Can we feed the world making efficient and fair use of available water?

Findings from the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF) indicate that efficient and equitable use of water, not scarcity, is the core concern on 10 major river basins around the world.

Conventional wisdom says that the world is heading for a major water crisis. By 2050, the global population will have increased from today’s 7 billion to a staggering 9 billion. The demands this will place on food and water systems, already under pressure from climate change and overuse, will inevitably push river basins over the edge.

Not so, say the findings of a comprehensive five-year study by the CGIAR Challenge Program for Water and Food, (CPWF), which covered more than 10 river basins and 30 countries. These river basins – the Andes system of river basins and São Francisco in South America, the Limpopo, Niger, Nile, and Volta basins in Africa, and the Ganges, Indus, Karkheh, Mekong, and Yellow River in Asia – are home to some 1.5 billion people, and half of the world’s poorest, and are representative of the water-related challenges in the developing world.

The study revealed that the challenge facing water resources is more complex than just scarcity. More often, the real problem is inequitable distribution of the benefits that river basins provide, such as water, food, energy, and a host of regulating ecosystem services.

Alain Vidal, Director of CPWF said, “Yes, there is scarcity in certain areas, but our findings show that a more general problem is a failure to make efficient and fair use of the water available in these river basins. This is ultimately a political and governance challenge, not a resource concern except in a few regions.”

The results cut across the grain of conventional thinking and indicate that there is a huge potential to increase food production through a greater emphasis on rainfed agriculture. Researchers found that in Africa, where the vast majority of cropland is rainfed, only about 4% of available water is captured for crops and livestock. With modest improvements, sub-Saharan Africa could produce two to three times as much food as it does today. An example of such improvements is the small-scale water-harvesting approach known as zai pits. These small pits, filled with a mixture of manure and seeds and covered with leaves, capture surface run-off water and boost crop yields in dry areas.

Likewise water policies often ignore the role livestock and fish play in local livelihoods and diets. More than 40 million people in the Mekong basin depend on fisheries for at least part of the year, almost half the water in the Nile basin flows through livestock systems, and in the Niger basin almost one million people depend on fisheries for their livelihoods.

The most surprising finding was that the problems facing major river systems today are not technical in nature but political. In most of the basins studied, it was found that there was ‘institutional fragmentation’ amongst different sectors and line agencies, making it nearly impossible to manage water for multiple uses. Likewise, government ministries should take advantage of the range of benefits coming from river basins, rather than focusing on one sector such as hydropower, irrigation, or industry. This finding demonstrates the crucial role multidisciplinary science can play in supporting more balanced development.

For more information download the technical reports from the CPWF site.

This post is part of our series celebrating “40 years of CGIAR”
Photo credit: Tilahun Amede/CPWF/ILRI/IWMI