Thursday, March 28, 2024
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The theme of World Water Day 2007 (March 22), Coping with Water Scarcity, is more than simply a way to focus attention on this issue. It is a specific and emphatic call to action.
Water has long been at the top of the priority list for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the coordinating agency for this year’s World Water Day observance. FAO recognizes that as the number-one user of water worldwide, the agriculture sector must take the lead in addressing the rising global demand for water.
Agriculture accounts for about 70% of the freshwater withdrawn worldwide, because without water there would be no agriculture. The figure is closer to 95% in several developing countries, where roughly three-quarters of the world’s irrigated farmlands are located.
Improving the food situation is fundamental to fighting hunger and improving lives on every continent. This means that to turn the tide against water scarcity, farmers must find ways to produce more food with proportionally less water. It takes 1000-2000 litres of water to produce one kilo of wheat and 13 000-15000 litres to produce the same quantity of grain-fed beef. By comparison, the amount of daily drinking water required by one person is estimated at a mere two to five litres. And yet each day, we “eat” an average of 2000 litres of water. Thus the effective daily consumption of water per person is 1000 times more than the apparent consumption through drinking. Without water, we can not produce; and without it we simply cannot eat. The planet is thirsty because it is hungry.
The rising global population is contributing to an increased demand for water. The world’s population is expected to rise from the current 6.5 billion to 8.1 billion by 2030. To keep pace with the growing demand for food, and taking into consideration an increase in water productivity, it is estimated that 14% more freshwater will need to be withdrawn for agricultural purposes by 2030 in order to obtain the 55% increase in food production needed.
Climate change has raised the stakes. So have successful development and the trend towards urbanization, which have added to the demand for water in agriculture the increased demand for water for industry and people’s homes.
Access to adequate water can be a problem even in areas with plenty of freshwater, but water shortages are most acute in the driest areas of the world, which are home to more than 2 billion people and to half of all poor people. Acute water scarcity affects countries in the Near East and North Africa, as well as Mexico, Pakistan, South Africa, and large parts of China and India.
In recent years there has been growing consensus that international, national and local policies must be coordinated to guide more effectively the use of water resources for agriculture, urbanization and industry.
As far as agriculture is concerned, FAO advocates short-term, small-scale irrigation projects at the village level, including the development of low-cost and relatively simple technologies which can be used by small farmers to irrigate crops. We also need to focus on the long-term future, first by upgrading and improving the management of the facilities and then by working across national borders to develop and protect water basins.
Pilot projects and programmes in countries as diverse as South Africa, Turkey and Mexico have turned to small-scale irrigation schemes or community-based systems for harvesting rainfall and protecting catchments that feed into main waterways. At the same time, FAO has supported inter-regional and river basin programmes which coordinate the responses of several governments or agencies, as in the countries which share the massive Nile River in Africa, which has been compromised by drought and human activity.
Improving agricultural practices and water productivity will go a long way to protecting our water resources for all of our needs. Worldwide, 1.1 billion people do not have access to adequate clean water to meet their basic daily requirements and 2.6 billion do not have proper sanitation. Every day, 3 800 children die from diseases associated with a lack of safe drinking water and proper sanitation.
Access to water is intricately linked to the achievement of most of the Millennium Development Goals, which include halving extreme poverty and hunger by 2015, halting the spread of HIV/AIDS, ensuring primary education for all children, and ensuring environmental sustainability.
But direct access to water for own food production is not possible for every country or region. The international food market serves as an important vehicle for transferring “virtual water” from food exporting water-abundant regions to food importing water-scarce ones. In fact, any importing of food is the equivalent of importing water in a condensed form. An FAO survey estimates, for example, that 86.5km3 of water would be needed to grow the food that is imported into the Near East – more than the annual flow into the region of the Nile River. Virtual water trade is not only potentially beneficial for the importing countries but also for global water management for two reasons. Firstly, one of the main imports is cereals and these can be produced with less water in countries having high water productivity. Secondly, the bulk of the imported grain is produced under rainfed, temperate conditions and is therefore only ’consuming’ soil moisture, and not surface and groundwater that might be allocated to other uses.
As a global community, we have the capacity to go beyond stop-gap responses to water scarcity and to develop sound, ongoing management of our water resources. Turning that capacity into concrete results requires sustained political will, cooperation and funding. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)
This column is available for visitors to the IPS website only for reading. Reproduction in print or electronic media is prohibited. Media interested in republishing may contact romacol@ips.org.
- Those who call water scarcity the challenge of the century are not exaggerating. The recent debate over a proposal to recycle waste water for drinking purposes in Australia, the drying of large portions of massive river basins like Lake Chad in Africa and the Aral Sea in Central Asia, the millions of people who struggle to grow crops on drought-stricken farms in Asia, Africa and in the Americas, all reflect the importance of conserving and making more productive use of our water resources, writes Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Improving the food situation is fundamental to fighting hunger and improving lives on every continent. This means that to turn the tide against water scarcity, farmers must find ways to produce more food with proportionally less water. It takes 1000-2000 litres of water to produce one kilo of wheat and 13 000-15000 litres to produce the same quantity of grain-fed beef. By comparison, the amount of daily drinking water required by one person is estimated at a mere two to five litres. And yet each day, we \”eat\” an average of 2000 litres of water. Thus the effective daily consumption of water per person is 1000 times more than the apparent consumption through drinking. Without water, we can not produce; and without it we simply cannot eat. The planet is thirsty because it is hungry.