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 on 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,” the Global Commission on the Economics of Water (GCEW) reports.
The report also warns that water crisis could lead to an average decline in GDP of eight percent in high-income countries and up to 15 percent in low-income countries by 2050.
Disruptions to the water cycle “have major global economic impacts”, the report said.
Economic decline will be the result of “the combined effects of changing rainfall patterns and rising temperatures due to climate change, as well as declining total water storage and lack of access to clean water and sanitation”.
Faced with this crisis, the report calls for viewing the water cycle as a “global common good” and for changes in water governance at all levels.
“The costs of these actions pale in comparison to the harm to the economy and humanity caused by continued inaction,” it said.
While water is often considered “nature’s abundant gift”, the report emphasizes that it is scarce and expensive to transport.
It called for “eliminating harmful subsidies in water-intensive sectors or redirecting them toward water-saving solutions and providing targeted aid for the poor and vulnerable.”
“We have to link the price of water to appropriate subsidies,” Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, WTO director-general and co-chair of the GCEW, said during an online briefing.
Another co-chair, President of Singapore Tharman Shanmugaratnam, stressed the need to view water as a global problem, “innovate and invest” to solve the crisis, and “stabilize the global hydrological cycle”.
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