The purpose of the High-Level Meeting on National Drought Policy is to encourage countries to move from crisis management to disaster risk reduction – an approach already successfully embraced for hazards such as tropical cyclones and floods.

Specific targets include:

• Proactive mitigation and planning measures, risk management, public outreach and resource stewardship as key elements of effective national drought policy;
• Greater collaboration to enhance the national, regional and global observation networks and information delivery systems to improve public understanding of, and preparedness for, drought;
• Incorporation of comprehensive governmental and private insurance and financial strategies into drought preparedness plans;
• Recognition of a safety net of emergency relief based on sound stewardship of natural resources and self-help at diverse governance levels;
• Coordination of drought programmes and response in an effective, efficient and customer-oriented manner.

"Water will play a central role in creating the future we want," concluded Ban. "At the upcoming Rio+20 Earth Summit, the international community will need to connect the dots between water security and food and nutrition security in the context of a green economy."

Each March 22, the UN-Water partnership of 28 different UN organizations celebrates World Water Day as a way to focus public attention on various water-related issues and the need to sustainably manage freshwater resources.

FAO is the lead UN agency for observances of the Day this year, which has the theme "Water and food security". The UN Food and Agriculture Organization is holding a day-long series of talks and discussions by international water experts at its Rome headquarters.  (Watch the event live online here).

Water for the future

During his own remarks, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said: "Twenty years ago, the first Rio Earth Summit highlighted the vital importance of sound water management in building a sustainable, food-secure future for the planet. While many countries have made great strides in improving their management of water resources since, much more needs to be done.

"We must meet the agricultural demand in a way that conserves water and other natural resources, ranging from the sustainable intensification of agriculture capable of producing the food the world needs while using water more intelligently to changing the way we eat, reducing losses, waste and promoting healthier diets,," he added.

Doing so will require investments in people, infrastructure, education and awareness building, and finding incentives for small farmers to adopt best practices and strengthening their capacity to improve their productivity, according to Graziano da Silva.

Boosting farmers' resilience against climate change, improving water governance, and establishing institutions to improve national and regional water management are also priority areas, he said.

Food and water waste

FAO estimates that 1.3 billion tonnes of food are wasted each year. A 50 percent reduction of food losses and waste at the global level would save 1 350 km³ of water annually, according to FAO. By way of comparison, the mean annual rainfall in Spain is 350 km³, the storage capacity of Lake Nasser in Egypt and Sudan is nearly 85 km³, and the water that passes the city of Bonn on the Rhine River in the span of a year adds up to around 60 km³.

Agriculture and water security interconnected

Today some 1.6 billion people live in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity and by 2025 two-thirds of the world's population could be living under water stressed conditions.

One primary reason for this is the necessary use of water for food production. The average human drinks 2 to 4 litres of water every day, but it takes 2 000 to 5 000 litres of water to produce one person's daily food.

Indeed, agriculture is responsible for 70 percent of all freshwater and groundwater withdrawals worldwide.

Yet the reason for this large water footprint is clear: irrigating, farmers can produce more food. Irrigated agriculture accounts for only 20 percent of the Earth's cultivated land area, but produces 40 percent of its food.

FAO's "Information Products for Nile Basin Water Resource Management" project has established modern hydrological monitoring and reporting systems across the Nile Basin, helped government authorities harmonize data-gathering, and produced a series of comprehensive surveys of water use and agricultural production.

"Up until now, there has been very little systemic study of how the Nile's waters are used — or could be used — to grow food, and key pieces of information that would allow for what we call 'sound water accounting' have been missing," said Pasquale Steduto, head of FAO's Water Development and Management Unit.

"The data this project has acquired and the information products it has produced will fill these gaps and let the governments of the region make the most of the Nile's resources," he said.

Narrowing window of opportunity

The population in the Nile basin — currently around 200 million people — is expected to increase by between 61 to 82 percent by 2030, according to an FAO report on the project presented at a meeting of governments in Kigali today.

