World Water Day

WorldWaterday

Rome/FAO [ENA] From 22 to 24 March 2023 the world comes together in New York during the UN 2023 Water Conference. It is convened by the UN General Assembly and co-hosted by the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Republic of Tajikistan. The United Nations 2023 Water Conference is a call to action to every single person on the planet to accelerate change to solve the water crisis around the world. It marks a turning point that call

governments and decision makers to take concrete actions and commitments to achieve the internationally agreed water-related goals and targets, including those contained in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It is the most important water event in a generation, the first event of its kind for nearly 50 years. Water is vital to agriculture that accounts for 72% of global freshwater withdrawals, to other economic sectors and to the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development. Governments and other stakeholders have acknowledged that water, sanitation, health, ecosystems, oceans, energy, food systems and nutrition are interwoven and that the rising trend of losses caused by water-related disasters must be addressed,

with particular attention paid to people in vulnerable situations.  Water is a key input for agriculture production – different crops have different water requirements for optimal growth. And agriculture plays a crucial role in the water equation. Water shortage means less water for agriculture production which in turn means less food available, threatening food security and nutrition. Taking into consideration that the world population will reach around 9 billion in 2050, it is clear that water scarcity is a real threat to food security since more food will have to be grown with limited water resources.

Water scarcity is aggravated by climate change and global population growth, resulting in increased competition for a decreasing and increasingly erratically available resource. Climate change results in irregular rainfall patterns with new extremes or peaks in droughts and floods, making it difficult to resort to conventional water-resources planning to meet increasing demand for water. Considering that ‘water is (key to) life’ and that water plays an important role in achieving a balance between economic efficiency, environmental sustainability and social equity, there is an urgent need to take the required actions. And this is best done in a concerted and collaborative manner.

Typically, countries experience either physical water scarcity or economic water scarcity. Physical water scarcity is when the demand for water exceeds the water resources that are naturally available in the given region, either as surface or groundwater, with a given rainfall regime. Economic water scarcity often occurs in regions where, despite the abundance of water resources, there is no adequate infrastructure to make it available meet the different needs, such as electricity, industries and mines, domestic water supply and agriculture. People in arid and semi-arid regions, which experience physical water scarcity because of their natural predicament, have often developed ingenious solutions, such as taming water from distant sources,

and using irrigation efficiency methods and other practices such as desalination of seawater or groundwater abstraction when available. Due to climate change, which affects the seasonal patterns of rainfall, countries that relied solely on rainfed agriculture now experience temporal physical water scarcity due to irregular rainfalls that disrupt the usual planting seasons, causing recurring crop failures and leading to food insecurity. This makes it necessary to store water for supplemental irrigation.

Addressing this climate change also requires novel approaches such as drought resistant crops or intercropping with cover crops (such as certain types of leguminous) that will prolong soil moisture for the targeted staple crops (such as maize) to continue to grow when the rainfall has stopped. More and more, all regions will need to store water for (supplemental) irrigation, which is needed to compensate for the increasing deficit in the crop water requirements caused by erratic or unpredictable rainfalls.