Can Global Food Production Cope With Growing Water Scarcity?

The world needs to grow more food to feed an additional ten billion people in 2050. However, a quarter of the total food produced globally is in regions or countries experiencing water stress.

Climate change and increasing competition for water will affect water supplies and, in effect, food production.

WRI shows the crops exposed to water stress and the interannual variability of water levels. The new data from the World Resources Institute’s Aqueduct Food platform analyses how increasing water risks affect food production worldwide.

Whether rainfed (66% of global food production) or irrigated (34%), both crops face increasing water risks.

Irrigated crops face water competition from industries, power plants, and households. Water stress is considered high when 40% of the local water supplies are used for purposes other than food production.

WRI notes that 60% of the world’s irrigated crops are grown in areas facing high or extremely high levels of water stress, and 66% of rainfed crops are vulnerable to unpredictable weather patterns.

Also, around 70% of the irrigated crops like rice, wheat, sugarcane, vegetables, and maise come from 10 countries: China, India, the United States, Pakistan, Brazil, Egypt, Mexico, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand. Two-thirds of these crops face high to extremely high levels of water stress, which means a high risk for global food security. Meanwhile, demand for water for irrigation is projected to rise to 16% by 2050 compared to 2019.

In countries like India, the demand for more water to irrigate crops is driving them to pump more groundwater and reroute rivers, which is unsuitable for the long term. Already, groundwater is depleting a foot a year in Northern India, and with rising temperatures, groundwater depletion can triple by 2080.

Where water stress is happening in the world

Addressing water stress

Climate change and unsustainable water management threaten water security and food production. Sustainable water management and practices are a climate adaptation strategy that builds the resilience of societies and ecosystems and reduces carbon emissions.

Managing water sustainably is a crucial aspect of addressing climate change, as highlighted in a recent article by the World Resources Institute (WRI). To effectively tackle this challenge, organisations should assess their water risks using tools like Aqueduct and Aqueduct Food. Corporations need to understand how their operations impact freshwater supplies, leading to a more responsible approach.

Furthermore, reducing food loss and waste is key, along with encouraging a shift from high-meat diets to foods that use less water. For instance, raising cattle for meat requires 50% more water than producing a pound of potatoes. Enhancing water use efficiency is also critical; innovative technologies, such as drip irrigation developed in Israel, have significantly improved agricultural resilience in arid regions, resulting in increased food production (Saccoccia and Kuzma, 2024). By adopting these practices, we can advance towards a more sustainable and water-conscious future. Read more from the “One-quarter of World’s Crops Threatened by Water Risks” article.

Another landmark review finds that more than half the world’s food production will be at risk of failure within 25 years due to the accelerating water crisis. According to a Global Commission on the Economics of Water report published in October 2024, the hydrological cycle is out of balance for the first time in human history, undermining an equitable and sustainable future for all (Global Commission, 2024).

Decades of collective mismanagement and undervaluation of water worldwide have damaged our freshwater and land ecosystems and allowed for the continuing contamination of water resources.

Global Commission (2024) says, “More than 1,000 children under five die every day from illnesses caused by unsafe water and sanitation. Women and girls spend 200 million hours each day collecting and hauling water. Food systems are running out of fresh water, and cities are sinking as the aquifers underneath them run dry.”

The Global Commission report says that while the degradation of freshwater ecosystems and the drying out of soil are effects of climate change, they also become drivers of the climate crisis, leading to more frequent and intense weather events. Total water storage is predicted to decline in areas where half of the world’s food is produced and where close to 3 billion people live.  

Water cycle

The Global Commission on the Economics of Water report features their call for bolder and more integrated thinking, adjusting policies and the new economics of water, which are as follows:

• One that recognises the hydrological cycle as a global common good: understanding that it connects countries and regions through both the water that we see and atmospheric moisture flows; that it is deeply interconnected with climate change and the loss of biodiversity with each rebounding on the other; and that it impacts on virtually all the SDGs.
• One that transforms water governance at every scale, from local to river basin to global, to ensure it is governed more effectively and efficiently, delivers access and justice for all and sustains the earth’s ecosystems.
• One that brings together fundamental economic concepts and tools, to value water properly to reflect its scarcity and the multiple benefits it provides as the Earth’s most precious resource.
• One that tackles externalities caused by the misuse and pollution of water but shifts from fixing them after the fact to shaping economies so that water is used efficiently, equitably, and sustainably from the start.
• One that spurs a wave of innovations, capacity-building and investments, evaluating them not in terms of short-run costs and benefits but for how they can catalyse long-run, economy-wide benefits and hence dynamic efficiency gains through learning, scale economies and cost reductions.
• One that recognises that the costs entailed in these actions are very small in comparison to the harm that continued inaction will inflict on economies and humanity.