Water and Food Insecurity in Developing Countries:Major Challenges for the 21st Century

Patrick Webb

Working Papers in Food Policy and Nutrition from Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy

Abstract: World population is projected to reach almost 8 billion people around the year 2025 (UN 1999). This expected increase has raised considerable debate about the world's ability to meet future food needs (Rosegrant et. al. 2001a; Scanes and Miranowski 2004). However, food is only one serious concern. The implications of a parallel, but related, growth in demand for water are profound and far-reaching. Already more than 1 billion people live without access to clean water, many of whom inhabit developing countries classified as 'water scarce'2. Yet the number of water-scarce countries is expected to rise to 30 by the year 2025, of which 21 will be low-income food-deficit countries home to 1.8 billion people (IWMI 2000). The task of ensuring adequate access to water will therefore be one of the most difficult challenges facing development professionals in the 21st century; at least as hard as ensuring food security.

Keywords: food security; water; developing countries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F35 O13 Q25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2005-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nutrition.tufts.edu/documents/fpan/wp29-water_food_insecurity.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.nutrition.tufts.edu/documents/fpan/wp29-water_food_insecurity.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://nutrition.tufts.edu/documents/fpan/wp29-water_food_insecurity.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fsn:wpaper:29

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers in Food Policy and Nutrition from Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Annie DeVane ().