Water scarcity: already a grim reality for billions worldwide

“Water scarcity and water-quality issues are increasingly threatening food security and nutrition through their impact on agricultural production, food processing, households and consumers. At the same time, persistent and severe droughts, exacerbated by climate change, are causing increasingly serious water shortages in dryland agriculture, posing a higher risk to the livelihoods of rural people by reducing crop and livestock yields.

According to the State of Food and Agriculture 2020 report, the situation will only grow worse if immediate action is not taken. The report found that 3,2 billion people worldwide live in agricultural areas with high to very high levels of water shortage (affecting dryland agriculture) or scarcity (affecting irrigated agriculture), and 1,2 billion of these people, about one-sixth of the