Asia urgently needs to improve water efficiency, report says.

Asian countries urgently need to boost farmland productivity and improve irrigation efficiency or the continent may not have enough water to support its growing populations, a recent study found.

Dwindling groundwater supplies are already threatening drinking water and crop production across Asia. Meanwhile, undeveloped arable land is in short supply. As a result, Asian countries will have to import more food or improve irrigation methods, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and International Water Management Institute (IWMI) concluded in an August report.

"Relying on trade to meet a large part of this demand will impose a huge and politically untenable burden on the economies of many developing countries," said Colin Chartres, director general of IWMI. "The best bet for Asia lies in revitalizing its vast irrigation systems, which account for 70 percent of the world's total irrigated land."

About 5 billion people are projected to live in Asia by 2050. With the demand for meat products on the rise, experts estimate that the region must double its supplies of food and animal feed crops during the next 50 years to feed an additional 1.5 billion people.

Meeting the increased demand for food in 2050 would require South Asia to irrigate 30 percent more harvested land--a move that would increase regional water demand by 57 percent unless water efficiency improves. In East Asia, farmers would need to increase irrigated farmland by 47 percent, at the cost of a 70-percent increase in water use, the study said.

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Solutions include public-private partnerships that improve irrigation infrastructure, the use of groundwater aquifers for storing water, and more efficient use of rainwater on farmland. International funds for climate change adaptation could potentially be tapped to improve irrigation methods.

The study did not factor in the effects of climate change, even though irrigation demands in arid and semi-arid parts of Asia are expected to rise as temperatures increase. Noting the absence of climate modeling in their projections, the report authors said, "The study's pessimistic assumptions may prove overly optimistic."

by Ben Block

(unless otherwise credited)