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dam-l [Fwd: GL: World must plan for water shortages]

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November 23, 1998
Study Notes Water Shortages
By The Associated Press

     WASHINGTON (AP) -- Water shortages in parts of the world in
the next 25 years will pose the single greatest threat to food
production and human health, according to a study financed by the
United States and Japan.

     At a time when 1.3 billion people worldwide have no access to
clean water, it also could become a key issue in conflicts, warns
the report's author, World Bank vice president and agriculture
expert Ismail Serageldin.

     ``New ways must be developed to take advantage of this
diminishing resource if humanity is to feed itself in the 21st
century,'' said Serageldin, who heads the Consultative Group of
International Agricultural Research. Work on the atlas was financed
by the Japanese government and the U.S. Agency for International
Development.

     In an effort to improve water management, the group has
compiled a massive electronic world water and climate atlas, a
high-tech undertaking designed to assist local farmers, their
bankers, government planners and even international financial
groups.

     Few Third World farmers have the knowledge or equipment to
download the atlas from the Internet or read it from compact discs,
Serageldin acknowledged. But the data will be available to
government agriculture agents who work with farmers.

     Indeed, the project has already identified a region in
Bangladesh where farmers can plant a type of chickpea on land that
previously was left idle during the dry season -- thus adding a
second crop to their annual food production, he said.

     The atlas provides maps of every country on earth, with the
user able to call up a variety of information. For example, farmers
can examine rainfall and hours of sunshine, temperature averages
and soil types in their home area.

     Worldwide, about 80 percent of water use goes for agriculture,
and demand is increasing. Most new food output comes from land that
requires irrigation -- meaning that water scarcity, not shortage
of land, is likely to be the biggest impediment to food production
in developing countries.

     The atlas, Serageldin said, can help identify ``areas which
today do not produce food but could without destroying forest.''
It can tell planners where new or different crops might be grown
without irrigation, or with supplemental irrigation rather than
costly full-time irrigation.

               In all, a quarter of the world's population is expected to
face severe water scarcity in the next 25 years, even during years
of average rainfall, the group estimates.

     And as surface water increasingly is used up fully in semiarid
regions of Asia, the Middle East and Africa, groundwater tables are
falling.

     The group also hopes to add more local information to the
atlas. That effort is now complete for the Indian Ocean country of
Sri Lanka, and other parts of Asia are being added.

     ``Down on the small scale is where the investment decisions
come in,'' Serageldin said.

     In the past, the data in the atlas has not easily been
available to local farmers and planners, but was usually scattered
among several government or international agencies.

     Now it is accessible on a set of compact discs and is
scheduled to be available in December on the group's Water
Management Institute Internet page at www.iwmi.org.

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Until it is put on the Internet, the atlas can be obtained from
James Lenahan, International Water Management Institute, P.O. Box
2075, Colombo, Sri Lanka.
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