The state of the world s land and water resources: A summary

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1 The state of the world s land and water resources: A summary Jean- Marc Faurès and Chris White Food and Agriculture Organisation, Italy and Australian National University, Australia Discussion Paper 1106 December 2011 This article summarises the major findings of the Food and Agriculture Organization s inaugural report The State of the World s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture. A lead author of the study discusses global trends in land and water resources for food production, constraints to sustainable resource management, and policy recommendations to overcome these constraints. The Global Water Forum publishes a series of discussion papers to share the insights and knowledge contained within our online articles. The articles are contributed by experts in the field and provide original academic research; unique, informed insights and arguments; evaluations of water policies and projects; as well as concise overviews and explanations of complex topics. We encourage our readers to engage in discussion with our contributing authors through the GWF website. Keywords: water resources; land resources; Food and Agriculture Organization; SOLAW. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization recently published a flagship report on the global status of land and water resources. The State of the World s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture (SOLAW) is aimed at raising awareness of land and water resources at a global and regional level, as well as developing recommendations for policy formulation. In this article, one of the authors of the report, Jean-Marc Faurès, summarises their findings. This article was originally published online in three parts which have been combined together in this single discussion paper. Part 1 Current trends Land, water, and food: global trends We felt the need to publish this report because, at the FAO, we monitor two of the major resources for agriculture: water and land. As a result, we have an extensive knowledge database on the subject. Agriculture is by far the major user of water and, since the end of the last century, water use in agriculture, as Suggested Citation: Faurès, J. M. 2011, The state of the world s land and water resources: A summary, GWF Discussion Paper 1106, Global Water Forum, Canberra, Australia. Available online at: page/water- and- agriculture/

2 well as in cities and industry, has increased tremendously. This has put a lot of pressure on aquifers and river basins across the world; in some places leading to a substantial depletion of water resources. Agriculture makes up about 70% of all water use in the world, however, there are major differences across countries. In countries where agriculture is particularly important and where the climate is arid, a lot of water goes to agricultural production and in some situations more than 90% of the water in a country is used for agriculture. It is therefore extremely important to understand that there are great variations across the world. Some places, generally those with more arid climates, have substantially less water resources than others and these are the places where water is most needed and where water scarcity is most important. In the report we define water scarcity in terms of the relation between water supply and water demand; where water demand is high compared to the supply there are conditions of water scarcity. When we talk about agricultural water resources we talk not only about rain that is used to grow crops but also the water that we take from rivers and aquifers and put on the land for irrigation. This use of irrigation water, which creates competition for water resources and threatens ecosystems, is critically important. Globally, irrigation makes up around 20% of the world s agriculture but produces 40% of the world s food; so it is a very critical part of agriculture. We have a population that has now just reached 7 billion people and we know that by 2050 we will need to feed another 2 billion people, this will mean more agriculture, more irrigation, and more water for agriculture. Thus, in an increasing number of river basins across the world, the issue of water scarcity is becoming extremely serious. Socio-economic and environmental impacts As long as water is plentiful, diverting some water for agriculture or for other uses doesn t pose any problems. Problems, however, can arise with increased population and increased demand for water. In those places where there is not so much water, this can lead to a point where somebody withdrawing water affects the ability of others to do so. In order to create a meaningful account of water resources we have to work at the level of the river basin; this is a geographic area where all the people and all their activities are connected through water. When you reach a certain level of water depletion within a river basin, every single additional use of water will affect other uses. Therefore, the immediate impact of increased water scarcity is competition for resources if somebody takes somebody loses.

