New data highlights hidden impact of changing climate and erratic rainfalls

Repeated droughts around the world have shockingly large and often hidden consequences, destroying enough farm produce to feed 81 million people every day for a year, damaging forests, and threatening to trap generations of children in poverty.

That is according to a new report from the World Bank Group titled “Uncharted Waters: The New Economics of Water Scarcity and Variability” which presents new evidence on how increasingly erratic rainfall impacts farms, firms and families.

It also shows that although floods and storm surges pose major threats, droughts are “misery in slow motion,” with impacts deeper and longer lasting than previously believed.

“These impacts demonstrate why it is increasingly important that we treat water like the valuable, exhaustible, and degradable resource that it is,” said Guangzhe Chen, Senior Director of the World Bank’s Water Global Practice. “We need to better understand the impacts of water scarcity, which will become more severe due to growing populations and a changing climate.”

The report found that impacts caused by drought can cascade into unexpected areas.

For families, the effects of drought can span generations.  The report finds that in rural Africa, women born during extreme droughts bear the marks throughout their lives, growing up mentally and physically stunted, undernourished and unwell because of crop losses. 

New data shows that women born during droughts also have less education, fewer earnings, bear more children and are more likely to suffer from domestic violence. Their suffering is often passed on to the next generation, with their children more likely to be stunted and less healthy, perpetuating a vicious cycle of poverty.

On farms, repeated years of below-average rainfall not only destroys crop yield – it forces farmers to expand into nearby forests.  Since forests act as a climate stabilizer and help regulate water supplies, deforestation decreases water supply and exacerbates climate change.

For firms, the report calculates the economic costs of droughts as four times greater than that of floods.  A single water outage in an urban firm can reduce its revenue by more than 8%. And if that firm is in the informal sector, as many are in the developing world, sales decline by 35%, ruining livelihoods and stagnating urban economic growth.

Many of the regions most affected by drought overlap with areas that are already facing large food deficits and are classified as fragile, heightening the urgency of finding solutions.

“If we don’t take deepening water deficits and the bigger and more frequent storms that climate change will bring seriously, we will find water scarcity spreading to new regions of the world, potentially exacerbating issues of violence, suffering, and migration,” said the report’s author and World Bank’s Water Global Practice Lead Economist Richard Damania.  “Current methods for managing water are not up to the challenge.  This sea-change will require a portfolio of policies that acknowledge the economic incentives involved in managing water from its source, to the tap, and back to its source.”

The impacts of erratic rainfall ripple through farms, firms and families, sometimes for generations. The report offers proposals for how to tackle these challenges, calling for new policies, innovation and collaborations.  

The report recommends constructing new water storage and management infrastructure, paired with polices that control the demand for water.  Utilities responsible for water distribution in cities also need to be properly regulated to incentivize better performance and investment in network expansion, while also ensuring a fair market return. 

The report also noted that when flood and droughts turn into economic shocks, safety nets must be put in place to ensure poor families can weather the storm.

Reconsider the impact of trees on water cycles and climate, Scientists ask

Forests and trees play a major role on water cycles and cooler temperatures, contributing to food security and climate change adaptation. 

In recent decades, the climate change discourse has looked at forests and trees mostly as carbon stocks and carbon sinks, but now scientists are calling for more attention on the relation between trees and water in climate change.

Scientists suggest that the global conversation on trees, forests and climate needs to be turned on its head: the direct effects of trees on climate through rainfall and cooling may be more important than their well-studied capacity of storing carbon.

A new publication and a symposium try to shed new light on the debate.

The research paper Trees, forests and water: Cool insights for a hot world compiles older knowledge and new research findings pointing at the important effects of trees on helping to retain water on the ground and to produce cooling moisture, which in turn have a positive impact on food security and climate change adaptation.

Authors are also participating in a two-day virtual symposium hosted by FTA, the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry. On the occasion of the International Day of Forests (March 21) and World Water Day (March 22), this webinar will serve to discuss the findings of the paper and to new areas of research about the linkages of forests with water and climate.

Trees for food security and climate change adaptation

“The role of trees widens,” said the Director of FTA, Dr Vincent Gitz. “This is very important in the context of the Paris Agreement, which recognized climate change is not only about mitigation, but also about adaptation.”

“The influence of trees on water cycles has important consequences on the global agenda for food security and climate change adaptation, at different scales,” Dr Gitz explained. “With trees, there is no tradeoff between adaptation and mitigation, but a synergy.”

“Carbon sequestration is a co-benefit of the precipitation-recycling and cooling power of trees. As trees process and redistribute water, they simultaneously cool planetary surfaces,” said Dr David Ellison, lead author of the study.

“Some of the more refined details of how forests affect rainfall are still being discussed among scientists of different disciplines and backgrounds. But the direct relevance of trees and forests for protecting and intensifying the hydrologic cycle, associated cooling and the sharing of atmospheric moisture with downwind locations is beyond reasonable doubt.”

Science collaboration for climate

This emerging area of research combines the knowledge of many fields of science: biology, chemistry, climate science, geology, hydrology and social science.

The paper and symposium are a good example of interdisciplinary research and collaboration which is necessary to address the issue of climate change adaption from multiple science and policy angles

Poor land use exposes Ghana to possible food and water scarcity

Ghana’s food and water security is under threat as the country’s arable lands are lost to illegal mining activities as well as infrastructural expansion projects, especially residential and industrial estates.

According to Director of the Crops Research Institute (CRI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), adequate measures must be put in place to address the challenge of land and water pollution.

She says the increasing human population demands that the country pursues the conservation of farm lands and water bodies to help boost crop production.

She however says the CSIR-CRI has the capacity to restore soil fertility to put destroyed farm lands into productive use.

Dr. Ennin spoke to LuvNews at a workshop on agricultural extension projects under the Korea-Africa Food and Agriculture Cooperation Initiative (KAFACI).

KAFACI is an intergovernmental and multilateral corporation body aimed at improving food production, achieve sustainable agriculture and enhance extension services of African countries through knowledge and information sharing on agricultural technologies.

The event brought together agricultural personnel from selected African countries to share research findings to enhance extension services.

Dr. Ennin believes the project would help capacity building and improve upon extension offices as a guide against the shortage of food in the future.