The world’s supplies of clean, fresh water cannot sustain today’s “profligate” use and inadequate management, which have brought shrinking food supplies and rising food costs to most countries, WWF Director General James Leape told the opening session of World Water Week in Stockholm today.
“Behind the world food crisis is a global freshwater crisis, expected to rapidly worsen as climate change impacts intensify,” Leape said. “Irrigation-fed agriculture provides 45 percent of the world’s food supplies, and without it, we could not feed our planet’s population of six billion people.”
Leape warns that many of the world’s irrigation areas are highly stressed and drawing more water than rivers and groundwater reserves can sustain, especially in view of climate change. At the same time, he said, freshwater food reserves are declining in the face of the quickening pace of dam construction and
The World Water Week fountain in Stockholm (Photo by Alex de Sousa) unsustainable water extractions from rivers.
Experts seem to be telling us what many of us already know, but at least the issue is being looked at! No industry should be allowed to contaminate fresh water, and maybe if people lived closer to the land and had more idea of where things came from, they’d care more!