3 For instance, if a city needs more water there might be less water for agriculture, this often happens because domestic water is seen as an absolute priority people need to be able to drink water. Likewise, if an industry starts taking water there is less water for other sectors, or if a farmer takes water in an area where there is not much water, farmers downstream may no longer have access to water. This creates competition between sectors and even inside the sectors, and when the rules or institutions are not there to decide how this should be regulated, it can happen in an anarchic way. Water depletion also raises issues over equity. Typically, people who are further down a river get hurt more than upstream people who have earlier access to the resources, and the poor get hurt more than the rich. If, for instance, you have an aquifer that is going down because of over exploitation, small farmers may not be able to pump water because it is too expensive to drill a well deep enough, while larger farmers and industries are more likely to be able to dig deeper and continue to get water. Thus, those who are less powerful usually lose access to water first. In addition to the socio-economic impacts, increasing pressure on water resources has two implications on the environment. The first is that, when you withdraw a substantial amount of water from a river, you affect the river itself, its ecosystem, and its environment. This can lead to long periods where the river is dry which has implications for biodiversity. In places where you pump too much water from an aquifer that is close to the coast you can see sea water intrusion into the aquifer. This can mean that the aquifer becomes salty and cannot be used anymore. The second impact is that when agriculture intensifies i.e. becomes more productive, it needs to use fertilisers and pesticides. Unfortunately, very often you see that there is an increased level of pollution in the water bodies. If the rules and regulations are not there, or there is no capacity to enforce them, then you can see serious degradation of rivers, aquifers, and the wider environment. Part 2 Current and future threats Agriculture plays a vitally important role in feeding us. Because there are so many people on the earth, agriculture has to use a substantial amount of the land and water resources that the earth has. As a result, in places where the population density is high, the impact on land and water resources from agriculture is also high. Agriculture has done an incredible job in the recent decades in becoming much more productive, and this is extremely important. If we had the productivity level today that we had in the 1940 s or 1950 s, we would need much more land and water than we use today. This is critically important because, without the capacity to increase agricultural

4 productivity, we would not be able to feed the world s growing population. time and you threaten your own capacity to produce. Thus, on one hand, the SOLAW report shows that the human footprint through agriculture on the environment is substantial, particularly in areas where land and water are scarce compared to the population. While, on the other hand, incredible progress has been made to contain these impacts. Threats and risks to the world s land and water resources In the SOLAW report we tried to classify the type of threats that we face in terms of the world s land and water resources. These threats vary across countries and include: flooding, water scarcity, pollution, biodiversity loss, deforestation, droughts, declining soil fertility, erosion, and land scarcity. The distribution and severity of each of these threats is shown in Figure 1 by the size and location of the coloured circles. A good example of this is soil fertility. Many countries in sub-saharan Africa do not have very favourable soils and, what s more, the fertility level is going down. When you have soil that is being eroded because of unsustainable agricultural practices, the most productive parts at the top of the soil are lost and you are left with soil that is less productive. The eroded soil can also lead to other problems such as the sedimentation of dams etc. Therefore, if there are no measures taken to maintain or enhance soil fertility, then we see production going down progressively. One of the main factors contributing to the threats listed in Figure 1 is weak regulation. If you do not set up rules for the sustainable use of land and water resources then there is a high risk that you mine your resources and degrade your environment. This in turn has an impact and risk for future generations. Moreover, if you do not manage your land and water in a way that maintains productive capacity, then productivity is reduced over Figure 1. Source: FAO (2011). We already have a series of problems related to human pressure on land and water resources that we can see in some areas, and these can be described as today s risks. In addition to these, there are also future risks, in

