SignalsAZ.com Prescott News Podcast - Are We Really in a Drought, or Just Living in Arid Arizona?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Text to Speech Audio Articles made possible on the Cast11.com podcast network by Fane Signature Group. How would you frame our environment in Arizona? We live in an arid environment where water is scarce relative to many other places, and people often claim we are in an extended, long-term drought. But do we really know what these words mean? Are we in a long-term drought, or are we living in a normally arid climate, punctuated by occasional short bursts of wet weather? Merriam Webster defines these terms as follows. Arid, excessively dry. Aridity, the quality or state of being arid. Scarce, deficient in quantity or number compared with demand, not plentiful or abundant. Scarcity, the quality or state of being scarce.

Starting point is 00:00:47 Drought, a period of dryness, especially when prolonged. Let's think about how we use these words and how we tend to respond to them. When we hear the word arid, our minds automatically associated with images of an arid landscape, something we have seen before and can easily visualize. We know it is a dry place. That vision might include sand dunes, desert plants, rock landscapes, or sparse grasslands. We might think of southern Utah, Death Valley, the Navajo Nation, or the central basins of Arizona. All are arid, each in its own unique way. When we think about scarcity, we associate it with not having enough of something. Depending on what that something is, scarcity can invoke fear, anxiety, stress, and competition. Often, these emotions drive the initial conversation, as fear and anxiety tend to

Starting point is 00:01:36 govern early thinking. Occasionally, scarcity also fosters competition that produces remarkable outcomes. When that competition is grounded in the betterment of humankind, the results can be phenomenal and allow us to engineer our way through scarcity. Examples include the dams and reservoirs along the Colorado, Verde, and Salt Rivers. The word drought, however, leaves us with the impression that we are facing a short-term problem, one that will resolve itself if we can simply endure current conditions. Our thinking becomes grounded in short-term solutions meant to bridge the gap until normal weather returns. For those of us who live in Arizona and the broader southwest, this kind of thinking can lead to unintended consequences. Yet it appears to be how many people still frame the environment we live in.

Starting point is 00:02:20 If we look at the environmental history of this region over the past 1,500 years or so, it suggests that we may not be in a drought at all. Instead, aridity may be normal, while short wet periods are the anomalies. If that is the case, then perhaps we have been approaching our water challenges in a less effective way than we could. Maybe we should be thinking more seriously about how to augment nature, in addition to the conservation and engineered storage efforts already underway. When we change the way we think about our drought to aridity, we shift our perspective from short term to long term.

Starting point is 00:02:52 Scarcity exists in both contexts, but the solutions differ depending on whether we are addressing a temporary condition or a permanent one. That is not to say interim solutions are unnecessary. Rather, when guided by a long-term vision, each short-term action can feed into a durable, long-term outcome. We may not know exactly what the future will look like 100 years from now, but we can see a new direction for our efforts. Changing the word from drought to aridity changes the thinking, the vision, and the path forward. We are no longer focused on simply weathering the storm. We are focused on improving the long-term conditions so future generations can live good lives in the places they choose to call home. Catch up with more local news stories on signalsaz.com.

Starting point is 00:03:36 Subscribe and be the F1 RSD2 know.

SignalsAZ.com Prescott News Podcast - Are We Really in a Drought, or Just Living in Arid Arizona?

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.