After decades of relative neglect, agriculture and the need to produce sufficient food are high on the global development agenda. Reasons include the recent increases in food prices, the large number of food insecure people in the world and concerns over the sustainable use of land and water resources. These problems are exacerbated by the threat of climate change and other global changes, including demographic changes, urbanisation, change forest cover, change diets, foreign land investments, accelerated production of other agricultural goods (fuel, fiber and fodder) on scarce land resources etc.
Agricultural water management plays a central role in food production and food security.
On the one hand, poor water management practices contribute to depletion and degradation of land & water resources. On the other hand, improved water management plays a vital role in increasing food production and reducing food insecurity as well as supporting sustainable land and water resources development.
SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE
Explain the relationship between environmental issues and food security 3.2 Environmental Challenges and Risk to Water Security
Another class of threats is posed by the interaction of a rising demand for resources in the face of a finite supply. Water provides a particularly interesting example because it is vital to life. One of the most important areas of environmental concern is the earth's water supply. We need to be concerned about water pollution as well as the increasing scarcity of drinkable water in certain areas of the world.
According to the United Nations, about 40 percent of the world’s population lives in areas with moderate-to-high water stress. (“Moderate stress” is defined in the U.N. Assessment of Freshwater Resources as “human consumption of more than 20 percent of all accessible renewable freshwater resources,” whereas “severe stress” denotes consumption greater
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than 40 percent.) By 2025, it is estimated that about two-thirds of the world’s population—
about 5.5 billion people—will live in areas facing either moderate or severe water stress.
This stress is not uniformly distributed around the globe. For example, in the United States, Mexico, China, and India, groundwater is being consumed faster than it is being replenished and aquifer levels are steadily falling. Some rivers, such as the Colorado in the western United States and the Yellow in China, often run dry before they reach the sea.
Formerly enormous lakes, such as the Aral Sea and Lake Chad, are now a fraction of their once-historic sizes. Glaciers that feed many Asian rivers are shrinking. According to U.N.
data, Africa and Asia suffer the most from the lack of access to sufficient clean water. Up to 50 percent of Africa’s urban residents and 75 percent of Asians lack adequate access to a safe water supply.
The availability of potable water is further limited by human activities that contaminate the finite supplies. According to the United Nations, 90 percent of sewage and 70 percent of industrial wastes in developing countries are discharged without treatment.
Some arid areas have compensated for their lack of water by importing it via aqueducts from more richly endowed regions or by building large reservoirs. Regional and international political conflicts can result when the water transfer or the relocation of people living in the area to be flooded by the reservoir is resisted. Additionally, aqueducts and dams may be geologically vulnerable. For example, in California, many of the aqueducts cross or lie on known earthquake-prone fault lines (Reisner, 2003). The reservoir behind the Three Gorges Dam in China is so vast that the pressure and weight are causing tremors and landslides.
Water scarcity is one of the key challenges facing the world in the 21st century. The continuing availability of water underpins action on food security, energy security, poverty reduction, economic growth, conflict reduction, climate change adaptation and biodiversity loss. But increasing global exploitation of water resources across the world has led to significant degradation of ecosystems and the goods and services they provide. In many places, the result has been rivers that no longer reach the sea, lakes that are a fraction of their natural size and aquifers whose levels have fallen drastically. As well as being an
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issue of concern to environmentalists and communities, over-exploitation of water has economic impacts on businesses and can adversely affect the ability of governments to meet a broad set of policy goals. The concept of risk can be used to describe the impacts and highlight potential responses.
SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE
Explain the relationship between environmental issues and water security 3.3 Environmental Challenges and Risk to Energy Security
Energy and environmental security has emerged as the primary issue on the global agenda for 2007. Consensus has recently been forged on the potential for long-term economic, national security and societal damage from insecure energy supplies and environmental catastrophe, as well as the intense need for technological advances that can provide low-polluting and secure energy sources. Yet despite growing global momentum, there is still little agreement on the best set of actions required to reduce global dependency on fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions. Confounding the international policy challenge is the disproportionate impact of high oil prices and global warming across nations, insulating some countries from immediate concern while forcing others to press for more rapid change (McKibbin, and Wilcoxen, 2016).
Today, there are many options of energy sources such as petroleum, biofuel, coal etc. But all these sources are non-renewable sources and will get depleted in the coming years if their consumption is not checked. Apart from the energy crisis, resources such as coal and petroleum are contributing to the emission of greenhouse gases. Due to the excess usage of these energy sources, not only are the sources getting depleted, but they are also adding to the greenhouse gases which in turn are adding to the global warming conditions. So, many countries are searching for alternative energy sources such as wind energy, solar
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energy, nuclear energy, etc., which may help in the future. But to get totally dependent on these resources and ensure their proper functioning may take some time.
These challenges will only grow greater in the year ahead as the rising economies, specifically China and India, expand and consume at remarkable rates. According to the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA), China’s oil consumption increases by almost half a million barrels per day in 2006, or 38 percent of total growth in world oil demand. India’s electricity consumption is estimated to grow from 519 billion kilowatt-hours in 2003 to 845 billion kilowatt-hours in 2010. Overall, the EIA forecasts that worldwide oil consumption will rise from 80 million barrels per day in 2003 to 98 in 2015 and 118 million in 2030.
Although energy and environmental security are frequently argued about as separate and distinct issues, policymakers in the United States and abroad would be well advised to focus on mitigating climate change as the most effective means to the energy security end.
Establishing a credible, practical and effective framework for cooperation on climate change should be the primary means of making an immediate impact by addressing energy and environmental security in a coherent policy (McKibbin, 2005; Mckibbin and Wilcoxen, 2016) .
SELF ASSESMENT EXERCISE
Explain the relationship between environmental issues and energy security 4.0. CONCLUSION
In this unit, we examined environmental challenges and the risk to food, water and energy insecurity. We concluded that climate change seriously threatens food security in two ways. First, it will harm agricultural production: rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns will slow yield gains, contributing to higher food prices and an increasingly
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precarious supply-demand balance that will make markets more prone to volatility. Second, it will increasingly disrupt food systems: more extreme weather will destabilize tighter markets and exacerbate volatility, imperil transport infrastructure and trigger local food crises.
5.0 SUMMARY
In this unit, we have discussed environmental challenges and the risk to food, water and energy insecurity. Water, food and energy form a complex web of inter-linkages.
Agriculture is both energy user and energy generator. Energy generation from biofuel and hydropower are land & water-intensive and sometime compete with food production over limited land and water resources. Other energy sources, e.g. fossil fuels such as oil, coal, gas, nuclear, also have various impacts on water quantity and water quality. Nevertheless, food production is water & energy-intensive, accounting for 70% of global water use and 6% of global energy use. Energy policies and subsidies influence water use for food or energy. In other cases, food policies, subsidies and consumption patterns drive water use.