Water

Despite sustaining the livelihoods of millions of Africans, the continent’s agricultural sector remains dependent on erratic seasonal rains. But FuturePump, a company founded in 2011, sells solar-powered irrigation pumps to smallholder farmers to free them from a dependence on seasonal rains by granting the opportunity to grow produce out of season. 　

New research finds that along with a warming climate and intensified human activities, recent water storage in global landlocked basins has undergone a widespread decline. This decline has aggravated local water stress and caused potential sea level rise.

In Malawi, a watershed restoration project successfully reduced soil erosion, increased moisture during the 2016 drought, and prevented flood damages. The project shows the importance of restoration, soil, and water conservation investments, as well as the importance of combining natural resource management with other interventions and community ownership.

As sea level rises inundate coastal soils with saltwater and climate change triggers drought and heat waves that prevent salt dissipation, farmers are forced to either migrate or adopt new livelihoods. Forward-looking adaptation efforts must ease these transitions and reduce the social and economic costs of climate change.

The Asian Development Bank has approved USD $38.6 million in development financing to help modernize irrigation systems, improve agriculture and land management, strengthen disaster risk management, and enhance data collection and analysis. A water resources project in particular will protect and modernize irrigation systems to improve productivity and resilience.

At the High-Level Experts and Leaders Panel on Water and Disasters Symposium in Tokyo, UN Secretary-General António Guterres reiterated that some countries have experienced losses akin to 40% of their GDP from water-related disasters. Losses are expected to get worse in the future as climate change exacerbates disasters.

New research finds that Cape Town could cost-effectively tap two months of new water supplies a year by clearing non-native trees from water catchments. Within 30 years, more than 100 billion litres of additional annual water gains would be achieved compared to exclusively using conventional techniques,such as desalination, which are also ten times more expensive.

A new report by the Climate Council of Australia finds that climate change has exacerbated the severe drought gripping much of Australia. Failure to manage climate change will increasingly compromise Australia's water security and, by extension, other sectors, while also multiplying both domestic and foreign threats.