Good afternoon everybody, thanks a lot for the invitation to speak in this forum!

Transcription

1 Good afternoon everybody, thanks a lot for the invitation to speak in this forum! The title of my presentation is Land and Water Constraints for Future Food Production 1

2 I will start with a general introduction on undernourishment to come after that to present the results of 2 studies carried out on the connection of food security and natural resources constraints. 2

3 Allow me starting with some global numbers on the problem of undernourishment: Currently, there are 3 billion poor, from which 1 billion are extremely poor. From this, 870 million people are chronically undernourished, that represents 12.5 percent of the global population From these million people suffering from hunger, many will die at young age. As a matter of fact, one person dies every 3.6 seconds due to hunger. I am not sure if you can imagine how many people are 870 million, 3

4 to give you an idea, if you put them together lying but without any space between them, you could give almost 9 turns to the Earth equator with the amount of people suffering from hunger nowadays. 4

5 These global numbers are heterogenously distributed in space, especially some Sub- Saharan countries have undernourishment rates above 25%. 5

6 In the last years, I have frequently heard people talking about a constant progress in the fight of hunger, and about how undernourishment is declining and the situation is improving. While this is true at the global level, 6

7 Profound disparities exist within progress when we looked at national values. The countries in yellow here have had a very slow progress on fighting undernourishment, and the red ones have even had a deterioration. Now, these figures show chronic undernourishment, 7

8 That means that they frequently do not reflect particular food crises, like the 19 famines we had around the world after the second world war, with quite impressive numbers of deaths. 8

9 Now food insecurity can have many drivers that can combine to produce chronic undernourishment or particular food crises. Today I will focus on one of these factors, the lack of water and land resources. 9

10 With that I will go to the second part of this talk, that refers to Past and present biophysical redundancy 10

11 Redundancy is a concept that comes from the mechanical engineering and implies the repetition of something to increase security, provide back-up or diminish the risk of system failure. For example, in aircrafts besides the power generation by the engine, you have normally the main battery and an auxiliary battery. So in case of power failure, these batteries are able to power up the airplane systems. 11

12 But we do not have to go to engineering to understand redundancy, this is the redundancy in my luggage for a 2 days trip. I need only one trousers and 2 T-shirts, but I take 2 trousers and 3 t-shirts, just to make sure that if I spoil some of those with a cup of coffea, I have some backup with me. 12

13 When we transfer the concept of redundancy to the food production systems, we can consider three essential components of redundancy: 1. Untapped freshwater resources 2. Unused fertile land, and 3. The yield gap, that is the unused potential productivity That means, unused water, fertile land and unexploited productivity is like my extra T-Shirt, the one I will probably not use but can be used if something happens. However, that sounds easier than it is because the definition of unused resources is difficult, especially when it is considered from sustainability perspective. 13

14 Think for example about these questions: Is the total of freshwater in a nation technically accessible? How much water do natural freshwater system need and cannot be considered available for agriculture? What is the influence of seasonal variability on accessibility of water resources? How much land should be protected for ecosystem services? Should pastures be considered used or unused? We can say they are used for meat production but some of it can be converted to crop cultivation if needed. For dealing with this difficulties we made three different scenarios: Rlow, Rmiddle, and Rhigh. 14

15 I am going to show results for the Rmiddle scenario that assummes that managed grasslands are available for conversion to vegetable food production, protected areas and areas worthy of protection are unavailable for agricultural production, spare areas are considered to be 30% less productive than used areas, precipitation and seasonality is assumed to reduce accessibility of water resources by 10% 30%, and environmental flow requirements are assumed to be middle high and met by society. So now, what is the current state of biophysical redundancy? 15

16 These figures show water, land and productivity redundancies for the year Orange, red and violet countries have low redundancy. Very low productivity redundancy is a major factor in South East Asia. The Middle East has very low water redundancy, And Europe and South America are particularly affected by limited or very low productivity redundancy. The African and South American tropics have mostly high overall redundancy due to high land, water and productivity redundancy on spare land. This is notable since in the medium scenario protected areas and areas worth of protection are considered unavailable for food production. 16

17 Here you see the overall redundancy for each country, considering all the factors I just showed. Countries that have redundant resources for producing the caloric nutritional needs for at least 50% of its population for one full year were considered to have high redundancy. Countries with values between 25% and 50% were considered to have limited redundancy. And countries that have redundant resources for producing the caloric nutritional needs for less than 25% of its population have very low redundancy. Overall there are 75 countries with limited and very low redundancy, those 75 countries are home to 4.8 billion people or around 70% of the world population. 17

18 The question that comes immediately is, has redundacy changed in the past? 18

19 Here you see that globally, redundancy in the food producing systems has decreased, in the most limited scenario, the world has gone from having limited to very low biophysical redundancy. 19

20 At national level, you see some countries, here coloured orange, that have had a decrease in biophysical redundancy. 20

