Rashaed Esson
Staff Writer
October 18, 2023 – Global water availability is threatened by climate change, rapid population growth, economic development and urbanization says, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in recognition of World Food Day on October 16th.
This year, World Food Day, under the theme “Water is Life, Water is Food”, heavily focused on water due to the current threat its faced with regarding availability on a global scale.
The FAO highlighted that the world is currently facing a water crisis, expressing that despite making up 50 percent of our bodies and covering 71 percent of the Earths surface, only 2.5 percent of the world’s “water is fresh and suitable for drinking, agriculture and most industrial uses.”
Two point four billion people, the Organisation further maintained, live in water stressed countries, many being smallholder farmers, particularly women, indigenous peoples, migrants and refugees, not to mention the growing competing for the water, fresh water, which FAO says is limited.
” Like all natural resources, fresh water is not finite.”
In fact, it revealed that unfortunately, freshwater resources per person have declined 20 percent in the past decades, adding that water availability as well as quality are deteriorating quickly as a result of poor use, management, over extraction of groundwater, pollution and climate change effects, over decades.
However, all is not lost as the organization pointed to a shimmer of hope with possible changes that can be made to improve the treatment of the world’s water resources, improving availability.
It said that more food as well as other essential agriculture commodities must be produced with less water while making sure that water is distributed equally among all ecosystems leaving no one behind.
Additionally, the Governments across the globe, it says, need to design and implement “science and evidence based policies that capitalize on data, innovation and cross-sectoral coordination to better plan and manage water.” Also, these policies, it further informed, must be supported with “increased investment, legislation, technologies and capacity development, while incentivizing farmers and the private sector to engage in integrated solutions for a more efficient use of water, and for its conservation.”