By David Stanway
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Countries need a new international pact to solve a growing water crisis that could cut economic growth by at least 8% and threaten half of the world’s food supply by 2050, it said an OECD-backed committee Thursday.
Climate change, destructive land use and chronic mismanagement have put “unprecedented pressure” on the global water cycle, according to the Global Commission on the Economics of Water (GCEW), a two-year research initiative launched by the Netherlands in 2022.
Densely populated regions such as northwest India, northeast China and southern and eastern Europe are particularly vulnerable to water shortages, the report said.
Governments must work together to create incentives to transform the way water is consumed and ensure investments in vital infrastructure go to the right places, GCEW said in its final report.
“We will need to set common goals for water sustainability,” said Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, co-chair of the GCEW.
“Ultimately, a global water pact will be needed. It will take several years to get there, but we are going to start that process,” he said at a briefing ahead of the report’s launch.
The report states that the global water supply can no longer be relied upon, partly due to changing rainfall patterns, with every 1 degree Celsius of warming estimated to increase moisture retention in the atmosphere by 7%.
“For the first time, we are actually changing the source of all fresh water, which is precipitation,” said Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and another co-chair of the committee.
In addition to ‘blue water’ in rivers and lakes, the committee also looked at ‘green water’ in the soil and plant life. After evaporation, green water provides about half of global rainfall, a process known as ‘atmospheric rivers’.
Rising temperatures have created a vicious cycle, with lower soil moisture exacerbating droughts and forest fires and causing more degradation and loss of biodiversity, further disrupting atmospheric river flows, the commission said.
Regions dependent on high levels of irrigation may experience a decrease in water storage capacity. According to current trends, global grain production could fall by as much as 23%.
Financing mechanisms are needed to encourage investment in water infrastructure, especially in more vulnerable countries, and banks should also make their lending conditional on protecting water supplies, the report said.
Global efforts are also needed to properly price water and to “redistribute” an estimated $600 billion in annual agricultural subsidies that encourage overconsumption and the planting of water-intensive crops in unsuitable regions, said Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director general of the World Trade Organization and another GCEW co-chair.
While multilateral cooperation is needed to tackle threats to global water supplies, growing shortages could worsen geopolitical tensions, said Genevieve Donnellon-May, a researcher at the Oxford Global Society think tank who studies water politics.
“One concern is that growing water scarcity could lead to less cross-border cooperation, both at the subnational level… and also between countries,” she said.
