Earth Report asked Dutch filmaker, Joost de Haas, to visit the wettest and driest places on earth to see how people cope with water - or the lack of it.

This is his film.

Meterologist: "In some places on Earth it never rains...and in others it rains a great deal.

"But those places can also be plagued by drought.

"A country like Holland receives about 75 centimetres of rain per year. The people there think
that they live in a wet country. But it's nothing compared to
the rainfall in Cherapunjee.

"The monsoon comes in from the Bay of Bengal over Bangladesh. But in Bangladesh there are no mountains and that's why so much rain falls here.

"In 1974 the total rainfall of the year was 24.55 metres. Most of it falls during the monsoon. In July for instance the rainfall was 8.2 metres. And in June 3 metres. And in August 3.597 metres.

"Look at this. One day's rainfall. It sometimes rains here for two months without stopping. You don't see the sun for more than twenty days. It just goes on raining. That's why Cherapunjee is
the wettest spot on Earth.

Comm: "Cherapunjee, a former British settlement in the North East of India can be found in every atlas. Not because it's a big place. Only a few thousand people live there. But since time
immemorial it's been celebrated
as the wettest place on earth. Its annual rainfall is eleven and a half metres, 15 times that of Western Europe.

"Cherapunjee's special status was discovered by the British who settled there in 1820. They recognised in this wet, green and hilly region their homeland and called it the 'Scotland of the
East'. But even for the British,
two months of non-stop rain was too much of a good thing. In 1850 only 30 years later, they left Cherapunjee.

"The present inhabitants of Cherapunjee, the Khasi tribe, have become used to all that rain. If everythings under cover life can go on as usual. As long as you're armed with an umbrella and
don't get in the way, it's no
trouble at all.

"Eleven and a half metres of rain, however, is bound to have consequences. At the height of the rainy season life grinds to a halt."

Woman 1: "If it rains very hard it's impossible to plant anything in the soil. It gets washed away immediately. It's even difficult to go outside to fetch anything. During the rainy season my husband can't find any work."

Man 1 Q: "So you don't grow anything?"

Woman: "No. It would just go to rot or be washed away."

Man1 Q: "And afterwards, where do you get new soil?"

Woman1: We find some again. We use manure, or food leftovers. We mix it together and plant things in it. We manage."

Comm: "Despite all the problems, the start of the rainy season in Cherapunjee is cause for a big celebration. For two whole days the people jump and jiggle their way through the mud in a noisy
dance intended to drive out
evil.

"For a place which is plagued by the wettest rainy season on earth it seems a curious ritual. And yet it isn't - for strange as it may sound, rain is not Cherapunjee's most significant problem.

"For although it is the wettest spot on earth it doesn't rain all the time. Far from it, more often than not it doesn't rain at all."

Man 2: "The rain that falls here, flows on immediately towards Bangladesh.

"We don't have a reservoir to store the water in."

Comm: "All Eleven and a half metres of Cherapunjee's rain falls in a period of four months. The rest of the year it's dry, dry as a bone. In the dry season the green hills of what's called the Scotland of the East are parched and brown.

"It took some time before the Indian government was prepared to include the wettest spot on earth in its drought programme - and provide the inhabitants with drinking water. There was no money to build a reservoir but for 20
years Cherapunjee has been kept alive by a pipeline.

"In the dry season the water is distributed with care.

"But how is it possible that nothing of the Eleven and a half metres of rain is left for the rest of the year. And has that always been the case?"

Man: "What a strange paradox. This is the wettest spot on Earth and yet for most of the year it looks just like a desert. Look at this forest. In the old days you found forests like this all over
Cherapunjee. Most of them have
gone now. During the monsoon the forests soak up the rain water and release it again little by little in the dry season. But when the forests disappeared the rain flushes away everything and the result is the landscape you see on my left. The desert."

