I always loved to see the lake near my family home get partially drained as a kid.

Suddenly, the edges of water would fall back twenty feet. A newly revealed ring of sand and weeds held weird objects, mostly stuff people carelessly threw away, but sometimes cool artifacts like an old oar.

As cool as it would have been, the seasonal drain never revealed a long-submerged church from an entirely different era that I could roam around in looking for treasure.

In Chiapas, Mexico, that’s kind of what happened recently.

The Temple of Santiago, built by monks in the 1500s, has reappeared after being submerged in the Nezahualcoyotl reservoir formed by a nearby dam in the 1960s.

But while my lake was drained by the local government, this lake was drained by drought.

The area has been suffering from a drought for the past year, causing the reservoir to fall 82 feet (25 meters) in capacity, enough to make the top of the church visible.

Sure, it’s awesome that people get to row out to this church and marvel at the intricately eroded facade and the crumbling walls. It’s accidental archaeology, a time capsule of the past, a huge tourist attraction.

But it’s also a reminder of the drawbacks of development and the march of climate change.

Here’s why:

Development

This church never would have been submerged had it not been for the Nezahualcóyotl Dam, one of 7 dams along the Grijalva River.

The dam diverted a huge amount of water upon completion, flooding forests, farmlands, villages and archaeological sites and causing widespread damage.

Dams inherently disrupt the composition of river water and the migration of fish and other marine life.

When rivers become heavily controlled by dams, surrounding areas can become especially susceptible to drought, as seen most prominently in China, a country that hosts more than half of the world’s hydroelectric dams.

Drought is a natural part of life. But human development can intensify the frequency and severity of droughts.

For example, the drought occurring in California is mostly due to horrible mismanagement of the Colorado River. One consequence in the US has been the draining of the Salton Sea, a once-thriving salt marshland and body of water that fostered countless forms of life and kept dust storms in check. People living nearby now face all sorts of health complications, especially lung disease, from the dust storms.

Climate change

To humans, climate change unfolds both discretely and dramatically. At least for now, the discrete forms of climate change include the extinction of wildlife, the acidification of the oceans, the rise of sea levels, the degradation of forests. These events happen over longer stretches of time and are therefore hard to detect.

The dramatic forms of climate change are the things human face and feel in their day-to-day lives: extreme storms, floods and droughts.

It might seem counterintuitive that climate change causes droughts--isn’t it melting all the ice caps and flooding the world with too much water?

Yes, but it’s also heating up all the other parts of the world, disrupting regular rain cycles by accelerating evaporation.

What does this even mean?

As winters become shorter, snow is melted and evaporated earlier, instead of gradually melting and gradually feeding lakes and rivers. Disrupted weather patterns then shift this water elsewhere (so some places get more rain, others get less).

In drier places, climate change is more acutely affecting the process of “evapotranspiration.”

Again, as these places heat up, more water is evaporated and not returned to that specific land, draining bodies of water, drying up farmland and harming wildlife.

Humans adapt quickly to changing circumstances. It’s easy to dismiss the drought that made the church visible again as just something that happens, especially since it hasn’t had devastating consequences.

But the reservoir never would have been there without the dam and the church never would have been submerged, it just would have been an old church that nobody paid a second thought to.

Southern Mexico is a region that is expected to be hit hard by climate change, so to assume it’s playing a role here is not that much of a stretch.

I’m all for the beauty of architecture. I love the diversity of styles in New York, Paris, London and other cities, the ornate embellishments on some buildings and the austere functionality of others. I love walking along bridges and looking at skylines.

I’d love to take a boat out to see this old church.

But I hope that Mexico and the world use this as another prod toward environmental action. Other churches will probably be flooded in the decades to come, and others will be pushed up from the bottom of lakes.

The real uncertainty is whether humanity will see these events not as touristy aberrations, but as calls to action, calls to reconsider how energy is sourced and used and how climate change can be reined in.

Until then, enjoy these final images of the church.  

TopicsEnvironmentClimate ChangeDroughtMexico

Editorial

Defend the Planet

What’s driving the church-resurrecting drought in Mexico?

By Joe McCarthy