Topic: The Global Water, Food and Poverty Paradox: Pumping Too Much and Pumping Too Little

Speaker: Dr. John A. Cherry, Leader of the Groundwater Project, an Adjunct Professor at the University of Guelph, Canada

Time: 9:30-10:30am February 20, 2025

Venue: Meeting Room A901, IGSNRR

Brief Introduction to the report:

Climate, wars, pandemics, and recessions threaten our society's future, but the most immediate threat is disappearing fresh water. According to the World Bank (2015), “Water is reaching a tipping point.” The US National Intelligence Council’s Strategic Futures Group, March (2021) wrote “Water insecurity is threatening global economic growth, political stability.” According to the World Economic Forum (2021), “Water insecurity risks triggering a global food crisis.” What goes unacknowledged by these and other global policy bureaucracies is that the global water crisis has groundwater problems at its heart. Unless this becomes clearly recognized soon and corrective measures taken, a breakdown of the globalized food economy and subsequent societal collapse will become likely.

Groundwater is at the heart of the crisis because groundwater makes up 99 % of all liquid freshwater; when drought comes, groundwater is the only freshwater in most regions. Understanding groundwater entails understanding the paradox, which is too much pumping in some areas and too little in others. In many parts of the world too much groundwater is extracted unsustainably (groundwater mining) for irrigation. However, in rural areas globally, a total of 3 billion people live in water poverty and need more groundwater development for health, hygiene, and family subsistence agriculture.

Welcome to the Forum!

Hosted by Key Laboratory of Water Cycle & Related Land Surface Processes, CAS