Compendium of Approaches to Improve Water Productivity
Globally, agriculture is the largest user of water, accounting for at least 70% of all water withdrawals
(Scheierling and Tréguer, 2018). The demand for water in agriculture will in 2050 is expected to go up by
50% over 2013 figures (FAO, 2017). This is triggered by:
• The demand for food is expected to rise by 60% by 2050 (FAO, 2011). This is caused by rising
population (40%) and by increasing per capita calorie intake (11%).
• This demand for food is matched by demand for non-food products. The demand for timber
is to increase by 45% from 2005 to 2030; in the same period demand for roundwood will go
up by 47% (FAO, 2009). Demand for cotton is to increase with 81% between 2010 and 2050.
While livelihoods of people and national food securities are dependent on effective crop production, water
is often the limiting factor. Water resources are finite and there is competition with other water users and
the environment. It therefore is important to improve the water use efficiency in agriculture to improve
water and food security and farm returns. This is also explicitly reflected in the Sustainable Development
Goals (SDG) 6.4, which reads: By 2030, substantially increase water-use efficiency across all sectors and
ensure sustainable withdrawals and supply of freshwater to address water scarcity and substantially
reduce the number of people suffering from water scarcity.
Improving water productivity, defined as the amount of agricultural production per volume of water
consumed, is thereby an important component. There are different definitions of water productivity,
ranging from biophysical, economic to socio economic.
In spite of this urgency and all the attention given to improving water use efficiency in the last two decades,
the overall trends in actual performance of the water systems in many countries has been negative rather
than positive. A study implemented for the Islamic Development Bank evaluated the change in several
agricultural indicators from 2009-20201
. It shows that more water is used in the existing irrigation systems
and water productivity in many countries has gone down rather than up (MetaMeta, forthcoming).
Similarly, in rainfed systems, water productivity has consistently gone down in a large number of countries.
These analyses illustrate that there is a huge potential to reach food security through improving water
management practices than on expanding irrigated areas. It is time to make better use of the limited
resource we have rather than inefficiently exploiting more of it.
Article source: https://waterpip.un-ihe.org/sites/waterpip.un-ihe.org/files/wp_compendium_final.pdf
