When people speak about the water crisis they usually first think of access to drinking water. Today's lack of access to safe and affordable drinking water for over a billion people, and inadequate sanitation for half the world's population, are indeed a top priority for action. But for a very large group of people supply of drinking water and sanitation is not sufficient to satisfy their water needs. They also need water for agriculture, for food security, for their incomes. This is too often just forgotten. The UN specifies a minimum requirement of 50 liters of water per person per day that covers drinking, cooking and sanitation needs. However, the UN does not include the virtual water needed to grow the food these people have to eat. When a family consumes one kilo of rice, they consume the equivalent of about two thousand litres of water to grow that rice. Acknowledging the need for safe drinking water and adequate sanitation I shall therefore focus now on water that is required for food production. The majority of the 800 million poor, malnourished people live in the rural areas. The problem often is not that there is no food to satisfy their needs, but that they lack the means to buy that food. India, for instance, in recent years had a surplus of cereals in its warehouses.
At the same time large numbers of people were malnourished. Only agriculture can provide hundreds of millions of poor people in rural areas with food and income. Poor people must be provided with a realistic opportunity to grow their own food. After a period of neglect it appears that many governments are now re-discovering that sustainable agriculture for smallholders is a top priority to achieve sustainable development. In Africa, in particular, agriculture can be an engine of economic development. Sustainable agriculture that delivers a decent income to small farmers is a complex matter. Farmers need access to land, to seeds, to fertilizers, to markets - and each of these factors can be a major constraint on the road to sustainable agriculture. It goes without saying, that a reliable government that respects land rights and entitlements is also a prerequisite for agricultural development. But I know that many experts agree with me that water has become the most critical constraint to growing more food and achieving better livelihoods for many, many poor people. Even the poorest farmers, usually women, who have no more than a garden plot, can still get a decent income with nothing more than their own hands if access to water is secured. That water is critical to agriculture is nothing new. It was the reason that governments and donor agencies invested many billions of dollars in water infrastructure such as large-scale irrigation projects and dams. We all know the controversies around those projects. As a result of these controversies investments in water resources development have virtually dried up. I am not arguing here that we should go back to the sixties and seventies and build dams in the same way we did then. The negative social and environmental impacts, the disappointing results of large-scale irrigation projects in Africa - they are all very real and we understand these so much better now than a few decades ago. The World Commission on Dams, after all, had its base right here in South Africa. But that does not solve the problem of the smallholder farmer in Southern Africa, who is confronted with the terrible drought that has hit the region now and who desperately needs reliable access to more water to grow food and generate income for her family. At the same time we know that the water needs of people in urban areas, both for household and industrial uses, will go up drastically in coming decades. If we take more water for agriculture as well as more water for cities and industry from river and aquifers, then nature will pay a very heavy price. Already we have lost more than half the world's wetlands in the 20th century. We already have destroyed the quality of water in many rivers to such an extent that they have become a source of disease rather than a source of life. We are also rapidly destroying the same aquifers that gave water, that gave life, to millions of farmers in Asia. The use of water by people has already upset the balance of ecosystems. The biodiversity of aquatic ecosystems, wetlands - these are among the richest natural systems on our globe - depends on fresh water inflows. Often it is said that we should not waste any water by letting it flow to the sea. However, water that is not consumed by humans, and that flows to the sea, is not wasted. It supports fisheries and coastal zones that provide very significant ecosystem services to people. In many tropical countries agriculture uses more than eighty or ninety percent of all water taken from nature for human consumption. No wonder, then, that many see agriculture as the main target for water saving. Increase the efficiency of irrigation from 40 to 80 percent and one can solve the world water crisis, many people say. This is a tempting solution, because it sounds so easy. But the water cycle is complex and water lost in the field of one farmer is often re-used downstream by another. For example, while many farmers in Egypt have irrigation efficiencies in their fields of no more than 40 percent, the total efficiency in the Nile Basin is close to one hundred percent. This means that if the upstream farmers would become more "efficient" - letting no water entering their fields escape from it - then the downstream farmers will simply have less. Water is not saved, the overall efficiency of the Nile basin is not affected, only the distribution is changed. The upstream farmer uses more water at the expense of the downstream farmer. No water can be saved for use in cities or industry through increasing irrigation efficiency in the Nile basin. This reflects a terrible dilemma. How to provide water for food security and a decent income to hundreds of millions of poor farmers and at the same time increase water for cities and industry - without damaging ecosystems even more? It's a real catch 22 situation.
