Irrigation

ISSUES

Heading Towards a Water Shortage

Irrigation consists of artificially bringing water to cultivated crops to increase their yield. Irrigation can compensate for a lack of rainwater, but necessitates the removal of groundwater, and water from rivers and lakes. Not all arable land is irrigated: only 17% was in 2003, but this land could provide up to 40% of the world’s harvest. (1)
Water as a Resource
Water is a renewable resource: the amount present on Earth is virtually constant. At any one time, water is flowing in the ocean, evaporating, and falling again over the earth. However, certain water stores, in particular aquifers (beds of water-bearing rock), take somewhere on a timescale of thousands of years to replenish. On a human timescale, they could therefore be depleted before they can regenerate, and come to be missed.
Furthermore, only 2.5% of total water reserves are fresh water. Fresh water from watercourses and subterranean groundwater for...

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DEBATES

Rebuilding Afghanistan’s irrigation network

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The safe use of wastewater in agriculture offers multiple benefits

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FOCUS

Nobel Price of ecology

Designed to recognize grassroots environmental heroes, the Goldman Environmental Prize, founded by Richard and Rhoda Goldman in 1989 In San Francisco, is awarded annually to individuals from the six inhabited continental regions for sustained and significant efforts to...

VIDEOS

16/04/2013	The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) is an international satellite...	14/03/2012	According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the Millenium...
02/08/2011	Josette Sheeran, the head of the UN's World Food Program, talks about why,...	23/12/2009	Soumana Doumbia, geographer, tells us about the difficulties that farmers...

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The town of Albi has installed which are more eco-friendly. These produce good quality white light which...

INDICATORS

Arable land
Desertification risks
Water consumption

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