UN urges "more crop per drop" as water dwindles
Date: 25-Mar-02
Country: ITALY
Author: David Brough
"Water scarcity and quality will be one of the major problems of the 21st century," Godwin Obasi, secretary-general of the U.N. World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), told a ceremony in Rome to mark World Water Day.
"It is also the biggest threat to food security," he added.
"The global demand for water is estimated to have risen nearly sevenfold from 1900 to 1995, more than double the rate of population growth," Obasi said.
According to the United Nations, some 1.1 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water.
Louise Fresco, assistant director-general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation, said irrigated food output would have to jump over 80 percent to meet developing nations' demand by 2030. But water availability was set to rise just 12 percent.
"How can you obtain 80 percent more production from just a 12 percent increase in available water?" she asked the gathering of diplomats and government officials.
The great global challenge for the coming years will be how to produce more food with less water, Fresco said.
"Agriculture needs to become more productive and needs to produce more crop per drop," she said.
RIVERS THAT DO NOT REACH THE SEA
Increased demand for water for use in irrigation and industry has resulted in some rivers no longer reaching the sea and declining water tables in many parts of the world.
Desertification is devastating farm production and the variety of plant and animal life in many areas, U.N. bodies say.
By 2025, just over one billion people will be desperately short of water, Obasi said.
The international community is behind target in its drive to halve the number of severely malnourished people in the world to around 400 million by 2015, the U.N. says.
FAO will hold a world food summit at its Rome headquarters from June 10-13 to try to get countries back on track.
Agriculture is the largest consumer of water, accounting for 72 percent of the total usage for the world, the WMO says.
Pressure on water supplies is ever more intense as the population swells in the developing world, officials said.
The global population is forecast to grow from some six billion now to more than eight billion by 2020, food and agriculture officials say.
Khalid Mohtadullah, executive secretary of the Global Water Partnership, which advises governments on water issues, said management of water resources in many parts of the world was wasteful and needed to be improved.
Italian Farm Minister Giovanni Alemanno called on Italians to adopt a "culture of water" to avoid waste.
"Insufficient awareness by people and inadequate attention by public institutions to the problem of conservation and management of water have led to a critical situation," he said.
Fresco said that water in the reservoirs in southern regions of Italy had fallen to below 60 percent of normal.