Comm: "In the Garo Hills about 200 kilometres away from Cherapunjee there is still lots of forest. Almost everywhere in the Garo Hills there is water to drink because the forest retains the plentiful rainfall. But for how long will it continue to do so?"

Man 3: "A few years ago we burnt down that bit of forest over there and grew crops on it for two years. We'll stay off it for a while to allow it to recover. Now we're using this bit at the front and we hope that there will be enough ash to give us a rich harvest."

Comm: "In the Garo Hills the people engage in a traditional form of agriculture known locally as 'Jhum' but better known in the rest of the world as 'slash and burn' cultivation. In slash and burn cultivation a new section of forest is burnt down every year to make room for crops.

"The ash that is left after the fire is an excellent fertiliser.

"After one or two years this fertilizer is exhausted and the farmers shift to the next bit of forest. The abandoned field is left alone to allow the forest to return. The forest needs at
least 12 years to recover fully.
But in most cases it's not given that amount of time. People practising slash and burn agriculture. Slash and burn agriculture is seen as destructive. But actually it isn't. It has its origins in the stage between
hunter-gatherers and real agriculture. A system that is that old, should be good. But the problem now is overpopulation and overexploitation."

Comm: "If the forest doesn't get the time to recover fully a downward spiral is set in motion. A forest that has not fully recovered produces less ash next time around. To guarantee the same harvest the farmers have to burn down even larger areas of forest or return earlier to the same plots."

Man 4: "If you let the forest recover for 12 years, the trees get bigger. And more leaves mean more ash to use as fertiliser. But nowadays we only let it recover for six years. So it produces less
and less and things get harder
and harder for us."

Comm: "Ultimately fields are left without protection and the fertile topsoil is washed away by the heavy rains. Once the fertility is gone the forest never returns and the threat of a second Cherapunjee becomes a serious possibility.

"Whereas in the Garo Hills preventative measures still make sense in Cherapunjee all hope of recovery has long since been abandoned. Eleven and a half metres of rainfall every year has washed
away every last bit of fertile
soil. For good."

Krishnan: "What we see here is an attempt by the local authorities. Focus on dying trees to reforest the area. As you can see it's been a failed attempt.

"Without any chance to make a living through agriculture or forestry the people chose the only
available option for them: mining."

Comm: "Why do people stay in a place which doesn't support life either in the rainy or the dry season? Because there's work. Cherapunjee has piped-in drinking water and little to eat. But there
is work, and for the poorest
of people that's the most important thing to have.

"These eroded hills contain coal and chalk, ingredients for the cement industry. Whole families have devoted themselves to the mining of these valuable resources. It has even attracted immigrants from Nepal and Bangladesh who have come because there is no work at home.

"The green hills of Cherapunjee are rapidly being dismantled. Not only does this mean the destruction of the very last thin layer of soil - the poisonous slag that is spread everywhere makes any kind of plant growth impossible.

"In Cherapunjee drought is not a meteoreological problem desert- pan out of mine dumps but a poverty related problem."

Krishnan: "There is plenty of water but the people don't have the resources to use this water. Cherapunjee really is a desert. A wet desert."

Comm: "If even the wettest place on earth is a victim of drought, is there hope for the rest of the world? Everywhere on the planet the amount of available clean drinking water is rapidly decreasing. Yet it is still possible to find new sources of water. Even in the least likely of places.

"On the west coast of South America there's an enormous desert which begins in Peru. There you find vast
expanses of sand. The desert extends halfway down into Chili. Mountains where rain clouds never reach over. This desert is the driest place on earth.

"There are even spots where no rain has ever been recorded.

"The Atacama desert is that dry because practically no rain can reach the area. In the East the desert borders on the Andes. The wind blowing in from the East loses all its moisture over these
mountains.

"The clouds drifting in from the ocean over the desert bring no rain. A cloud must become at least a few kilometers high to produce rain. Off the Chilean coast a layer of warm air stops that happening.