At the same time, "environmental degradation, drought, weak institutions, low financial capacity, inadequate infrastructure and social instability conspire to perpetuate poverty in the region," it notes. Some of the eleven countries that share the Nile — Burundi, DR Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya Rwanda, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda — are among the poorest in the world.

And although the waters of the Nile have great potential as a lever of social and economic development, high demographic growth rates and accelerating pressures on land and water resources "narrow the window of opportunity for reversing the negative trends in the region," according to FAO's study.

Reducing the pressures on the Nile will require increasing the efficiency and productivity of water use along the entire food production chain, from farm to fork, building farming systems that are more resilient to climate change and enhancing trade in agricultural commodities among the countries that share the basin, said Steduto.

Knowledge and tools

Agriculture already uses more than 80 percent of renewable water resources in the Nile basin, FAO's work shows, and the potential for increasing water supply, say by draining wetlands or reducing evaporation in resources, is extremely limited.

"Nile water allocation has therefore become a near zero-sum game," said Steduto, explaining the rationale behind the FAO-Italy project. "So it becomes very, very important that water authorities have detailed information for good water accounting, and planning tools that let them weigh the costs and benefits of their policies and their resource management choices."

The "Information Products for Nile Basin Water Resource Management" project has consolidated spatial  information on water and agriculture in the region; a forecast of the region's future food requirements; a survey of the types of farming systems practiced along the Nile and; an analysis of possible future scenarios for water management and agriculture development.

Additionally, 18 technical manuals on water measurement techniques and technologies were developed and disseminated. Hundreds of staff in water management and agriculture agencies received training, including in negotiation skills.

A wealth of Geographic Information System (GIS) data on water, land and agriculture was acquired. Better data permitted the creation of the Nile Decision Support Tool (Nile-DST) — software that models the entire Nile system and allows planners to assess the trade-offs and consequences of different possible development scenarios.

At the same time, says Steduto, the project has strengthened a shared vision of natural resource management and sustainable developments among the governments of the Nile. "Only through a joint effort of the riparian countries can a sustainable future be designed and built," he said.

The $5 million Information Products for Nile Basin Water Resource Management project was financed by the government of Italy as the last of three projects it funded in the region for a total investment of $16 million.

23 August 2011

"Forests are part of the natural infrastructure of any country and are essential to the water cycle", said Eduardo Rojas-Briales, Assistant Director General of the FAO Forestry Department.

"They reduce the effects of floods, prevent soil erosion, regulate the water table and assure a high quality water supply for people, industry and agriculture."  He was speaking prior to the UN World Water Day which will be celebrated this year on 22 March.

Forests are in most cases an optimal land cover for catchments supplying drinking water. Forest watersheds supply a high proportion of water for domestic, agricultural, industrial and ecological needs.

"The management of water and forests are closely linked and require innovative policy solutions which take into account the cross-cutting nature of these vital resources", said Jan McAlpine, Director of the United Nations Forum on Forests Secretariat.  "The International Year of Forests, 2011 provides a unique platform to raise awareness of issues such as the water-soil-forests nexus, which directly affect the quality of people's lives, their livelihoods and their food security."

Moreover, forests and trees contribute to the reduction of water-related risks such as landslides, local floods and droughts and help prevent desertification and salinization.

Today, at least one third of the world's biggest cities, such as New York, Singapore, Jakarta, Rio de Janeiro, Bogotá, Madrid and Cape Town draw a significant portion of their drinking-water from forested areas. If properly utilized, forest catchment areas can provide at least a partial solution for municipalities needing more or cleaner water.

Generating momentum on forests and water

It is well known that water used by forests can be influenced and reduced by prudent forest planning and management practices such as the planting of appropriate tree species. Countries are stepping up policy and project activities to increase forest areas for the protection of soil and water.

Eight percent of the world's forests have soil and water conservation as their primary objective. While every hectare of forests make a huge contribution to regulating water cycles, around 330 million hectares of the world's forests are designated for soil and water conservation, avalanche control, sand dune stabilization, desertification control or coastal protection. This area increased by 59 million hectares between 1990 and 2010. The recent increase is largely due to large-scale planting in China for protective purposes.

