Sunday Times 2
Asia running out of groundwater
[NEW DELHI] India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan along with China account for nearly half of the world’s total groundwater use and these regions are expected to experience serious deficits, says the UN World Water Development Report (WWDR 2015), Water for a Sustainable World 2015 released ahead of World Water Day on 22 March.
Image credit: Manipadma Jena
WWDR 2015 explains the complex relationship between access to water and economic development using India as an example. Between 1960 and 2000 India’s mechanised tube wells increased from one million to 19 million.
India has 26 million groundwater structures; Bangladesh and Pakistan each have around 5 million.
Food grain yields have more than tripled since 1950 alleviating poverty, but 54 per cent of India’s landmass in 2015 faces high to extremely high water stress due to unregulated water withdrawal and intensified farming, according to the World Resources Institute.
By 2050, agriculture will need to produce 60 per cent more food globally and 100 per cent more in developing countries, including South Asia, the WWDR 2015 foresees. This will result in greater competition for water among agriculture, urban centres and industry.
One area of concern highlighted by WWDR 2015 highlights is providing water to world’s rising slum population, projected to touch 900 million people by 2020.
“In South Asia by 2012 the urban slum population was already a staggering 200 million – more than one-third of the 579 million total urban population,” Bharat Dahiya urban expert at the Social Research Institute of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, tells SciDev.Net.
Tushaar Shah, international water expert and senior fellow with the International Water Management Institute, Colombo, says that in the coming years groundwater extraction for agriculture will continue to increase and the crisis will deepen in South Asia.
Global groundwater use is 900-950 billion cubic metres (bcm) of water per year with South Asia alone responsible for one-third or 300 bcm per year. India’s withdrawal of 240 bcm per year is much higher than China’s 130 bcm per year.
Courtesy scidev.net