South Asia
Climate change, food and water security in South Asia: critical issues and cooperative strategies in an age of increased risk and uncertainty
Climate change, water security and food security in South Asia
Authors:
T. Shah (ed); U. Lele (ed)
Publisher:
Global Water Partnership, 2011
A key challenge for the South Asian region is achieving food and water security. This publication makes reference to a workshop held in Sri Lanka and examined how the region can best address the threats and opportunities embedded in the nexus between climate change, water security and food security.
The paper underlines a couple of facts:
- the risk and uncertainty are increasing in the region due to warmer temperatures and increased incidence of temperature-influenced diseases and pests.
- while climate change will likely bring more floods, it will also be the cause of deepening water scarcity.
The report highlights the importance of integrated water resources management (IWRM), where water resources management is considered as an integral part of a larger framework of natural resource and environment management.
On the other hand, the authors believe that improved transboundary water management is a potentially powerful adaptation strategy against climate change.
The document’s recommendations can be summarised as follows:
- there is a need to work across boundaries by transforming people and organisations, by driving innovation and by solving problems.
- land and water resources management, including the revitalisation of public irrigation systems, are urgently needed.
- in this sense, making good investments in infrastructure to store and transport water, and treat and reuse waste water is required.
- it is important to examine energy subsidies in conjunction with the issues of food and water security.
- it is essential to craft robust institutions that are able to gather and analysis related information, and have the capacity to predict and plan, to help taking and implementing proper decisions.
- moisture recycling can potentially be an important element in climate change adaptation strategy, still salinisation needs to be tackled by improving surface water management (e.g. limiting system losses).
