3/9/2012 Food Water Energy Nexus EARLY WARNING SYSTEMS FOR Before - PDF document

3/9/2012 Food ‐ Water ‐ Energy Nexus EARLY WARNING SYSTEMS FOR “Before the world’s fossil fuels are finally exhausted, it is likely that their extraction FOOD ‐ WATER ‐ ENERGY NEXUS IN will require an unimaginable amount of water” GMS GérardVelter, general manager of Veolia Water for Africa, Middle East and India “When measured in calories, the energy market is twenty times the food market. So if governments would replace only 10% of global energy consumption with first ‐ generation biofuels, they in the same stroke would double agricultural water withdrawals” water withdrawals SVRK Prabhakar SVRK Prabhakar Peter Braebeck ‐ Letmathe, Chairman, Nestle Group Senior Policy Researcher, IGES “The share of biofuels in total use of coarse grains is projected to increase until 2015, reaching 13%” UN FAO Agricultural Outlook 2010 ‐ 2019 “The area currently under cultivation is 1.5 billion hectares, so if all that extra land could be used it would represent an increase of one ‐ third. In fact a lot of it either should be left alone for environmental reasons or would be too expensive to farm.” International Conference on GMS 2020: Balancing Economic Growth and Environmental Sustainability, Bangkok, Thailand. 20 ‐ 21 Feb 2012 The Economist special report on feeding the world Keane, 2011 F ‐ W ‐ E Nexus Why do we need EWSs for F ‐ W ‐ E?  Food, water and energy systems are  Finite  complexly interconnected co p e y te co ected  Catastrophic consequences of fluctuations in one system effects each other  Global oil crisis of 2008  Biofuel boom during 2008 ‐ 2010  Global food crisis 2008 and 2011 WEF, 2011 Reasons for Food Crisis The Food Crisis [and Peace] Assumptions Marco Lagi et al., 2011 Adverse weather (Drought in Australia) X Land conversion to biofuel use Land conversion to biofuel use O O Shifting investor speculative focus from mortgage and O stock markets to commodity markets Change in dietary patterns in developing countries X Guardian, 2011 FAO, 2012 Could EWSs avoided this catastrophic impact? Did we know it was coming? 1

3/9/2012 Real World Examples for EWS Issues with these EWSs  Energy:  Specialized: only energy or water or food  European Union ‐ Russia proposal for building a EWS for energy that simulates the supply and demand situation in the region  Narrow based: e.g. do not consider the impact (European Union, 2009). of energy prices on food  Food production:  Crop Weather Watch Group, India: Have failed to warn C W th W t h G I di H f il d t  Limited to hazard ‐ mitigation approach impending crop losses and couldn’t take advantage of recovering monsoon in 2004 drought. (drought or flood forecasting)  Several other drought monitoring tools being implemented in  Not full ‐ spectrum: limited to crop the region including west ‐ asia drought monitor based on USDA drought monitor. establishment or output and do not forecast  Water: prices  FMMC of MRC: hydro ‐ meteorological network. SCHEMATIC REPRESENTATION OF A What an EWS Should be able to SIMPLE EWS FOR F ‐ W ‐ E do for F ‐ W ‐ E? Global Productivity Regional  Help visualize demand and supply situation of food, water, and Demand for National energy in the region on a short ‐ , medium ‐ , and long ‐ term basis; Consumption Food/Water/Energy Local  Give projections on prices of food, water, and energy on an immediate and long ‐ term basis so that countries can make p preventive and proactive strategies; p g ; Export/Import  Help policy makers at various levels to plan appropriate crops, water usage, and water conservation practices, and how energy is produced Ecological/bio ‐ physical/socio ‐ and consumed at the regional and national scales; economic/Climatic Constraints  Help in appropriate allocation of resources for food and energy Regional production while keeping in view such constraints as environmental Allocation of National health, climate change, food prices, and sustainability of resources Resources employed; and Local  Help develop a set of standard operational procedures to be invoked in a situation like the 2008 and 2011 food crisis. Output (food/water/energy) Determinants of Early Warning Opportunities for EWSs in GMS Systems  The Mekong River . The Mekong River acts as a single  How the system is defined in terms of most important integrating factor, providing the feedback connections between different opportunity to develop the EWS around it. actors/components of the system.  Institutional system . Institutions with regional  The precision with which the dynamic and The precision with which the dynamic and mandate such as the Mekong River Commission a date suc as t e e o g e Co ss o (MRC) could have significant impact on the way static forces are quantified and represented, other institutions set policies and processes in and managing water resources facilitating a centralized decision making system.  Interpretation of the outcomes as against  Growing economic integration . Countries in the sub ‐ what it actually means, with implications for region are increasingly integrated in terms of the institutions that use the EWS for policy economic activities that is well studied (e.g., trade of purposes. goods and services). 2

3/9/2012 Challenges for EWS in GMS Challenges Cont…  Attitudinal factors of stakeholders. As with any other EWS,  Complex nature of the food ‐ water ‐ energy nexus . This is different actors in the region may not trust the EWS and largely brought by the uncertainty in climate projections, may not consider it as a decision ‐ making tool. Thus, there is future growth patterns, and changing food preferences a need for awareness generation and capacity building of different stakeholders. of the people that can introduce many “unknowns” that  Poor development of regional coordination mechanisms for  Poor development of regional coordination mechanisms for influence the effectiveness with which the EWS can i fl th ff ti ith hi h th EWS the use of certain common natural resources . As an example work. of both the solution and problem, disputes related to how  Poor availability of data . Real time and quality data are the water in the Mekong River should be equitably used by various countries on upstream and downstream has not often a problem in the sub ‐ region and can greatly been resolved. Development of a EWS may help resolve influence the effectiveness of a EWS. Such approaches as this problem since stakeholders in the region would be able integrated river basin level resource management using to visualize how downstream users are affected by overexploitation by upstream users, leading to amicable water balance models could be useful to avoid water allocation of water resources to individual countries. shortages. These are data ‐ intensive approaches and lack of quality data hinders their adoption and effectiveness. Off ‐ the Shelf Approaches to Minimize Food ‐ Water ‐ Energy Conflicts  Identification and promotion of agro ‐ technologies that provide synergistic advantage in terms of improved productivity, profits, and climate benefits.  Moving to river ‐ basin based water resource management can enhance water use efficiency. h ffi i  Tapping the unrealized irrigation potential in the Basin. prabhakar@iges.or.jp  Improving weather forecasting systems and proper communication of the same. THANK YOU!  Improving energy use efficiency in the region can reduce demand for energy.  Creating east ‐ Asia energy community/grid can help harmonize the demand and supply patterns of energy in the region. 3