ] ‘Time immemorial’ by human standards is a short time on the planetary scale.
The climate change recorded back in the 1800s became
even more evident in the latter half of the 20th century.
And it’s been reshaping our planet ever since.
Humid regions are even more humid, dry regions are dryer.
Access to safe drinking water is increasingly problematic all over the world.
Scientists claim that climate change, an exploding population,
and large-scale exploitation of natural resources
are signs of a new chapter in the Earth’s history - the Anthropocene.
Sinking Jakarta is a symbol of the age when mankind’s activities
are having a sizable environmental impact.
[ Noorkim ] We built our house on special stilts
There was plenty of room under it
The kids played there
There was enough room for a swing
But over time, year after year,
the water kept getting closer
and we had to raise the house to keep it above water
We have to do this every five years
[ VO ] Noorkim has had to elevate his house four times already.
The last time was a couple of years ago.
He buys used bamboo poles, moves into one room and replaces the stilts under another,
making them longer.
When he’s done with one room, he moves on to the next one.
This way, in a couple of weeks, he raises the whole house by half a metre.
[ Noorkim ] Floods are common around here
Every time there's a heavy tide or the water reaches a certain level,
we get flooded
Then a few hours later, the water recedes and we have to clean our houses
Children often fall ill or get injured because of the floods,
but only one child has died so far
[ Rainah, Jakarta resident ] My husband was at work and all 3 kids were at school
All of a sudden, a massive flood hit us
People were shouting: 'Get out of your houses! It's a flood!'
The waves were really big and I couldn't go anywhere
I stayed home to wait for my husband, who was supposed to be home by noon
[ VO ] Rainah, 44, is a neighbour of fisherman Noorkim's.
She runs some sort of café. Locals buy food from her.
When that flood hit, she was seven months pregnant.
[ Rainah ] The water was about this high, but I climbed to the roof
When my husband arrived, he took me in his arms
I was soaking wet
He carried me to the hospital where it was safe
I was afraid I'd go into labor
After examining me, the doctor forbade me from going home
I had surgery that very day
[ VO ] Rainah had twin boys. They’ve grown and go to school now.
Instead of a dilapidated wooden shack, Rainah’s husband has built a stone house
where his family still resides.
Rainah doesn’t want to move, because she grew up here.
If they sell their house, it’s unlikely they could afford to buy anything better.
[ Rainah ] It's dangerous, everyone says so, but
I've lived here since childhood, I'm used to it
Just recently, we were told to leave immediately because of a possible tsunami
Fortunately, we were spared
[ VO ] There’s a well in Rainah’s room, basically just a hole in the floor.
The water in it is salty. Rainah has to buy both processed water and potable water.
A term has emerged in the Anthropocene age – 'water stress.'
Water is in short supply for everyone,
both fishermen living on the water and their neighbors,
whose houses are built on the ground.
[ VO ] This water sales point in Muara Baru is run by Sakur, who is 22.
He resells spring water that he brings from the countryside.
5,000 rupiahs for a 19-litre jug.
1 US dollar will buy you more than 50 litres of water.
[ Sakur, the water seller ] Groundwater is the cheapest,
and public tap water is the most expensive
[ VO ] Jakarta, a city of 10 million people,
has no centralised water supply system.
Some people, like Noorkin and Rainah, buy water brought from elsewhere.
Owners of factories and large buildings dig wells
to access fresh water from under the ground.
That’s how it was done at the new high-rises built
in the north end of Jakarta, next to a shantytown.
[ Dodo Gunawan, Director, climate change information center, meteorology, climatology, and geophysics agency ] At the moment, we're facing two mutually unsolvable problems
On the one hand,
there's an urgent need for residential buildings,
but, on the other, we see that this area is completely unsuitable for development
It's very risky to use because of several well-known factors
like sea-level rise or subsidence
So, actually, the people living there are at high risk
[ VO ] A shortage of potable water is a typical problem for many cities all around the world:
from San Paolo and Cape Town to New Delhi, Mexico City and Los Angeles.
The only thing that makes Jakarta stand out
is a plethora of other environmental issues:
water problems have intertwined with climate change and garbage pollution.
Jakarta is like a scale model of our planet.
A wealthy minority thinks everything’s fine,
but an increasing number of people are experiencing serious problems.
[ Erni Pelita Fitratunnisa, head, preservation and environmental management, Jakarta environmental management agency ] Jakarta can't currently procure enough water
to meet the city's needs
This is because 13 rivers that could supply
Jakarta with potable water is in poor condition
They can only be cleaned up by joining forces with the people living right next to them
[ VO ] Jakarta has to get its water delivered from the countryside.
In one day, driver Ridwan makes no more than three round trips.
Because it’s a few hours’ drive each way.
Ridwan doesn’t believe he’ll be out of work anytime soon,
that rivers will be cleaned up,
and residents of the suburbs will stop littering.
[ Ridwan, water deliveryman ] They don't care, they don't give a damn
[ VO ] Ridwan also lives in the suburbs of Jakarta.
