Water crisis threatens world food production: Report October 17, 2024

The report says the global water crisis could affect economic growth (Pexels Archiv)

By AFP - Agence France Presse

Water crisis threatens world food production: Report

Failure to act on the water crisis could put more than half of the world's food production at risk by 2050, experts warned in a major report published on Thursday.

“Almost 3 billion people and more than half of the world's food production are now in areas where total water storage is projected to decline,” said the report by the Global Commission on the Economics of Water (GCEW).

The report also warned that the water crisis could lead to an average 8% drop in GDP in high-income countries by 2050 and up to 15% in low-income countries.

Disruptions to the water cycle “have major global economic impacts,” said the report.

The economic declines would be a consequence of the “combined effects of changing precipitation patterns and rising temperatures due to climate change, together with decreasing total water storage and lack of access to clean water and sanitation.”

Faced with this crisis, the report called for the water cycle to be seen as a “global common good” and for a transformation of water governance at all levels.

“The costs involved in these actions are very small compared to the damage that continued inaction will inflict on economies and humanity,” it said.

Although water is often perceived as “an abundant gift of nature,” the report emphasized that it is scarce and expensive to transport.

The report called for the elimination of “harmful subsidies in water-intensive sectors or the redirection of these subsidies towards water-saving solutions and the provision of targeted support to the poor and vulnerable.”

“We have to match the price of water with adequate subsidies,” said World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, co-chair of the GCEW, during an online meeting.

Another co-chair, Singapore's President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, insisted on the need to see water as a global problem, to “innovate and invest” to solve the crisis and “stabilize the global hydrological cycle.”

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