Abstract
Water scarcity raises major concerns on the sustainable future of humanity and the conservation of important ecosystem functions. To meet the increasing food demand without expanding cultivated areas, agriculture will likely need to introduce irrigation in croplands that are currently rain-fed but where enough water would be available for irrigation. “Agricultural economic water scarcity” is, here, defined as lack of irrigation due to limited institutional and economic capacity instead of hydrologic constraints. To date, the location and productivity potential of economically water scarce croplands remain unknown. We develop a monthly agrohydrological analysis to map agricultural regions affected by agricultural economic water scarcity. We find these regions account for up to 25% of the global croplands, mostly across Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia. Sustainable irrigation of economically water scarce croplands could feed an additional 840 million people while preventing further aggravation of blue water scarcity.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | eaaz6031 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-11 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Journal | Science advances |
| Volume | 6 |
| Issue number | 18 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 29 Apr 2020 |
Funding
L.R. was supported by The Ermenegildo Zegna Founder's Scholarship and by the AGU Horton Hydrology Research Grant. M.C.R. and D.D.C. were supported by Cariplo Foundation through the grant 2018-0887 SUSFEED (CUP D44I19004030007) and by Politecnico di Milano through the POLISOCIAL AWARD 2018 - BOA_MA_NHA! (CUP D46C19000330005). P.D. was funded by the USDA Hatch Multistate project#W4190 capacity fund. The study was also partly supported by National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) through NSF Grant DBI-1052875.
