Hydrocentricity: A limited approach to achieving food and water security

This paper argues that the perception of global water stress is based on a hydrocentric view of societies 'problems and that there is a failure to appreciate that there are alternative approaches to providing food and water security that do not require increased water abstraction from rivers. These alternatives can be managed better by the state than water resources planners and apply across the confines of river basins. The work draws on the "virtual water" concept (Allan, 1997; Hoekstra et al, 1997; 2003), showing how food imports provide an efficient substitute for indigenous water and previous studies by the author on the myth of the connection between food security and water stress (Brichieri Colombi, 2003). The paper examines ten possible interventions that, taken together could allow a state to match supply and demand for water and to provide food and water security with minimal increased abstraction from rivers. The ten interventions are combined in a simple spreadsheet model and are applied to the 15 riparian states on the Nile and Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna Rivers, which together cover almost half the world population. In each case, a balance is obtained within a set of constraints that represent a reasonable upper limit of applicability of each intervention. This paper does not claim the solutions are optimal, since such a term defies any hydrological or economic rationale, but merely that increased abstraction is not necessary. If this conclusion is correct, water resource planners need to reconsider arguments that the water crisis is inevitable in the search for water and food security.