British Columbia is being hit by drought again and again, and each episode has been worse than the last. In 2023, severe dry conditions covered roughly 85 percent of the province. Dry spells now begin in spring and can stretch into winter, and climate projections suggest extremes of this scale could arrive every three years or more often.
The consequences are already visible. Fish have died in large numbers, farms have lost production, and livestock have perished. Several communities have been under emergency declarations lasting months, and competition between water users is intensifying as supplies shrink.
Analysts point to a combination of forces. Climate change is driving the dry conditions, but human decisions about land and water are making them more damaging. Water licenses have been allocated beyond what rivers and aquifers can sustain, wetlands that once held water have been drained, and clear-cut logging has stripped away the forest cover that helps watersheds retain moisture.
The underlying problem, according to the reporting, is that the province's water system still assumes plenty. It responds to crises after they arrive rather than preparing for them. Authorities also lack a systematic way to measure how much water is actually being used, which makes planning difficult.
The Water Sustainability Act, passed to give the province proactive tools for managing water, has not been fully put into practice, and its planning mechanisms have stalled. Proposed reforms include implementing the act in full and building regional sustainability plans, raising industrial water rates, expanding metering so use can be tracked, and funding watershed plans backed by regional watershed boards.
Whether the government will make that shift from reacting to crises to acting in advance remains an open question. The droughts, however, are not expected to wait for the policy to catch up.
We rewrote this story on 4 November 2026 after an editorial review.
Credit. Based on reporting by Deana Machin, Oliver Brandes and Rosie Simms for The Conversation Science. Is this your work? Write to us.
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