Reservoirs Slip as Ministers Are Summoned to Geneva

GENEVA — With four days to go before the Global Concordat Council convenes its emergency water session on Tuesday, the arithmetic of scarcity is already on the table. The Oceanic & Atmospheric Assembly reported this week that major reservoirs across three continents are drawing down faster than replenishment, a slippage that has moved delegates from capitals to the lakeside ahead of the opening gavel. The session, to be chaired by Secretary-General Ingrid Halvorsen, will weigh allocation formulas that no minister wants to be seen conceding. "We are not short of water on the planet," said one Concordat hydrologist attending the pre-session briefings. "We are short of it where the twelve billion of us actually live." In Phoenix, municipal managers have begun rationing outdoor supply for the third summer running; in the Sahel, a sovereignty dispute over shared meters shadows the talks. The Assembly stressed the storage figures are provisional. The politics are not.