The Water Stories We Need to Tell
- Sumbul Mashhadi
- Jul 7
- 3 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
Co-authored by Jyotsnarani Jena and Sumbul Mashhadi
Somewhere in Serbia this June, a river became a road. The Drina dropped so low that people crossed it on foot, walking across a river that has carried boats, borders, and stories for centuries. That image has stayed with us for two weeks now. While every headline about this heatwave screams temperature, we think the rivers are telling the truer story.
You have seen the numbers by now. Europe's hottest days on record, more than 1,300 people dead, most of them elderly, in homes never built for this. A heat dome smothering North America. Scientists say this would have been virtually impossible without climate change. We won't repeat the whole grim scoreboard here.
What we want to say is simpler.
Nobody actually experiences "climate change." Nobody feels a global average temperature. What people feel is what shows up at the door, at the tap, in the field: water. Too much of it. Too little. Too dirty. Or at the wrong place, at the wrong time.
That's how this heatwave was actually lived.
The Impact of Water Scarcity
Too Little Water
Thirty-one villages in Rajasthan, India were left queuing at a single hand pump after the canals shut down. Metro Vancouver, Canada, known for its rain, banned lawn watering outright. Lawns turned gold across the city. Barges on the Rhine (Europe) were sailing half empty because the river couldn't carry them full anymore.
Too Much Water
On Canada Day, the sky over Ottawa unleashed a record 118 mm of rain in a day. Basements flooded, and power went out for thousands. In the Netherlands, a riverbank burst mid-heatwave and flooded a wedding with 150 guests right in the middle of the ceremony.
Too Dirty Water
In Kuttanad, Kerala (India), a land laced with canals, rivers, and backwaters, Vinodini Raju rushes to fill every container when the supply comes. The water surrounding her home isn't water her family can drink. Across India this summer, from Devprayag to Indore to Sopore, people marched with torches and empty pots, protesting for the simplest of human needs that barely made a headline.
And then there's the fact we can't stop thinking about. In France, at least 74 people drowned during the heatwave. People went to the water to survive the heat, and the water took them. If you want one sentence that captures how unprepared we are, it's that one.
So What Do We Do with All This?
There is a certain irony that all of this unfolded during London Climate Action Week, while thousands of delegates discussed climate resilience in a city breaking a fifty-year heat record.
If climate change arrives through water, then protection has to arrive through water too. That means warning systems that actually reach people before the heat does. The 1,300 deaths on the world's richest continent say they didn't. It means fixing the unglamorous things now, including leaking pipes, unshaded streets, and homes that turn into ovens. It means remembering that nature is infrastructure and investing in nature-based solutions. A restored wetland holds water through a drought and absorbs it in a flood. No committee is required to set it up.
And it means money. Water carries most of climate's damage but receives a sliver of climate finance. That math simply cannot hold another summer like this one.
But there is one more thing action needs. It is the thing we work on: attention. Things get funded when they get felt. A rainfall deficit is a number until it's a farmer's face. A drowned swimmer, a flooded wedding, a queue at a hand pump—these are not anecdotes decorating the data. They are the data, in the only language most of us truly respond to.
So here is our ask, plainly. If this summer touched your water—your tap, your lawn, your river, your well, your basement, your fishing spot, or your canceled plans—tell that story. Send it to us, in whatever language it lives in.
The heat will break. It always does. Our job is to make sure someone's listening.
Please submit your story here.
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