Inaction on the water crisis could put more than half of the world’s food production at risk by 2050, experts warned in a major report published Thursday.
“Nearly 3 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 report by the Global Commission on the Economics of Water (GCEW).
The study also cautioned that by 2050, the water issue may cause high-income countries’ GDPs to decline by an average of 8% and lower-income countries’ GDPs by as much as 15%.
Water cycle disruptions “have major global economic impacts,” the paper stated.
The financial crisis would be caused by “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” .
The paper recommended changing water governance at all levels and viewing the water cycle as a “global common good” in response to this challenge.
“The costs entailed in these actions are very small in comparison to the harm that continued inaction will inflict on economies and humanity,” it said.
Despite the common belief that water is “an abundant gift of nature,” the research emphasised how expensive and rare it is to carry.
It suggested that we eliminate “harmful subsidies in water-intensive sectors or redirecting them towards water-saving solutions and providing targeted support for the poor and vulnerable” .
“We have to couple the pricing of water with appropriate subsidies,” said the World Trade Organization’s Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a co-chair of the GCEW, during an online briefing.
Another co-chair, Singaporean President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, insisted on the need to see water as a global problem, to “innovate and invest” to solve the crisis and “stabilise the global hydrological cycle”.
