Why are rivers running dry?

Some of the world's most magnificent rivers no longer reach the sea. Because its water is divided among seven US states and Mexico and nearly all of it is taken for farms and cities, the Colorado River has failed to reach the sea for most years since the 1960s. Similarly, massive diversions of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers for cotton irrigation shrank the once-mighty Aral Sea to a mere fraction of its size.

The true culprit is human choice rather than nature. According to the FAO, agriculture accounts for about 70 percent of fresh water taken globally.1source 1 Furthermore, a global mapping found that only 37 percent of rivers longer than 1,000 kilometres still flow freely along their whole length.2source 2 While a warming climate makes the problem worse, these rivers often run dry not from a lack of rainfall, but because of decisions made on paper about how much water to take.