Launching a Dialogue on Water, Food and the Environment
Ladies and gentlemen,
Last year, I had the pleasure of chairing the Second World Water Forum in The Hague. I was proud of the interaction we achieved among the many stakeholders who took part. But I will confess to one disappointment. After decades of preaching integrated water resource management, the water sector professionals themselves still practice their trade in a very sectoral manner. Irrigation engineers apparently still speak more to each other than to water supply experts or wetland managers.
They have produced no joint vision showing how they plan to work together to achieve their many goals. And the sector visions we discussed in The Hague last year didn't do so either. That is the problem I want to focus your attention on today.
Let me illustrate the issues we are dealing with by taking the example of Gujarat. I visited this Indian state several years ago. Gujarat has a population of fifty million, and an average of only eleven hundred cubic meters of water per person per year. The state was faced with serious droughts both this year and last. Groundwater is crucial for both farming and domestic use, but levels have dropped tens of metres and wells across the state have fallen dry. Water tankers provide emergency supplies to thousands of villages. Water has risen to the top of the political agenda and the Chief Minister has asked for advice on what he should do to alleviate the water crisis.
The state is industrialising fast and according to a recently published White Paper demand for water for domestic and industrial use is expected to increase explosively. Agricultural water demand is forecasted to increase significantly too. The White Paper points out that if the agriculture sector reduced its use by only eight to ten percent, industrial and domestic demand could be met. But what it doesn't say is that Gujarat currently uses over forty percent of all its renewable water resources for human consumption, and the rise in demand that is expected in the next twenty five years will push that percentage to well over seventy percent. That is extremely high by any standards, but particularly so in a highly variable monsoon climate. The current environmental problems of saline water intrusion and aquifer and catchment degradation are unlikely to be solved. Droughts are likely to become more rather than less frequent. What can the Chief Minister do?
How can Gujaratis achieve water security? Gujarat is far from alone in its dilemma. Moreover, as water resources get scarcer, the poor and vulnerable are impacted first and suffer most. The natural environment, the resource base, the land and water resources, biodiversity - these get degraded in a way that threatens the future of our children.
Crucial is that we need more cross-sectoral dialogue in the water sector. We need to move away from single, sectoral objectives to the recognition of the hierarchy of societal objectives affected by water management. Achieving, for example, the twin goals of food security and environmental security.
In the decades to come, populations are set to grow, incomes to rise, and countries to industrialise. Demand for water will increase dramatically, particularly in the urban areas of developing countries. At the same time, as people become more environmentally aware, calls for a healthy environment for both people and nature will grow louder. The large-scale development of river and groundwater resources is less acceptable now than it was in the period between 1960 and 1990, when most of the world's forty five thousand major dams were built. What is more, water infrastructure built in recent decades is decaying or becoming obsolete. Reservoirs are silting up and irrigation networks are crumbling.
Using subsidised energy, farmers have had access to water on demand, tapping key aquifers directly through tubewells. In doing so, they have made a major contribution to food security. But groundwater levels are falling in these aquifers too.
As water is channelled off to meet demand from the cities, less is available for agriculture. At the same time, groundwater sources are drying up, and financial and environmental constraints prevent the development of new resources. The consequences are becoming visible. Pakistan, home to the world's largest irrigation system, is increasingly hit by serious droughts. Farmers in irrigated areas have grown used to cheap and plentiful water. While the human population tripled in the twentieth century, water use multiplied sixfold. Most of this water went to agriculture. Farmers have dramatically increased their harvests in recent decades, thanks to high-yielding crop varieties and fertilisers. And thanks too to major investment in water resource infrastructure. What is more, with massive subsidies on energy they have been able to pump up groundwater, using resources that are unlikely to be sustainable or renewable in future decades.
How are we to find enough water to ensure food security for a growing world population, to safeguard health and livelihoods? And how are we to harmonise these needs with the needs of other water users and the environment? In other words, how can we grow the food we need with the water at our disposal? This is a truly global challenge. In many places, of course, water resources still have to be developed. But more generally, we are faced with the need to grow more food with less water, and meet the growing needs of the cities and industry without doing damage to the environment.
It will be a major challenge, but can be done, as the following examples illustrate. A few years ago, community groups introduced rainwater harvesting and well-recharging techniques in many thousands of villages in Gujarat. Their efforts have been remarkably successful. Last year I was in Namibia, where they are developing promising techniques using nets to harvest dew for desert environments. In Bangladesh, humble treadle pumps costing as little as twenty US dollars each are helping over a million families to grow vegetables and are freeing them from the poverty trap in the process. A good part of the Waza-Lagone floodplain in Cameroon has been restored, allowing traditional communities to continue practising flood recession agriculture, without affecting the irrigation scheme for rice production. The Lesotho Highlands project shows that one can build environmental flows into large-scale projects. Functional genomics holds enormous potential for breeding more drought-resistant plants or rice requiring less water to grow.
It is clear that water and land resource management in agriculture can be improved. But it is not at all clear whether irrigated areas should be expanded. Old-style irrigated agriculture, involving large-scale, publicly-funded irrigation systems, has gained a dubious reputation in some quarters, where there is less willingness to invest in new systems. In others, particularly among irrigation and drainage specialists, expansion is still considered unavoidable if food security is to be achieved and hunger and poverty reduced in rural areas.
We need to reach agreement on the direction water management for agriculture should be taking. That is the only way to prevent conflicts arising among users, and to ensure that more money is available for spending on projects that receive widespread public support. Users need to be involved more closely in managing their natural resources. Bridges must be built between the water, agriculture and environmental sectors.
So I am very pleased to be launching a new initiative here today. It is an initiative that aims to trigger a process of cross-sectoral dialogue on water for food and the environment. Ten international organisations have forged a broad coalition enabling many other national and local partners to join in the Dialogue on Water, Food and Environment.
The aim of the Dialogue is to bring together the water, agriculture and environmental sectors. It will focus on water resource issues, with activities falling under three headings. First, promoting cross-sectoral dialogue at national and river basin level. Second, developing a credible and authoritative knowledge base, acceptable to both the agriculture and environmental lobbies. And third, developing a platform for information exchanges between the hundreds of organisations carrying out projects in the field. These organisations have gained a wealth of expertise and knowledge that seldom reaches formal knowledge bases.
I sincerely hope that the Dialogue on Water, Food and Environment will make a significant contribution to managing water resources, and to achieving the twin goals of food and environmental security. The Dialogue will also be a key theme of the 3rd World Water Forum in Japan.
This dialogue will only be successful if you - as water professionals and stakeholders - are willing to reach out across sectoral borders. The global challenge is to find ways of responding to Mr Kofi Annan's call to arms at the Millennium Conference. "We need a Blue Revolution in agriculture that focuses on increasing productivity per unit of water - "more crop per drop".
It is essential to increase water productivity worldwide. But that is not enough. We must simultaneously seek to reduce poverty and ensure that more people share the benefits. We will need to find ways of co-managing water for agriculture and nature, for industry and domestic use. We will need to exploit complementarity, not emphasise diversity.
Locally it will mean finding ways for the Chief Minister of Gujarat to achieve all water-related objectives simultaneously, rather than separately, and be better prepared for the next drought.
We face enormous challenges. But we can meet them, if we are all willing to get involved. Last year I asked you to make water everybody's business! That is why I invite you, participants in this Stockholm Water Symposium, now to take up the challenge and join me in becoming ambassadors of the Dialogue. Help water managers at every level - local, national and global - to achieve the twin goals of food and environmental security.
Thank you.