21 Especially these countries here have gone in the last two decades from having limited biophysical redundancy to have very low redundancy. Now, you may say, well great, they are using more resources to produce more food, so they have now more food. A decrease in biophysical redundancy would be good in that case. 21

22 Well, lets look if that is true, from 28 low income economies only 9 have limited or very low biophysical redundancy today. That is good, that means there are natural potentials to expand food production. However, there are preoccupying negative trends in some LIEs, which are reducing more and more their redundancy. 22

23 However, you see indeed some improvement in food availability and production, especially in Cambodgia, Malawi and Sierra Leone. Nevertheless, Eritrea, Uganda, Sudan, Burundi, Zimbabwe and Somalia have negative trends in production per capita and decreasing biophysical redundancy. That means that the decreasing redundancy does not always come together with improved food security. 23

24 With that I would like to go to the last block of this presentation and look at the future food security situation under land and water constraints. 24

25 The research questions in this context were what countries depend already today on on external water and land resources not by election but due to resource constraints? What countries will HAVE TO depend on external water and land resources in future? And How many people could be food insecure by the middle of the century? 25

26 This map shows the percentage of population in each country that eats thanks to non-national water and land resources, or in other words, how much percent of the population depends on international trade. Globally it is about nine hundred and fifty million people. This means that today sixteen percent of the global population is dependent on external water and land resources. Especially in North Africa and Andean countries, more than half of the population depends on ex-situ water and land resources considering current water and land productivities and present land use patterns 26

27 And this map shows where the consumption of agricultural goods goes beyond the national limits of resource availability. The countries in red, brown and blue can not feed themselves, due to water and / or land scarcity. From the comparison of these two maps one can see that today's dependency of Scandinavia and Andean countries is not due to a resource shortage, while the dependency on North Africa and the Middle East is very much connected with land and water scarcity. These countries have no choice but to import agricultural products. The question that comes immediately is how this current dependency situation will develop in the future. But before I get to that, I would like to present the productivity scenarios that we developed in this context. 27

28 These productivity scenarios represent the possibilities of countries to improve productivity in future. CURRENT is the scenario where agricultural practices, and thus the yields and the virtual water content, remain the same. So I do not assume any future efficiency improvements. In HIGHER I assume an improvement in agricultural management, by setting certain parameters closer to the optimum. So I'm assuming medium efficiency improvement. In POTENTIAL, I assume that the world achieves optimal management, in the sense that the yields are maximized in every country. So I'm assuming maximum efficiency. On the basis of these scenarios, I analyzed the future dependence on external water and land resources. 28

29 Here you can see how much percent of the global population in 2050 might depend on imports. Here we have the productivity scenarios on x, the level of 2000 is shown by the blue line, the error bars show the difference accounting for and without consideration of agricultural land expansion, and the colors represent the different population scenarios. There is much information in this graphic, but maybe the most drastic result you can see is that in 2050 up to 51 percent of the world's population could depend on nonnational resources, if we do not improve agricultural management and do not expand agricultural areas. The question you ask yourself at this moment is how the picture looks at the national level. 29

30 Without going into much detail, the countries in dark red are the ones that can try whatever they want, even if they use all their resources in the best form, they will not be able to feed themselves due to water and land scarcity and will depend on imports. You see that many of them are in Africa. The question is if these countries do not have enough resources to produce their food and do not have money to import products, how much people will suffer undernourishment? 30

31 And this is what you see here. If poor countries in the world remain poor and do not increase productivity and expand agricultural areas, we would have a population of up to 1.3 billion in 2050 suffering from hunger. In Bangladesh, Congo, Ethiopia and Uganda, the numbers are over 100 million people. 31

32 If we are optimistic and assume that the poorest countries in the world make full use of their own land resources and increase productivity, we would still have a between 0.5 and 0.7 billion people suffering from hunger. 32

33 And even assuming that these countries achieve the most optimal management conditions, we may still have between 55 and 123 million people in risk of hunger in In Somalia and Niger, more than 20 million people will still suffer from hunger. 33

34 With that I come to a small summary and the conclusions of the two studies presented here: Today: 3 billion poor, 1 billion extremely poor 870 million people chronically undernourished (12.5%) Biophysical redundancy is limited or low in 75 countries Past: Biophysical redundancy has decreased This decrease did not always mean more food availability Future (2050): People at risk of food insecurity due to land and water scarcity between 55 million and 1.3 billion Up to 51% of world population may depend on non-domestic water and land resources 34

35 Damit möchte ich eine kleine Zusammenfassung 35

36 Anzahl der Menschen mit Risiko von Nahrungsmittelunsicherheit aufgrund von Landund Wasserknappheit: zwischen 55 Millionen und 1.3 Milliarden. Jenachdem ob arme Länder in der Lage sind Importe zu finanzieren, die Ausweitung von landwirtschaftlichen Flächen zu realisieren und die landwirtschaftliche und Wassereffizienz zu steigern. 36

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