Water

Water quantity—too much in the case of floods, or too little in the case of droughts—grabs public attention and the media spotlight. Water quality—being predominantly invisible and hard to detect—goes largely unnoticed. Quality Unknown: The Invisible Water Crisis presents new evidence and new data that call urgent attention to the hidden dangers lying beneath water’s surface. It shows how poor water quality stalls economic progress, stymies human potential, and reduces food production. Quality Unknown examines the effects of water quality on economic growth and finds upstream pollution lowers growth in downstream regions. It reveals that some of the most ubiquitous contaminants in water, such as nitrates and salt, have impacts that are larger, deeper, and wider than has been acknowledged. And it traces the damage to crop yields and the stark implications for food security in affected regions. An important step toward tackling the world’s water quality challenge is recognizing its scale. The world needs reliable, accurate, and comprehensive information so that policy makers can have new insights, decision making can be evidence based, and citizens can call for action. The report calls for a paradigm shift that emphasizes safer, and often more cost-effective remedies that prevent pollution by combining smarter policies with newer technologies. A key message of Quality Unknown is that such solutions exist and change is possible.

This report assesses the conditions under which a global Water Grand Strategy (WGS) might be created and implemented by stakeholders in the United States within the next one to two years. While numerous American organizations are addressing water challenges the world over, no explicit policy or vision coordinates their multiple endeavors. As a result, the United States does not maximize its influence in finding solutions to the world’s most pressing water challenges.
This report evaluates the need for a WGS and explores the possible ends of such a strategy. It summarizes what the United States is already doing in the water space,1 and identifies the current model’s strengths and weaknesses. It outlines a process for forging a “Whole of America” water strategy—a stakeholder-driven process—and addresses key implementation challenges.

South Africa is over-exploiting its freshwater resources and water could be a large constraint on the implementation of the National Development Plan. Using the International Futures forecasting system, this paper models and forecasts water demand and supply until 2035, the period covered by the National Water Resource Strategy 2013. The authors’ research finds that the gap between demand and supply increases and that the solutions proposed by the Department of Water Affairs and Sanitation will not close the gap without additional, aggressive measures. The authors propose such measures for each sector of demand and each source of water supply.

The report features an analysis of the Top 10 trends which will preoccupy our experts for the next 12-18 months as well as the key challenges facing the world’s regions, an overview of global leadership and governance, and the emerging issues that will define our future.

The aim of this paper is to provide policy-makers with a helpful overview of the technical and economic aspects of water use in agriculture, with particular emphasis on crop and livestock production. Through 2050, in many countries, agriculture will remain an important determinant of economic growth, poverty reduction, and food security, even as, over time, the proportion of agricultural revenue in national gross income declines. Water use in agriculture will remain substantial, irrigated areas will expand and competition for water will increase in all sectors. Most likely, overall supplies of land and water will be sufficient to achieve global food production goals in 2050; although poverty and food insecurity will remain pressing challenges in several regions and countries. Thus, the focus of this report is on the regional and national aspects of food security.

This paper sets out 5 different visions for water management in future cities, and explores the research and innovation challenges to achieve them.

The OECD Environmental Outlook to 2050 asks “What could the next four decades bring?” Based on joint modelling by the OECD and the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, it looks forward to the year 2050 to ascertain what demographic and economic trends might mean for the environment if humanity does not introduce more ambitious policies to manage natural assets with greater care.

This Outlook focuses on four areas: climate change, biodiversity, water and the health impacts of pollution. These four key environmental challenges were identified by the previous Environmental Outlook to 2030 as “Red light” issues requiring urgent attention (see Chapter 1). It concludes that the prospects are more alarming than the situation described in the previous edition, and that urgent – and holistic – action is needed now to avoid the significant costs and consequences of inaction. Policy makers must take decisions despite uncertainties. The Outlook presents achievable solutions, highlighting the linkages between different environmental issues and some of the challenges and tradeoffs in the face of competing demands.

Since the food riots of 2007‐2008, global food security has been the subject of renewed attention and has become a hot topic in forward looking activities, thereby inducing a change of perspective: if food security and sustainable agriculture have always been interlinked then, since the riots, the importance of the composition of diets and economic access to food are more worthy of consideration than ever. Conversely, it is striking that in the forward looking literature, there are no studies that deal directly with the bio‐economy. The bio‐economy is addressed as a transversal concept that can be appreciated under economic and technological variables.