The world’s supplies of fresh water can no longer be counted on due to a shift in rainfall patterns caused by climate change, a major report has warned. It's calling for global cooperation to address a problem that could put more than half of the world’s food production at risk by 2050.
Climate change, destructive land use and mismanagement of supplies has put the global water cycle under "unprecedented stress", the Global Commission on the Economics of Water (GCEW) warned in a report published Thursday.
"Nearly three 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 GCEW, a two-year research initiative set up by the Netherlands in 2022.
Densely populated regions are especially vulnerable to freshwater shortages, it said, including northwestern India, northeastern China and southern and eastern Europe.
Agriculture is impacted, with global cereal production falling by as much 23 percent if current trends continue.
Vicious cycle
Rising temperatures have created a vicious cycle, leading to the loss of “green water”, the moisture contained in soils and plant life, whose evaporation provides around half of global rainfall.
High temperatures leads to drier soil, which worsens droughts and wildfires, causing more degradation and biodiversity loss, which further reduces the amount of available “green water” in the soil.
Disruptions of the water cycle "have major global economic impacts," said the report.
The water crisis could lead to an 8 percent drop in GDP on average for high-income countries by 2050 and as much as 15 percent for lower-income countries.
The economic declines would be a consequence of "the combined effects of changing precipitation patterns and rising temperatures due to climate change, together with declining total water storage and lack of access to clean water and sanitation".
Global cooperation
The report called for the water cycle to be viewed as a "global common good", which governments must work together to protect.
"We are going to have to set common goals for water sustainability," said Singapore’s President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, co-chair of the GCEW, at a briefing ahead of the report's launch.
"Ultimately, it will require a global water pact. It is going to take several years to get there, but we are going to start that process."
The report called for the elimination of "harmful subsidies in water-intensive sectors or redirecting them towards water-saving solutions”, noting that poor and vulnerable communities must receive particular care.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director general of the World Trade Organisation and another GCEW co-chair, said some $600 billion in annual agriculture subsidies that encourage the over consumption of water must be redirected, and that there must be a shift away from planting of water-intensive crops in unsuitable regions.
(with AFP, Reuters)
