The Hindu Business Line : Water woes

It is a paradox that the world is inexorably moving towards an era of water shortage despite water constituting three-fourths of the earth’s surface. Together with climate change, emerging water scarcity, it is increasingly believed, has the potential to wreak economic and ecological havoc on the planet in the coming decades unless the challenge is addressed with renewed urgency. Research has suggested that changing diets, urbanisation, bio-fuels, control over water resources and more recently, climate change are all affecting the world’s water availability. Poor countries are at greater risk of facing the ravages of water scarcity as it threatens the livelihoods and health of small and marginal farmers.

By 2025, two-thirds of the world could be threatened by water shortages which would in turn have a large impact on food security, the Food and Agriculture Organisation has argued. The International Food Policy Research Institute has suggested that if current consumption trends continue, water scarcity will likely cause annual global losses of 350 million metric tons of food production by 2025, leading to an inevitable rise in food prices. There is now widespread apprehension among policy researchers that the rapidly emerging water crisis may not get the priority it deserves in most Governments’ policy commitments, given the economic crisis and market turmoil. While managing demand and supply would be politically challenging, what is feasible is improving water use-efficiency. Given that irrigation uses almost 70 percent of all freshwater, improved efficiency will mean “more crop per drop”. Importantly, however, investments will be required in renovating outdated irrigation infrastructure, using just-in-time irrigation techniques and of course, improving plant varieties that consume less-water and are water-stress tolerant.

For a country of India’s size, traditional lifestyles and agrarian background, land constraints and water shortage are more likely to limit growth prospects. The country has 17 percent of the world’s population, but only 2 per cent of the world’s land and 4 per cent of the water resources. There has already been an alarming decline in ground water levels in many States, yet water conservation is hardly on top of anyone’s mind. Under the Constitution, water is a “State subject”, and it is the responsibility of the State Governments to regulate the extraction of ground water and to take suitable action for arresting the decline in ground water levels. It would be sad if World Water Day on March 22 turns out to be merely a symbolic recognition of the precarious state of the world’s water supply without a global commitment to obtaining the most out of scarce resources.

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