According to the authors of new research released today at the World Water Week in Stockholm, a radical transformation in how farming and natural systems interact could simultaneously boost food production and protect the environment—two goals that often have been at odds. The authors warn, however, that the world must act quickly if the goal is to save the Earth’s main breadbasket areas—where resources are so depleted the situation threatens to decimate global supplies of fresh water and cripple agricultural systems worldwide.
A new analysis resulting from the joined forces of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) outlines the urgent need to rethink current strategies for intensifying agriculture, given that food production already accounts for 70 to 90 per cent of withdrawals from available water resources in some areas. The report, An Ecosystem Services Approach to Water and Food Security, finds that in many breadbaskets, including the plains of northern China, India’s Punjab and the Western United States, water limits are close to being “reached or breached.” Meanwhile, 1.6 billion people live under water scarcity conditions, and the report warns that the number could soon grow to 2 billion. The current situation in the Horn of Africa is a timely reminder of how vulnerable some regions are to famine“Agriculture is both a major cause and victim of ecosystem degradation,” said Eline Boelee of IWMI, the lead scientific editor of the report. “And whether we can continue increasing yields with the present practices is unclear. Sustainable intensification of agriculture is a priority for future food security, but we need to take a more holistic ‘landscape’ approach.”
Meanwhile, a separate report by IWMI, Wetlands, Agriculture and Poverty Reduction, warns against seeking to protect wetlands by simply excluding agriculture. It argues that policies focused entirely on wetland preservation and ignore the potential of ‘wetland agriculture’ to increase food production and contribute to reducing poverty.
“Blanket prohibitions against cultivation do not always reduce ecosystem destruction and can make things worse,” said Matthew McCartney of IWMI, who co-authored the report. “For example, sub-Saharan Africa's grassy ‘dambo’ wetlands often provide vital farmland to the rural poor. However, banning farming in these areas has exacerbated rather than reduced ecosystem destruction. It has prompted deforestation upstream and led to a shift from farming to grazing in the wetlands themselves, so there has been a much greater impact on these natural systems. A balance is needed: appropriate farming practices that support sustainable food production and protect ecosystems.”
New Alliance Between Agriculture and Environment Groups
The two reports seek a new path toward achieving food security and environmental health. They focus on radically reorienting practices and policies so that farming occurs in ‘agroecosystems’ that exist as part of the broader landscape, where they help maintain and supplement clean water, clean air and biodiversity.
“We are seeing a growing trend of alliances between traditionally conservationist groups and those concerned with agriculture,” said David Molden, Deputy Director General for Research at IWMI. UNEP is the United Nations' voice of the environment, and IWMI is part of the world’s largest consortium of agricultural researchers, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).
“For instance,” Molden continued, “UNEP has adopted food security as a new strategic concern. IWMI and its partners in the CGIAR are developing a multi-million dollar research program that will look at water as an integral part of ecosystems to help solve issues of water scarcity and land and environmental degradation. IWMI has also recently become a key partner with the Ramsar Convention on the relationship between wetlands and agriculture.”
“The various political, research and community alliances now emerging are challenging the notion that we have to choose between food security and ecosystem health by making it clear that you can’t have one without the other,” he added.
Examples of Successful Integration in the Field
UNEP IWMI and collaborators have identified multiple opportunities to use trees on dryland farms that will intensify the amount of food produced per hectare of land area while helping to improve the surrounding ecosystem. Farmers can prevent runoff and soil erosion by integrating trees and hedgerows and retaining more water to nourish their crops.
Another example of innovative thinking includes better water and soil management in rainfed systems in sub-Saharan Africa, which have demonstrated the ability to reverse land degradation while increasing crop yields twofold or threefold at the same time.
Overall, the authors say it’s time for decision-makers at the international, national and local levels to embrace an agroecosystem approach to food production. These changes could include incentivising more farmers to adopt improved practices through ‘payments for environmental services (PES)’.
One example being explored by the CGIAR’s Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF) is the potential for benefit sharing in river basin areas of Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. Upstream users value the water for irrigation and ecotourism and have a spiritual affiliation with the ecosystem. The hydropower companies need a steady stream to support the downstream electrification of the growing urban population. Large-scale farms and agro-industry also need increasing supplies of water.
“More and more agriculture needs to be brought into the ‘green economy’,” said Alain Vidal of the CPWF. “We need to value farming practices that protect our precious water resources in the same way we are beginning to value forest management that helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions, especially because those natural resources support the livelihoods of the most vulnerable.”
In the report, An Ecosystem Services Approach to Water and Food Security, experts from UNEP, IWMI and 19 other organisations acknowledge that one major impediment to adopting a more sustainable approach to food production is that it requires a new level of cooperation and coordination among officials and organisations involved in agriculture, environmental issues, water management, forestry, fisheries and wildlife management—individuals and groups who routinely operate in separated, disconnected worlds.
“It is essential that in the future we do things differently. There is a need for a seminal shift in the way modern societies view water and ecosystems and the way we, people, interact with them,” said David Molden. “Managing water for food and ecosystems will bring great benefits, but there is no escaping the urgency of this situation. We are heading for disaster if we don’t change our practices from business as usual.”
