50pc of world's food production at risk due to water crisis

Over half of the world’s food production will be at risk of failure within the next 25 years as the water crisis is increasing rapidly on the planet, according to the Global Commission on the Economics of Water.

The report warned the ecosystem would be destroyed unless urgent actions are taken, as the entire system depends on water.

Currently, half of the world’s population is facing a severe water crisis, and the number is expected to rise as the climate crisis worsens across the world, the report stated.

By the end of the decade, the demand for freshwater will increase by 40 percent compared to supply because world water systems are shrinking unprecedently.

However, the research revealed that governments across the world did not estimate the need for water accurately. Meanwhile, each person on the planet requires at least 50 to 100 litres of water a day for health and hygiene, but that amount cannot be achievable for most of the region. 

“Water is victim number one of the climate change,” said Tharman Shanmugaratnam, the president of Singapore and a co-chair of the commission.

“The climate crisis manifests itself first and foremost in droughts and floods. When you think of the heatwave and fire, it is impacted hardly, due to moisture, and in the case of fires, global heating first dries out landscapes so that they burn,” he said.

An increase of 1 degree in temperature adds 7 per cent of moisture to the atmosphere, which powers the hydrological cycle more than it would happen under normal variation. 

The said variation was happening because of cutting down forests and draining wetlands that depend on transpiration from trees and the storage of water in soils.

According to the report, more than two billion people lack access to safe drinking water, and every day 1000 children die from lack of access to safe water.

This crisis will worsen by 2025 water problems, and over half of the world’s food production comes from areas experiencing unstable trends in water availability.