5 particular those related to climate change, that come on top of the problems that already exist. Due to the variable nature of climate change, there are some areas that are more at risk than others from these future threats. Unfortunately, in many of the areas which face the highest risks, we have a series of very important agricultural production systems that are at risk from a series of climate change related causes. For instance, the large areas of irrigation that are fed through snow melt from mountain ranges are going to experience increased temperatures and changes in the regimes of the rivers that feed them. One of the major risks is that, over the medium term, we may see seasonal changes in the distribution of water flowing in the rivers, i.e. water not coming at the right time for agriculture, which will affect the systems that rely heavily on that water for agriculture (see FAO report on the impacts of climate change on food and water security). Another example of the areas that are at high risk from climate change are deltas. These, often highly populated areas, face a double threat from climate change as they are likely to experience changes in water supply from above, through changing precipitation and river flows; and also from below, through rising sea levels and the associated problems of sea water entering aquifers and affecting the land. Other areas which are at risk from climate change are the semi-arid tropics in parts of Africa and Asia. Here the increased variability of rainfall due to climate change will affect all farmers, but particularly those who rely on rain fed agriculture. These are just some of the examples of what we call agricultural systems at risk. The systems that are more at risk than others, in terms of their capacity to continue to produce, are generally those which sustain very important parts of the world s population. The focus of this report is on particular agriculture systems that are at risk because we felt it was necessary to go beyond generalities and global assessments. While it is possible to give a global number of how much land is used in the world, it is meaningless because there are places where there is not even a single hectare available, while there are other places where you still have large amounts of land. The same is also true for water resources. Therefore, by focusing on a series of agricultural systems in the report, we aim to give a more concrete analysis in terms of the response that we have to give to the problems of land and water resources scarcity. Part 3 Policy recommendations When discussing the policies that can be used to resolve the challenges facing the world s land and water resources, it is important to start with the facts. Since policies are designed by decision makers, the role of the FAO lies in informing decision makers of the status of the

6 resources and to provide the facts which can be used as a basis to make the right decisions. In addition to this, we have gone one step further in this report in analysing the spectrum of possible policies that could be adopted, explaining the kind of policies that would have a positive impact and those that would have a negative impact, and recommending what we consider to be appropriate policies. Policy recommendations As described in the second part of this series of articles, substantial progress has been made in the recent past in increasing agricultural productivity. It is crucially important that this trend continues because, in order to meet the expected increase in demand for food by 2050, agricultural production will have to increase by 70 per cent globally and up to 100 per cent in developing countries. With all of the economic, social, and environmental problems we face, increasing the agricultural production that we have today to the required levels is a major challenge and in some continents where demographic growth is still very high, such as sub-saharan Africa, the challenge will be even greater. Since we only have one earth, we only have a certain amount of land and a certain amount of freshwater resources that flow in our rivers each year. Thus, the only way to meet these challenges and deal with the growing pressure on land and water resources is through what we call sustainable intensification, that is, continuing the trend of producing more with the same resources by making better use of existing resources without reducing the long term productivity of the environment. Encouraging better use of the world s land and water resources has to be done by sending signals to the billions of farmers across the world who carry out the business of farming and feeding us, to invest in agricultural production and use existing resources more effectively. In many countries, one important way of sending such signals to farmers is through securing their access to land and water resources. The FAO has found that if you improve the tenure of land so that you manage to give farmers a guarantee they will hold an entitlement on the land they crop for a long enough time that justifies investment on their side, then you see an increase in productivity. There are many things that farmers cannot do if they don t know if they will hold rights to the land next year and, in order help improve productivity, we need to ensure that farmers have recognised access to their land. In terms of water resources it is the same. In Australia there are very advanced land and water rights which are separable from one another, and this has led to very productive systems. However, in many countries this is not the

