FOOD SUPPLY RESTORATION & SECURITY: AFRICA

As part of the Crisis Policy Forum, the HotSpring collaborative innovation initiative is now planning an effort to tackle the problem of food supply management and chronic food and water scarcity in Africa. The lessons from this experiment in collaborative research will be applicable in many cases to other situations around the world, and we are open to spurring dialogue in those areas as outgrowths of this ongoing discussion.

Among the basic problems we now face, as a species, is the confluence of difficulties in providing reliable clean drinking water reserves, a viable and sustainable food web, by way of an integrated agricultural and distribution ecosystem, economic stability and cohesive political engagement within a defensible political framework.

Ethnic rivalries, resource-focused regional proxy wars, like the massive decade-long tragedy in DR Congo (in which as many as 14 states played a role), and political manipulations and their fallout, as we have seen in Kenya this winter, threaten to further undermine production and distribution systems.

Add to such conflicts the tens of millions of fatal cases of HIV infection, and we have a crisis of historic proportions where mass peril will drive political structures, borders and aspirations on an unprecedented scale. Small-scale logical enhancements to political and economic stability, democratization and integrated decentralization of administrative resources, are needed to reduce risk of mass starvation and heal mounting tensions.

Discussion is now open: please comment below. We would like to focus on practical solutions to:

1. Problems related to infusing food supply with enough to feed all those in need;
2. Environmental degradation: i.e. resilience services, ecological measures, ecosystem management;
3. Land use deficiencies: how to improve;
   
4. Animal and timber poaching;
5. Economic corrosion and instability;
6. Corruption and funding shortfalls;
7. Cooperative measures for extending food supply to conflict-afflicted areas;
8. Overcoming limits of transportation infrastructure;
9. Contagious disease: treatment, education, socio-economic impact;
10. Communications gaps: get relevant anecdotal and researched data to those who can use it.
    

World Creating Food Bubble Economy Based on Unsustainable Use of Water

Lester R. Brown, EPI :: On March 16, 2003, some 10,000 participants [met] in Japan for the third World Water Forum to discuss the world water prospect. Although they [would] be officially focusing on water scarcity, they [would also] indirectly be focusing on food scarcity because 70 percent of the water we divert from rivers or pump from underground is used for irrigation.

As world water demand has tripled over the last half-century, it has exceeded the sustainable yield of aquifers in scores of countries, leading to falling water tables. In effect, governments are satisfying the growing demand for food by overpumping groundwater, a measure that virtually assures a drop in food production when the aquifer is depleted. Knowingly or not, governments are creating a "food bubble" economy.

As water use climbs, the world is incurring a vast water deficit, one that is largely invisible, historically recent, and growing fast. Because the impending water crunch typically takes the form of falling water tables, it is not visible. Falling water tables are often discovered only when wells go dry.

Once the growing demand for water rises above the sustainable yield of an aquifer, the gap between the two widens each year. The first year after the line is crossed, the water table falls very little, with the drop often being scarcely perceptible. Each year thereafter, however, the annual drop is larger than the year before.

[...] Aquifers are being depleted in scores of countries, including China, India, and the United States, which collectively account for half of the world grain harvest. Under the North China Plain, which produces more than half of China's wheat and a third of its corn, the annual drop in the water table has increased from an average of 1.5 meters a decade ago to up to 3 meters today. Overpumping has largely depleted the shallow aquifer, so the amount of water that can be pumped from it each year is restricted to the annual recharge from precipitation. This is forcing well drillers to go down to the region's deep aquifer, which, unfortunately, is not replenishable.

He Quincheng, head of the Geological Environmental Monitoring Institute in Beijing, notes that as the deep aquifer under the North China Plain is depleted, the region is losing its last water reserve—its only safety cushion. His concerns are mirrored in a World Bank report: "Anecdotal evidence suggest that deep wells [drilled] around Beijing now have to reach 1,000 meters [more than half a mile] to tap fresh water, adding dramatically to the cost of supply." In unusually strong language for the Bank, the report forecasts "catastrophic consequences for future generations" unless water use and supply can quickly be brought back into balance. [Complete Text]

MORE AT
Sentido.tv, Water Crisis Special Report
Sentido.tv, Sustainable Development Report
EPI, la Eco-Economía, en español

Water Resource Stress: Global Economic-Ecological Factor for the 21st Century

Sentido.tv :: More than 1 billion people already face fresh water scarcity, figure expected to double in 20 years' time

Water is one of the "fundamental building-blocks of life", as is often said in science, in biology classrooms, in medicine, theology, environmental policy debates, and in cosmology and space exploration. It is also a commodity whose economic reality is increasingly defined by chronic scarcity and often intensely uneven distribution.

One of the most vital problems regarding the global water supply is the fact that we are already over-exploiting it, draining vital fluvial systems and ancient underground aquifers that cannot be replenished. This, coupled with the population boom and increasing industrialization, urbanization and consumerization of emerging economies, means global scarcity is fast becoming the rule.

In highly populated regions with little or highly-variable rainfall, irrigation and industrial uses are putting unsustainable pressures on the supply of safe drinking water. At least 1 billion people worldwide currently suffer the perils and hardships of a lack of clean drinkable water.

Experts calculate that by the year 2025, some 1.8 billion people will be living in regions with "absolute scarcity" of water resources, meaning they will be unable to meet demand for drinking water, irrigation or industry. The result is likely to be widespread economic chaos, famine, migration, and conflict, if no remedies are put in place ahead of time.

The first and most obvious result of such shortages is mass migration, the other is the spread of water-borne bacteria and infectious diseases. The human body can only survive a few days without hydration, so "absolute scarcity" has 3 key effects:

MASS MIGRATION: those who suffer the most extreme scarcity must move in search of survival;

DISEASE: water that carries toxins, disease and even raw sewage is a last resort, but becomes a tempting resource, and so disease takes root and spreads among afflicted and displaced populations;

COLLAPSE OF THE FOOD SUPPLY: extreme drought and desertification often follow a period of intense or prolonged degradation of agricultural water resources...

In such situations, the problem is massive and severe enough to generate real political instability and be a security concern for national governments. This means law, treaty and military power come into play, and economic crisis can rapidly evolve, or degenerate, into armed conflict. [Complete Text]

MORE AT
Sentido.tv, Water Crisis Special Report
Sentido.tv, Sustainable Development Report
EPI, la Eco-Economía, en español