What do use water for

Depending on where you live, your answer will be vastly different. For people in much of the Global North, not so much. I represent the latter group. Surprisingly, my current city, New York, is renowned for its clean water. Wrap your mind around this: currently, more than million people in India lack access to safe water. So what gives? For starters, the state has had minimal rainfall and snow over the past few years. Crazy right? Additionally, water- thirsty almonds grow exclusively in the state, consuming gallons of water per pound of nuts.

For example, basin authorities often hold limited ability to enforce water allocations and to convene stakeholders. Institutions charged with developing irrigation often limit themselves to capital-intensive larger scale schemes and tend to rely on public sector-based approaches rather than developing opportunities for small-scale private financing and irrigation management. Farmers and their organizations are also often responding to highly distorted incentive frameworks in terms of water pricing and agricultural support policies, which further hinder positive developments in the sector.

Given the existing constraints above, the agricultural water management sector is currently in the process of repositioning itself towards modern and sustainable service provision. It proposes a singular water approach on building resilient water services and sustaining water resources, while also managing risks related to broader social and economic water-related impacts.

This includes transforming governance and service provision as well as supporting watershed management and greening the sector and can be achieved by providing improved incentives for innovation, reforms, and accountability. The World Bank is committed to assisting countries meet their economic growth and poverty reduction targets based on the Sustainable Development Goals SDGs.

SDG 2 and SDG 6 establish food security and water management efficiency and water quality objectives for countries which are dependent on how water is managed in agriculture. Accordingly, the Bank has a major interest in helping countries advance their management of water in agriculture. However, due to its own fracturing of the water agenda in the Bank, there has been limited attention to addressing the higher level policy drivers of water use in agriculture, linking it to the overall integrated water resources management agenda, and facilitating broader water stakeholder cooperation.

Project development objectives and indicators have focused almost exclusively on farmer income, and inconsistently highlight water service improvements, though recent program have begun to explicitly consider improvements in overall water quantity and quality impacts.

The Bank has also been constrained by the challenges of difficult implementation. Most irrigation and drainage projects take longer than planned, and even then complete with less than fully satisfactory outcomes due to basic challenges in design and contracting. As a result, even where institutional and other aspects are addressed by project design, there is little space during implementation for the Bank and client to focus on broader issues of incentives and behavioral change prior to project closing, but rather all efforts are committed to completion of physical works.

In order to support clients in moving towards agricultural water stewardship, the World Bank is strengthening its overall approach to water in agriculture. Project design and implementation are providing the space to better balance infrastructure construction with institutional development consistent with agricultural water stewardship. In order to support this ambitious agenda, the World Bank is investing in upgrading the knowledge and skills of its staff, and strengthening partnerships, in order to bring experience and global expertise to the benefit of our clients.

The GSG organizes direct support to task teams in developing and ensuring the quality of analytical and lending activities throughout the project cycle. This includes an in-depth review of what determines successful implementation of water in agriculture engagements, developing guidance materials for institutional assessments, integration of other priority themes, and linking Bank supported programs to the agricultural water stewardship.

Technological innovations combined with changes in the policy environment are playing an increasingly important role in agricultural water management. Since , China has adopted this approach in the Xinjiang Turpan Water Conservation Project in the arid northwest region of the country. The Peru Irrigation Subsector Project raised agricultural production and productivity by enhancing the sustainability and efficiency of existing public irrigation systems. This is measured based on freshwater withdrawals as a share of internal renewable resources.

The World Resources Institute categorise water stress in the following ways: if withdrawals are less than 10 percent of resources then a country has low water stress; percent is low-to-medium stress; percent medium-to-high; percent high stress; and greater than 80 percent is extremely high stress. Many, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Syria, Pakistan, Libya have withdrawal rates well in excess of percent — this means they are either extracting unsustainably from existing aquifer sources, or produce a large share of water from desalinisation.

In the chart we see agricultural water withdrawals as a share of total water withdrawals versus gross domestic product GDP per capita. This links strongly to the structure of economies; at lower incomes, agriculture forms a higher share of total GDP and a larger share of agricultural employment.

Globally, 70 percent of water withdrawals are used for agriculture. However, water requirements vary significantly depending on food type. This water footprint is the sum of water requirement across the full value chain for example, the requirement of meat production includes the water requirement of the animal as well as the demand of the crops grown for animal feed.

This value also includes the quantity of wastewater or water which is polluted as a result of agricultural production.

It can include water from primary renewable and secondary freshwater resources, as well as water from over-abstraction of renewable groundwater or withdrawal from fossil groundwater, direct use of agricultural drainage water, direct use of treated wastewater, and desalinated water.

It does not include in-stream uses, which are characterized by a very low net consumption rate, such as recreation, navigation, hydropower, inland capture fisheries, etc. Water for the dairy and meat industries and industrial processing of harvested agricultural products is included under industrial water withdrawal. This sector refers to self-supplied industries not connected to the public distribution network. It includes water for the cooling of thermoelectric and nuclear power plants, but it does not include hydropower.

Water withdrawn by industries that are connected to the public supply network is generally included in municipal water withdrawal. It is usually computed as the total water withdrawn by the public distribution network.

It can include that part of the industries and urban agriculture, which is connected to the municipal network. Renewable internal freshwater resources refers to the quantity of internal freshwater from inflowing river basins and recharging groundwater aquifers. Data on renewable resources should be treated with caution; since this data is gathered intermittently, it fails to capture seasonal and annual variance in water resources which can be significant in some nations.

Data at a national level also fails to capture variability at more local levels, which can be important when analysing the sustainability of particular groundwater aquifers or surface water basins. Water stress is defined in its simplest terms as occurring when water demand or withdrawal substantiates a large share of renewable water resources.

The World Resources Institute WRI define baseline water stress based on the ratio of annual water withdrawals to renewable resources. Water scarcity is more extreme than water stress, and occurs when water demand exceeds internal water resources. Freshwater use. Click to open interactive version. Renewable freshwater resources. Renewable freshwater resources per capita.

Per capita renewable water resources by region. Agricultural water withdrawals. What share of agricultural land is irrigated? Industrial water withdrawals. Household water withdrawals. Water stress and scarcity.