7 case, and many areas lack strong water use rights and the capacity to disconnect access to land from access to water. Thus, we argue that in order to make better use of the world s land and water resources, policies need to secure farmer s access to land and water. Another important policy signal is to reduce uncertainty over the marketing of agricultural produce. Farmers need to be able to market their products and they need to be able to know, more or less, how much they can get from their produce in order to make good investment decisions. Farming is an extremely risky business and most farmers have what we call a risk aversion attitude they prefer secure outcomes to risky ones of an equivalent value. This risk aversion attitude means that farmers may not invest much, on the one hand because they don t know if they will have enough water to grow it, and on the other hand because they don t know whether they will be able to sell it at a reasonable price. Thus, policies to secure better access to markets, which in many countries is an infrastructure issue, and more transparent markets, are ways in which we can contribute to sustainable intensification by encouraging farmers to use their land and water in a more productive way. In addition to increasing agricultural productivity, sustainable intensification requires that farming avoids creating lasting damage to the environment which may reduce productivity in the future. Therefore, policies must also address the problem of encroachment on the environment from agriculture. Key to this is removing distortions in policy frameworks that lead to unsustainable practices. In some countries, for example, the energy used for pumping water from groundwater resources is available at no cost so there is no signal to farmers that they should be careful about the way they use their water. In such places you see that groundwater aquifers quickly become overexploited. Removing these non-natural incentives would help make better use of water resources. Another aspect is that which we call externalities, those impacts which are caused by one group of people but are felt by others such as environmental problems. In agriculture, if one farmer produces in an unsustainable way other people will be affected, for instance, excessive withdrawals of water can affect people s ability to use water downstream and loss of biodiversity due to the destruction of habitats has an impact on the global community. In order to resolve these externalities we have to find a way to internalise them and reward farmers for when they do a good job. Finding such incentives, together with regulations that induce farmers to adopt a more sustainable approach to land and water management are examples of policies that can be used to improve land water resource management.

8 Finally, there is a whole set of improvements that can be made in land and water legislation, the capacity to enforce legislation, and in the institutions where it is made and enforced. Typically, land institutions and water institutions do business separately despite the fact that they are obviously very much connected (in particular through agriculture) meaning that they often make decisions that are not compatible with each other. Here we have to make a much better effort to improve the coherence of the work and policies that land, water, agriculture, and food security related institutions develop so that we don t have conflict in terms of these policies. In conclusion, presented here are a few examples of what should be done now to improve the management of land and water resources. The threat to the world s resources is not something that can be left to be dealt with in the future, and there are a lot of places where we need to act now. The future will create further burdens in terms of additional people to feed and therefore creates a reason for acting now to try to improve current policies in terms of land and water management. References 1. FAO (2011), The State of the World s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture Managing Systems at Risk. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome and Earthscan, London. About the author(s) Jean-Marc Faurès, is Senior Water Resources Management Officer at FAO s Land and Water Division. His work includes projects related to water resources assessment, water demand management in agriculture and land and water adaptation to climate change, in the framework of FAO s programme Coping with water scarcity. M. Faurès participates in several programmes aimed at analysing trends and assessing future development pathways in agricultural water management. Chris read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University; completed a Masters degree in Environmental and Resource Economics at the Australian National University; and now works as an Environmental Economist at the Crawford School of Economics and Government. The article is based on a recorded interview with the Global Water Forum. About the Global Water Forum The Global Water Forum (GWF) is an initiative of the UNESCO Chair in Water Economics and Transboundary Governance at the Australian National University. The GWF presents knowledge and insights from some of the world s leading water researchers and practitioners. The contributions generate accessible and evidence-based insights towards understanding and addressing local, regional, and global water challenges. The principal objectives of the site are to: support capacity building through knowledge

9 sharing; provide a means for informed, unbiased discussion of potentially contentious issues; and, provide a means for discussion of important issues that receive less attention than they deserve. To reach these goals, the GWF seeks to: present fact and evidence-based insights; make the results of academic research freely available to those outside of academia; investigate a broad range of issues within water management; and, provide a more in-depth analysis than is commonly found in public media. If you are interested in learning more about the GWF or wish to make a contribution, please visit the site at or contact the editors at globalwaterforum@gmail.com. The views expressed in this article belong to the individual authors and do not represent the views of the Global Water Forum, the UNESCO Chair in Water Economics and Transboundary Water Governance, UNESCO, the Australian National University, or any of the institutions to which the authors are associated. Please see the Global Water Forum terms and conditions here. Copyright 2012 Global Water Forum. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivative Works 3.0 License. See to view a copy of the license.