"On the driest spot on earth every source of water is welcome. That's why since the seventies a group of Chilean geographers led by Professor Pilar Cereceda have been trying to collect water from
clouds. They realised that the
clouds are always at the same altitude. It's a predictable phenomenon and therefore
a reliable source of water.

"Cereceda and her colleagues didn't only have a scientific interest in collecting water from fog. They also had in mind to offer a solution to the problems of the poorest living on the Chilean
coast. Take for instance the
situation in Chungungo...a small fishing village on the Chilean coast.

"Up until the seventies the villagers had water enough. Nearby was an iron mine. The fishermen sold fish to the mine and in return the mine gave them water. An abundance of water.

"Despite the lack of water the fishermen of Chungungo wanted to stay in their village. Because even though life was difficult there was work. Work that here, too, was hard to find. But how were they to survive in a village without water?

"The fishermen of Chungungo could hardly have suspected that the solution to their problem was just above their heads. A cloud layer above the village caused mist to form in the mountains. The
fishermen even had a name for
it: Carmunchukka . They didn't realise that carmunchukka could be harvested as Cerededa's team intended to do.

"One of the most important questions the scientists had worked on was what shape the net should be. The most efficient turned out to be a complicated diamond-shaped structure which allowed the moist wind to pass through it from all sides.

"But they quickly realised that the design would have to be a lot simpler. In the long run the fishermen of Chungungo would have to maintain the net themselves, using techniques and materials
they were familiar with. The
diamond-shape became a fishing net made of the polypropylene gauze that was used in the village to make partitions.

"To everyone's surprise the material turned out to be a very efficient fog catcher. The process is simple: tiny water droplets are blown onto the gauze by the wind and they merge to become bigger
drops. 10 million tiny droplets form a drop of water the size of a teardrop. Up to 50% of the water in the fog can be harvested like
this."

Old woman in garden: "I don't remember everything, but people were very happy. I was an old woman of course who didn't believe in clean water. It was delivered in a giant pipe. We made tea right away. It was marvellous. But of course water from above can't be wrong."

Comm: "First and foremost the project was a scientific project. The researchers had built and maintained the installation themselves. And of course they had a budget for it too. But once the
installation had been handed
over to the villagers that budget would dry up. And that proved to be a problem. In the village a committee was formed to look after the collection of fees. This committee had to adopt strong
measures because although the
fishermen wanted to pay they couldn't.

"Without regular maintenance the drinking water system deteriorated visibly. The efforts of the water committee alone were not enough to prevent it and there simply wasn't the money to take on anybody else. Here too, drought turned out to be first and foremost a problem of poverty.

"All hope was not yet lost. The Chileans were convinced that instead of nets trees could be used to collect water from fog. Peruvian scientists had reached the same conclusion. In various
locations along the Peruvian
coast, there are definite clues that the idea of collecting water from mist isn't as new as it had seemed.

"What we see here is a desert. But you can also clearly see that the situation used to be very different. You see terraces for agriculture, settlements. Man moves
into enclosure and even enclosures for livestock. And yet the climate wasn't very different then. It may
have rained a bit more but it
can't have been very much. The climate has always been like this.

"And for growing crops, for people or even tending livestock there had to be a lot of water. The fresh water probably came from the mountains behind where we can still find remains of the forests.

"The Peruvians were doing reaserch into plants able to live off their own water supply. They wondered how much water a particular tree could collect. In this way they were able to select the trees suited to be used in reforestation.

"In the end they succeeded in creating ten hectares of forest able to survive by itself - and there are plans for bigger projects. Ultimately they hope to make the forest big enough to produce more water than it needs for itself. The surplus will create little streams which can be used to drink and other purposes.

"Water is never just a meteorological problem. It is never just a shortage of water.

"In the desert too there is water and nature knows how to make use of that. Even in the driest spot on earth you can find water. And with that water you can break the vicious circle."