Home to the largest river in the world by volume, the Amazon, Brazil holds about 12% of global freshwater reserves. As a result, many Brazilians have long run with the narrative that their water is abundant. But that is changing.

"This myth needs to be broken because we are seeing a series of problems related to water use and a change in availability," said Juliano Schirmbeck, technical coordinator of a MapBiomas report on water.

For the past four years, the Brazilian monitoring platform has been going through an archive of satellite images, dating all the way back to 1985, to track the area of aquatic surfaces in Brazil month by month.

On average, these areas have been shrinking over the past decades, with recent years particularly badly affected. Just from 2023 to last year, the country lost about 400,000 hectares of water surface. That's more than five times the size of Singapore.

Last year, Brazil was plagued by water shortages from North to South. Authorities declared a state of water scarcity in five major river basins. And wildfires ravaged the Amazon rainforest and Pantanal wetlands after months of drought.

The trend lays bare an uncomforable truth. Even countries with vast freshwater resources, like Brazil, are at risk of water crises due to deforestation, climate change and poor management.

Brazil has experienced........

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