Food crisis due to drought and heat

The report warns of the growing water crisis, coupled with global warming and the loss of biodiversity, all three of which reinforce each other. However, the document also includes actions that must be taken urgently and collectively to stop this crisis.

Criminal human activities: The source of all the planet’s freshwater, precipitation patterns are changing, leading to a shift in worldwide supply and a shift in the global hydrological cycle. Each high temperature adds 7% humidity to the water cycle, overloading and condensing the cycle, causing more extreme weather events.

The study highlights that more than 2 billion people lack access to safely managed water, 4 billion people experience famine for at least one month of the year, and a child under the age of 5 dies every 80 seconds from water-borne diseases. This is why the authors of the report call for developing a new water economy.

Spain is not explicitly mentioned in the report, but the water situation and future are reflected in various maps. One of them reveals that Spain will be one of the countries to record the largest reduction in food supply in 2050 due to water and heat stress.

The decrease in the Peninsula will be between 12.4% and 14.9%, which will make us one of the countries most affected by this decrease in food in Europe. Only South Asian countries in the lane from Afghanistan to China will exceed this percentage, excluding all countries in the Indochina peninsula except Burma.

a transnational problem

However, water is a supranational, global problem. Science has shown that communities and nations are hydrologically intertwined not only with rivers and surface waters, but also with atmospheric moisture flows (“atmospheric rivers” as scientists describe them). Conclusion: Applications in any region assume an effect on precipitation recorded in other regions.

“If left unchecked, the global water crisis will endanger all Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and make them virtually impossible to achieve. It will endanger food and health security, exacerbate poverty and peace within and between nations,” the Commission warns.

All of this will “disproportionately affect women, vulnerable and marginalized groups in indigenous communities, youth, farmers, workers and small and medium businesses,” he adds.

All countries have already been pushed into serious food insecurity. And floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires are causing “unprecedented human, economic and ecological costs in nearly every region of the world,” he says.

“Global population and income growth and changes in per capita consumption of food, feed, fiber, wood and energy have led to unprecedented land and freshwater use in agriculture,” Metin says.

Blue water withdrawals (from rivers, aquifers, lakes and water reservoirs) have increased from 500 cubic kilometers in 1900 to over 4,000 in 2022. This has contributed to global groundwater depletion and degradation of coastal environments.

The report’s authors argue that breaking out of this stalemate requires “collective and urgent, bold and integrated action” that must be implemented by 2030. Actions should be local, regional, national and global. The authors summarize their recommendations to achieve a sustainable and equitable water future in seven points:

• Manage the water cycle as a global commons that must be protected collectively and in the interests of all. This means recognizing that water is increasingly intertwined with climate change and the depletion of the planet’s natural capital; He said that it is essential for food security and that it will only be sustainable in every corner of the world with justice and equity.

• To ensure the fulfillment of the right to water for all. Take a results-oriented, task-oriented approach to water that encompasses all the important roles it plays in human well-being. The human right to drinking water for domestic use must be fulfilled; innovation and industrial strategy should be used to solve specific problems; They need to increase their water investments through public-private partnerships.

• Stop underestimating water. Affordable pricing will ensure a more efficient, equitable and more sustainable use of water, as well as supporting people in need. The non-economic value of water should also be taken into account in decisions taken to ensure the protection of the planet and the nature on which life depends.

• Reduce subsidies to agriculture and water. Gradual removal of subsidies of up to $1 billion (930 million euros) each year for agriculture and water, which often lead to overconsumption and environmentally harmful practices. Water leakage, which costs billions of dollars a year, must be drastically reduced and water footprint disclosure is necessary to shift capital and consumer choices towards sustainable practices.

• Encourage private investment. Build partnerships for fair water to enable investments in access to water in low- and middle-income countries. Attract private companies, banks, institutions and philanthropists as investors. The economic returns of these investments will be much higher than their costs.

• Strengthen freshwater storage systems, especially dangerously depleted natural assets such as wetlands and groundwater. It is necessary to develop a circular urban water economy through the recycling of industrial and urban wastewater and transform agriculture into precision irrigation and crops that require less water. It is one of the ways of non-destructive agriculture.

• Reshaping multilateral water governance, which is now fragmented. Trade policy should be used as a tool for more sustainable use of water by incorporating conservation standards into trade agreements. Farmers, women, youth, indigenous peoples and local communities and consumers at the forefront of water conservation must be empowered.