Like everyone else, he gets processed water from the well
and drinks bottled water, just like the poor residents of the Muara Baru neighborhood.
[ Ridwan ] The biggest problem is the government
isn't working for the good of everyone
They only take into consideration the interests
of the middle and upper-middle classes
They don't care that the sinking ground
affects the lives of poor people most of all
[ VO ] Engineer Peter Leititre has studied Jakarta’s water issues in detail.
He’s convinced: this huge city is sinking
because of the continuous and badly-managed use of the groundwater.
Jakarta is at risk not because sea level is rising,
but because the land on which the city is perched keeps subsiding.
[ Peter Letitre, manager of national and international projects, Deltares research institute ] Since the 1970s,
we see that there is an additional problem,
which is aggravating, accelerating the problems of flooding.
It has to do with the subsidence of the ground.
It means that the north of Jakarta has been gradually going underwater.
The demand for water has greatly increased.
Because of the population growth and industrial development
water demand has very much increased,
the population also doubled almost every 20 years in Jakarta, so,
this is actually the reason why the water demands have increased.
[ VO ] The sea-level rise that everyone’s heard about
is almost imperceptible in Jakarta.
The water level rises by a mere 8 mm per year,
while the ground is sinking at a rate of up to 20 cm per year.
[ Letitre ] This wall has recently been raised by 20-30 cm
because even recently, in December 2017,
water was flowing here over the wall.
Because the wall that was raised in 2007 was 2 meters, is already too low.
[ VO ] Jakarta holds quite a sorry record among all the sinking cities.
Up to 40% of the metropolis is currently below sea level.
[ Letitre ] Providing pipe water supply is not efficient.
You should also enforce the law and look for all the illegal wells that are in Jakarta,
because there are 3-4 thousand registered wells,
but there are even more illegal wells.
Cannot only be through punishment,
and it also should be by awareness raising of the industries.
Because it’s impossible to check all the buildings.
You can only solve the issue when people also think
about the future of the city itself.
[ VO ] In 2019, the authorities decided to move the capital from Jakarta.
Many cities have disappeared underwater in human history,
but Jakarta is the first metropolis
that could be taken to a watery grave not by elements,
but by its citizens’ own hands.
It could become the first, but not the last.
[ Michael Wagreich, Member, working group on the Anthropocene, international commission on stratigraphy ] Groundwater, water cycle
is really a problem.
And we are I think half the way of crossing this boundary, this planetary boundary.
So we have to really think of controlling ground water resource,
and having a better global usage of grond water and fresh water.
[ VO ] Anthropocene-caused problems are not limited to water stress.
The atmosphere is heating up because of excessive emissions.
The Earth is littered with garbage that enters the oceans uncontrollably.
This new man-made reality is changing our planet.
[ Wagreich ] There is a new Earth system growing.
So the state of the Earth 2-3 thousand years ago, has changed a lot.
We see there’s global warming.
Of course, it’s anthropogenic.
But there’re other things that are put, like nitrogen,
nitrates that go in our groundwater, that go into the sea.
And there’s a lot of oxygen
which is used up so the oceans become deficient in oxygen,
and things like that and we’re not sure how this will behave on that.
[ VO ] The planet’s reaction to the unreasonable use of water
in the Anthropocene age is quite distinct –
water bodies have been dying one by one.
What was once the Aral Sea on the border between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan
is better known nowadays as the Aralkum Desert.
The surface area of Lake Chad in Central Africa has shrunk by 95% in 50 years.
[ VO ] Lake Poopo in Bolivia, located in the Andes
at an altitude of 3.5 kilometres,
can only be found on old maps these days.
Starting from 2016, all the travel guides inform that Lake Poopo has dried up.
[ Freddy Alvarez, Leader, Uru people’s community ] The lake also dried up when I was young…
in 1996 and 1999
Then the water reappeared and things got back to normal…
because the lake had fish
Then the lake started drying up again, and it hasn't had any fish since
Only flamingoes come here now, every year
[ VO ] When the lake was still alive,
the fishing tribe called Uru lived on its shores.
Neighbours called them 'lake people.'
[ Freddy ] Our ancestors used to live on rafts, they didn't use boats as we do nowadays
They didn't eat rice and quinoa, they weren't familiar with these crops
All they ever knew came from the lake
They ate whatever the lake gave them
They ate seaweed, fish, flamingos, and ducks
[ VO ] Today, those formerly called lake people, about a thousand of them,
reside in villages near what was Poopo.
Like many people in the far-away city of Jakarta,
the lake people used to be fishermen.
[ Corsino Rios Valero, farmer ] We're all born fishermen here, my father taught me
We used to go fishing on the lake together
I was his fishing assistant
We've been doing this since we were kids
We're accustomed to fishing
But now the lake is drying up, and sad times have come to us
Where can we go?
Everything we did was centred on fish
[ VO ] Poopo was once the second-largest lake in South America, after Lake Titicaca.
It had a surface area of more than two-and-a-half-thousand square kilometers.
It was more than 5 meters deep.
What’s left of the giant lake today looks more like a swamp.
