Better water use could reduce future food crises

Seed Daily: The challenge of meeting future water needs under the impacts of climate change and rapidly growing human demands for water may be less bleak than widely portrayed a team of Swedish and German scientists says. If the overall water resources in river basins were acknowledged and managed better, future food crises could be significantly reduced, say researchers from Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University, Stockholm Environment Institute and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

The challenge of meeting future water needs under the impacts of climate change and rapidly growing human demands for water may be less bleak than widely portrayed. An analysis by a team of Swedish and German scientists quantifies for the first time the opportunities of effectively using both "green" and "blue" water to adapt to climate change and to feed the future world population. The study was recently published in the journal "Water Resources Research".

The current approach to water management considers only blue water, that is river discharge and groundwater. According to the researchers, this limits the options to deal with increasing water scarcity and water risks induced by climate change. Under those conditions, over three billion of the current world population are estimated to suffer from severe water scarcity.

The new analysis which additionally accounts for green water, that is water in the soil that stems directly from rainfall, suggests that the actual number is under one billion. It also shows that wise water management can lift billions out of water poverty…..

Water flows by Jordan Valley Reservoir Dam.JPGWater flows by the main dam of the Jordan Valley Reservoir, Hong Kong. Shot by Isaac Wong (惡德神父) and CELLy Chan, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5, Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 and Attribution ShareAlike 1.0 License