Food and Fuel Consumption the Biggest Environmental Stressors

Today is World Environment Day. On that occasion, UNEP (United Nations Environmental Programme) this week released a report "Assessing Environmental Impacts of Production and Consumption" (press release: here, also in The Guardian). The report looks at the compound environmental impacts for human health, ecosystem health, and natural resources from industrial/agricultural production and also from a human consumption point of view. The report concludes that use of fossil fuels and consumption of foods have the most significant environmental impacts including impacts on the availability and quality of water resources:

For want of a drink

...is the title of a phantastic special issue on water in the Economist this week. An absolutely worthwhile read, front to back, for anyone interested in a primer on the global context of water, drinking water, sanitation, food production, water scarcity, water pollution, water management, and water politics and its importance to the planet's livelihood and survival. The report touches on all the important areas and does it well, REALLY well! The author, John Grimond, is to be congratulated to this series. This is the best thing "water" in the general media that I have ever seen, when it comes to providing an overview of water issues around the globe. It is an extremely timely article. It comes just ahead of our conference on "Sustainable Groundwater in Agriculture: An International Conference Linking Science with Policy", 15-17 June 2010, in San Francisco. Conference speakers include a number of the experts that John consulted with in preparation for his articles.

From my perspective - and related to several of the notes below - kudos to John Grimond also for making a successful effort to convey the hydrologic concept of "consumptive water use" (water that goes to evapotranspiration) in contrast to non-consumptive water uses (e.g., water down the kitchen sink), for pointing out the importance of agricultural water use and its link to feeding the world, for getting it right on the importance of crop ET, and for the clever integration of groundwater concepts into this whirlwind tour of global water.

Here is a list of links to the individual articles:

Inconvenient Truth: Some "Green" Energy Can Guzzle Water

...that was the title that the Davis Enterprise used for Todd Woody's recent NY Times article exploring a recent surge in solar projects and a recognition of the need for sometimes significant amounts of water being consumed by large-scale commercial solar power plants. The title caught my eye. Being a numbers guy by nature, I was wondering what this article may be calling a "guzzler". The lead example for the article (and associated blog) were two planned solar farms in the Amargosa Valley (right next to Death Valley). Annual consumption would be 1.3 billion gallons of water per year. Sounds like a lot of water, doesn't it? I prefer to use cubic meters or acre-feet and compare it to equivalent farm-water use, which is where most of our water use is besides environmental flows - I think that would provide a much better perspective than the one-gallon water bottle we buy in the supermarket:

Increasing Water Productivity in Agriculture?

Here is a very good article (and some food for thought) on agricultural water productivity from people who have looked at the water business in agriculture around the globe for some time. The article clarifies the key hydrological and irrigation engineering concepts around the politically hot topics "water use efficiency", "irrigation efficiency", and "water productivity" in agriculture. A very good read even for non-scientists. I am copying the abstract below.

Global Groundwater Recharge Map & Water Use

Ever wondered how much water percolates into the ground? Petra Doell et al., a few years back, published a global map of estimated groundwater recharge, which they recently updated and extensively discussed in a public journal article that includes beautiful color maps (I admit - I always liked looking at good maps). An interactive version of the recharge map is available now at the WHYMAP (world-wide hydrogeological assessment and mapping program).