And there are many culprits responsible for the lake’s death.
Tin, zinc and tungsten have been mined in the vicinity of the lake for centuries.
For years, water carried these particles from the mines into the lake.
Because of the incompetent treatment of crops,
some of the soil from the fields ended up on the lake floor.
Thus, Poopo has lost its depth.
[ Freddy ] The lake used to look like a large deep dish,
but now it's like a flat plate
that collects all the garbage from the rivers that empty into the lake
[ VO ] But apart from local factors, there are some global forces at work here –
global warming makes the lake water evaporate faster,
and causes increasingly frequent droughts.
But the Anthropocene means the human impact causes a change
in the global climate as well.
[ Viktor Danilov-Danilyan, Director, water problems institute, Russian academy of sciences ] It goes without saying
that global climate change will exacerbate water problems in certain regions,
but the main problems leading to such a deep, unsatisfied thirst –
these are, of course, man-made problems
In terms of its impact on the hydrological cycle
and on the affordability of fresh water sources,
man, of course, has had a much greater impact
than the climate changes we've observed so far
[ VO ] In Jakarta, it’s already getting dark after 6pm.
Ridwan has reached the Muara Baru neighborhood.
He’s brought what people here call ‘processed water.’
It will be used to wash clothes and dishes, to clean the house.
To use it for cooking, one has to boil it first.
They’ve worked out a way to lift 19-liter jugs to all floors of the communal high-rise.
A new set of skills becoming of the Anthropocene age.
Fisherman Sampra has rolled one of the jugs into his apartment.
He used to live right on the shore, but in 2015,
his house was washed away by the flood.
Sampra and his mother managed to escape.
[ Sampra, fisherman ] I like it better here, there are practically no rats or mosquitoes
At the old place, we had floods nearly every year,
really heavy ones
[ VO ] He’s safe from the flooding on fifth floor,
but he still has to pay 5,000 rupiahs for a jug of water, just like he used to.
Uninterrupted water delivery is the most convenient thing about the new home.
[ Sampra ] At the old house, we had to buy purified water
We had to go get it with bottles
If the truck didn't arrive, we could go a whole day without washing
[ VO ] Sampra knows nothing about subsidence in his neighborhood.
After all, the buildings have no cracks.
The ground is sinking over a wide area,
and it can be seen only by using special equipment or during a flood.
[ Erni ] Jakarta's clean water shortage is acute,
but the city's making every effort to remedy this problem
We need to quickly expand the water supply system
It's still not as extensive as we'd like,
and many farms are forced to use groundwater
As the system grows, we hope to reduce groundwater extraction,
and one day eliminate it completely
[ VO ] 'One day' is the only timeline announced by Jakarta officials.
[ VO ] Bolivian authorities acknowledge that a problem exists with Lake Poopo,
but so far they too have been reluctant to react.
They hope the lake will come to life once again.
To help mitigate the impact of the environmental disaster,
the European Union contributed 14 million euro to Bolivia.
Fish were stocked in Poopo but the shallow water made the temperature too high,
so the fish didn’t survive.
Fixing nature is much harder than breaking it.
[ Victor Hugo Vasquez, Governor, Department of Oruro ] The lake isn't changing
just due to pollution, another reason is global climate change
Bolivia pollutes very little, but some countries
pollute the environment 365 days per year,
nonstop, without thinking twice
I'd like to urge these industrial countries to
accept their responsibility to the environment
[ VO ] In the age of Anthropocene,
debates around the environmental behavior of
various countries will become more and more heated.
This is demonstrated by the way the global decisions on emissions monitoring are made.
That’s a new factor in global policies,
and will become all the more prominent with time.
[ Danilov-Danilyan ] As for developed countries, well-off countries,
this is simply a brazen unwillingness to do anything
at the expense of their short-term interests
That was typical of George W. Bush, and it's typical of Donald Trump now
So, America's short-term interests, which concern only the next 4-5 years,
take precedence over the long-term interests of the same country
They're afraid of losing business to Europe,
which is better prepared to design and produce,
for example, energy-saving equipment,
and energy-saving cars, and so on, and so on
[ VO ] As water stress grows by degrees,
one out of three people on the planet don’t have access to potable water,
and nearly half the world’s population lives in areas where the sea level is rising -
water remains a pressing issue.
[ Konstantin Ranks, geologist, journalist ] You know, when 7.5 billion, and soon 8 billion people,
try to agree on something while living completely differently,
but everyone wants an affluent lifestyle
without considering the consequences of their actions,
then there's bound to be serious conflicts
First there will be a fight for water,
for energy,
for food
This is going to be a big problem
Those countries that have power, including military power,
can defend their rights and, of course, their citizens' interests
[ VO ] There are many problems with water on Earth, and there are more to come.
We impact the planet as never before.
Quite often, we’re responsible for droughts and floods,
for lack of water and excess of water.
The examples of the Uru people and of the Jakarta remind us
that humans won’t be able to change their lifestyle that easily,
and surely won’t be able to find a new home.
After all, Earth, the planet of water, is the only home we have.