Water crisis threatens global food production
By Alimat Aliyeva
In the next 25 years, more than half of the world's food production will be at risk of disruption, as the planet will be engulfed by a rapidly growing water crisis, unless urgent measures are taken to conserve water resources and stop the destruction of ecosystems on which the state of freshwater depends, according to a report by the Global Commission on the Economics of Water Resources, Azernews reports.
Half of the world's population is already facing water shortages, and this number is expected to grow as the climate crisis worsens.
Demand for freshwater will exceed supply by 40 percent by the end of the decade because the world's water systems are under "unprecedented stress," the report says.
The Commission concluded that governments and experts grossly underestimate the amount of water people need to live a decent life. If each person needs from 50 to 100 liters per day to maintain health and hygiene, then for proper nutrition and a decent life, people need about 4,000 liters per day. In most regions, this volume cannot be provided at the local level, so people depend on the trade in food, clothing and consumer goods.
The Global Commission on Water Economics was established by the Netherlands in 2022 based on the work of dozens of leading scientists and economists to provide a comprehensive understanding of the state of global hydrological systems and how to manage them. Her 194-page report is the largest global study that examines all aspects of the water crisis and suggests measures to overcome it for policy makers.
According to Professor Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and one of the co-chairs of the commission, the results of the study were surprisingly harsh. "Water is the number one victim of the climate crisis, and the environmental changes that we are currently witnessing at the global level threaten the entire stability of Earth's systems. The climate crisis manifests itself primarily in droughts and floods. If you think about heat waves and fires, then the really strong impact is through moisture – in the case of fires, global warming first dries up landscapes, and they burn down," he said in an interview with the Guardian.
Each increase in global temperature by 1°C adds another 7
percent of moisture to the atmosphere, which leads to a
"strengthening" of the hydrological cycle much more strongly than
with normal fluctuations. The destruction of nature also
contributes to the further development of the crisis, as
deforestation and drainage of swamps disrupt the hydrological
cycle, which depends on the transpiration of trees and the storage
of water in the soil.
Scientists have drawn five main conclusions from the report: a
water crisis is brewing in the world; there is no coordinated
global effort to solve this crisis; climate disruption increases
water shortages; water is artificially cheaper for some and becomes
too expensive for others; water is a common good.
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