Topics related to forest and water interactions have gained international attention in recent years. Many relevant conferences and events have been organized between 2008 and 2010, each of them looking at forests and water issues from a different perspectives (e.g. integrated water catchment area management and the role of forests in precipitation). Based on the outcomes of these meetings, a set of practical actions on forests and water supply are currently being developed for policy-makers and technicians.

Work is also continuing at the project level, particularly in transboundary water courses. One very prominent example is the "Fouta Djallon Highlands (FDH) Integrated Natural Resources Management Project" in West Africa.

This ten-year project, supported by the Global Environment Facility and jointly implemented by FAO, UNEP and the African Union, involves eight countries (Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, and Sierra Leone).

The Fouta Djallon Highlands are the point of origin of a number of international water courses, notably the Gambia, Niger and Senegal rivers. Shifting agriculture and tree felling for charcoal production led to heavy deforestation and depleted water resources in the area. In order to improve local livelihoods and water resources, the project aims to ensure the conservation and sustainable management of natural resources through the restoration of forest cover.

“The future of water is in a more efficient agriculture,” Diouf said at the opening of the Ministerial Conference of the 5th World Water Forum being held in Istanbul.

Agriculture accounts for 70 percent of all global freshwater withdrawals, though important differences may exist depending on the stage of development of countries.

It takes only two to three litres of water to satisfy the daily drinking requirements of a person, but 3 000 litres to produce the equivalent of our daily requirements for food.

“It is only by investing in productive sustainable agriculture based on good water management that we will meet our food and energy needs while at the same time safeguarding the natural resources on which our future depends” he said.

Concluding his intervention, Diouf expressed the hope that the 5^th World Water Forum will send a “call to the international community to ensure the urgent investments needed in water infrastructure in developing countries and to have a better management of water resources that can address fundamental human needs but also provide productive livelihoods for generations to come”.

FACTSHEET:  Growing more food—using less water

Environmental damage

Conventional intensive farming methods had often contributed to environmental damage, resulting in declining rates of agricultural productivity just as the world needs to double its food production to feed nine billion people by 2050, Pandey said.

"In the name of intensification in many places around the world, farmers over-ploughed, over-fertilized, over-irrigated, over-applied pesticides," he declared. "But in so doing we also affected all aspects of the soil, water, land, biodiversity and the services provided by an intact ecosystem. That began to bring yield growth rates down."

FAO said that the rate of growth in agricultural production is expected to fall to 1.5% between now and 2030 and further to 0.9% between 2030 and 2050, compared with 2.3% per year since 1961.

In developing countries, growth in wheat yields has gone down from about 5% in 1980 to 2% in 2005. Growth in rice yields went down from 3.2% to 1.2% during the same period while maize yields dropped from 3.1% to 1%.

Smaller footprint

Conservation agriculture could not only help bring yields back up but also deliver several important environmental benefits, Pandey continued. Aside from restoring soil health, it also saved on energy use in agriculture, reducing the footprint of a sector which currently accounts for some 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

It could further mitigate climate change by helping sequester carbon in the soil and also potentially save 1,200 km³ of water a year by 2030 since healthy soil retains more moisture and needs less irrigation.

Only with sustainable intensification of crop production can serious progress be made towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals on hunger and poverty reduction and on ensuring environmental sustainability, Pandey warned. "We are currently headed in the wrong direction for both of them," he added.

He urged governments, donors and other stakeholders to provide policy and financial support to ensure early, wider uptake of CA. Training, participatory research and building strong farmers' organizations should be accelerated while newly-developed CA equipment should be made widely available and/or manufactured locally.

Delegates to the four-day Congress include farmers, experts, and policy makers from all over the world. The meeting is hosted by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS). FAO, along with IFAD and other Indian and international organizations are among the sponsors and co-organizers of this largest global gathering of the Conservation Agriculture community.

As of September 2008, Newsroom stories are no longer separated into separate categories and can be found on the "News archive" page.