Damned if we develop more water resources, damned if we don't. And indeed, the Global Water Partnership identified this conflict between water for food and water for nature as one of the most critical problems to be tackled in the early 21st century. That is the challenge relating to water and food that I hope you will discuss today. Of course, this is not really new. That we need "more crop per drop" is a well-known motto. IWMI, the organiser of this session, has been advocating for many years that we need to focus on increasing water productivity, rather than irrigation efficiency. I was therefore extremely pleased when this call for higher water productivity in agriculture was taken up at the highest political level. Secretary General Annan has, at more than one occasion, called for a blue revolution in agriculture that focuses on increasing the productivity of water, more crop per drop. So, can this be done? Yes, I believe so. However, it requires a concerted effort at all levels. Water users at local level should be involved in the development of approaches that enhance the sustainable use at riverbasin level. Their dialogues can be strengthened with knowledge from other levels, national and international. It will require dialogue among all the water users. Dialogues such as presented here at the WaterDome. It will require real commitment. That is the challenge that I hope will be taken up by the next speakers in this session. But before I ask my esteemed fellow presenters and panelists to giver their views, I would like to discuss briefly some key elements that relate to the Water and Food Challenge. First, for political awareness, I think we need a target on water for productive purposes, for food. In 'No Water No Future' I proposed to hold the line on water that goes to agriculture. Specifically I proposed to increase water productivity in agriculture - both rain-fed and irrigated. This would enable food security for all people without increasing water diverted for irrigated agriculture over that used in 2000. What does this mean? We would achieve the food security target - halving the people malnourished by 2015 - and achieve the poverty alleviation target - halving the people living in extreme poverty by 2015 without diverting additional water to agriculture. To monitor this, we need to establish a baseline for what our water use for agriculture is now, or was in 2000. That is difficult but it has been estimated by FAO. Those estimates could be improved to become a workable and acceptable reference. It also means that we need to get a much better instrument to measure current water productivity. However it does not mean that we halt the further development of water resources for agriculture. Actions would have to be tailored to basins. I know, for instance, that the Yellow River Conservancy Commission, the basin management authority for the Yellow River, has a target to reduce diversions to agriculture by 4 billion cubic meter, or 10%, by 2010. At the same time there will definitely be excellent economical and social desirable investment opportunities in water resources development in African basins. Last but not least, we need to know how to go about increasing water productivity. And we need to understand how decisions made outside the water sector, impact agriculture and the access of farmers in the south to land, fertilizers, markets, and so forth. The international trade regimes in agricultural products - a key issue here at the WSSD - also have an enormous impact on the water and food sector. My earlier example, that it takes at least two thousand liters of water to produce one kilo of rice, will explain to you why some people refer to the export of food as the export of virtual water.
We do know, for example, that the agriculture subsidies in OECD countries, such as the European common agriculture policy or the new US farm bill, do have a major impact on where food is grown and water is used. Agriculture subsidies are currently around a billion US$ per day, that is, many times the total amounts of development assistance. These, and other regulations that limit market access have a major impact on the export opportunities of agricultural products from the South to the North. We should support the ambitious approach to reduce and change the nature of the European common agricultural policy and to increase access to markets, in the interest of developing countries. It is crucially important to carefully assess the impact of changes in subsidies in agriculture and in the international trade in food and fiber on the national and local demand for water for food. This should be taken into account in the Doha trade negotiations. I am not claiming that this will be easy. But I do know that the experts have identified opportunities to increase water productivity in many areas. Some of these will be controversial because they do have to do with molecular biology. In 'No Water No Future' I recommended to develop a strategy for the use of molecular biology to increase drought tolerance and water productivity of crops. Some have interpreted this to mean that I am advocating the use of genetically modified organisms. While I am not necessarily in all circumstances against the use of GMOs - I am certainly not advocating their use since there are promising alternatives. There are also substantial gains to be derived from the use of, for example, functional genomics, that do not have to imply the use of GMOs. But, more importantly, the core of my argument is that countries should get access to the information on benefits as well as potential impacts and risks to allow themselves to make informed policy decisions in this area. My final recommended action in 'No Water No Future' is that the CGIAR should assess the potential for increased drought tolerance and increased water productivity in agriculture. I am therefore very pleased that the next speaker is Mr Ian Johnson, the Chair of the CGIAR. I thank you.