Ecosystem Services Investment Vital for Food Security

The report shows how managing and investing in the connections between ecosystems, water and food, through diversifying crops, planting trees on farmland and improving rainwater collection and other practical steps, could help avoid water scarcity and meet the growing food demands of a global population set to reach 9 billion by 2050.

An Ecosystems Approach to Water and Food Security, which was launched during World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden, says that policymakers should consider farmland, fisheries and other agricultural areas as "agroecosystems", which provide sources of food as well as performing diverse ecosystem services such as water purification and flood regulation.

Declines in these ‘regulatory' ecosystem services - leading to problems such as a loss of soil nutrients or increased vulnerability of crops to disease - have already begun to adversely affect agricultural productivity. Exacerbated by climate change, these declines could result in crop yields that are up to 25% short of demand by 2050, greatly impacting poor communities worldwide.

One of the main challenges in boosting current levels of food production is the availability of water, which is needed for livestock, crop irrigation and fisheries and other agricultural uses.

Groundwater levels, for example, are declining rapidly in several major breadbaskets and rice bowl regions such as the North China plains, the Indian Punjab and in the Western USA. Maintaining healthy, resilient ecosystems to ensure water availability for agriculture and other ecosystem services is thus essential for long-term food security.

In many parts of the world, increases in food production through intensive farming methods have come at the expense of other ecosystem services, such as biodiversity, pollination or soil erosion protection, caused by pollution from agricultural run-off or the diversion of water from rivers to farmland.

The UNEP-IWMI report shows how an ecosystems-based approach to agriculture can restore this balance and result in a more efficient use of water, a reduction in the 5-10 million hectares of farmland that are lost each year to degradation, fewer yield losses as a result of pests and increased benefits to poor communities dependent on farmlands, rivers, forests and other ecosystems for their food and livelihoods.

But for this shift in thinking to take place, several changes are required to the way ecosystems, water resource management and food security are approached by planners and policymakers.