Half of all global food threatened by growing water crisis, report says
The world has a worsening water crisis and half of all food production will be at risk of failure by the middle of this century.
That’s the worrying message from a report released Wednesday by a major international study.
Half of the world’s population already faces water scarcity and that proportion is growing too, according to the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, which is funded by the Dutch government and facilitated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — a group of the world’s richest economies.
While water scarcity will have a seismic effect on humans and the environment, it will also have an economic impact. The GCEW estimates that a lack of clean water due to climate change and the chronic mismanagement of land could cut global economic growth by 8% on average, with the loss almost double that in lower-income countries. [Continue reading…]