Speculations on the Future of Water and Food Security

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Speculations on the Future of Water and Food
Security

• Ismail Serageldin
• IFPRI
• 29 March 2004

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Outline

• How Scarce Is Water?
• How Much for Agriculture?
• Climate Change And Its Impact
• Problems, Approaches and Reforms
• The Role Of Science
• Rebuilding Social Structures Empowerment Is Key
• Envoi

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IFPRIs Excellent Work

• 2020 exercise
• M. Rosegrant, X. Cai and S. Cline, World Water
  and Food to 2025 Dealing with Scarcity, 2002
• IWMIs work
• World Vision exercise, 2000.
• Tokyo Club debates 2002-2004
• Others

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How Scarce Is Water?
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Fresh water is precious
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Fresh Water Is Only 2.5 of All Water
Only 2.5 is fresh water
97.5 is salt water
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Two thirds of that is locked in Glaciers and Ice
Caps
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2/3 of the remaining part is lost to
Evapotranspiration
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That leaves only 40,700 KM3 Potentially Available
to people
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Of that 20 are too remote
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Of the accessible part 3/4 come as floods and are
not readily useable
12
With dams, etc. Total water available to humans
sustainably is about 12,500 km3
Of the 80 or 32,900 km3 accessible
1/4 available sustainably
3/4 floods
8,200
Dams, etc.
4,300
12,500 km3
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Total water available sustainably 12,500 km3
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Total water available sustainably 12,500 km3

• About 35 directly used by people
• About 19 used instream (to dilute pollution,
  sustain fisheries, maintain wetlands, etc)
• Therefore, more than 50 or 6,250 km3 is
  currently used

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Per Capita Availability Shows Huge Variation
Country/region
Water availability
gt 10,000 m3/year
North America
Egypt
1,100
Jordan
260
Syrias water table has been declining one meter
every year for the past 30 years!
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Regional per capita availability of water is
declining
000 m3
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Africa
14
12
10
World
8
Asia
6
4
2
MENA
0
1960
1990
2025
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Current Mismanagement
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Fragmentation by Use

• In each country at least 6, and sometimes as much
  as twenty, agencies are involved with water
  management

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International fragmentation

• About 260 river basins are shared by two or more
  countries, highlighting the need for
  collaboration in water management

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Water Use And The Environment
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Rising Water Use

• In The 20th Century,
• Population Grew Three-fold,
• But
• Water Use Grew Six-fold!

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Human Activity Has Had an Impact on Both the
Hydrological Cycle and the Quality of Water
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Three Gorges Construction
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Storage Capacity in cu.m. / person

• USA 7000
• Australia 5000
• So. Africa 700
• Ethiopia 25
• Kenya 4

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The Yellow river did not reach the sea 220 days
in 1997!
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In the last 100 years 50 of the worlds wetlands
have been lost to development.
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Water Budgets

• Global
• 97 Salt Water
• 3 Fresh Water
• Freshwater
• 87 Not Accessible
• 13 Accessible
• MENA
• 1 of Accessible Freshwater
• 5 of World Population

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How Much for Agriculture?
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INDUSTRY
RESERVOIR LOSSES
MUNICIPAL
AGRICULTURE
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5
INDUSTRY
6
MUNICIPAL
89
AGRICULTURE
Source World Bank WDI 2002
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(Liters/day)
Domestic
Food Production
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One Calorie One Liter
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Underground water is being mined at unsustainable
rates and 10 of world grain production depends
on unsustainable aquifer withdrawals.
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Irrigated Agriculture in Developing Countries

• Today accounts for
• 40 of all crop production
• 60 of cereals
• Over the next 30 years, to meet the demands of a
  larger world population, we must increase
• arable irrigated land by 22, and
• water withdrawals by 14

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Water Use Efficiency
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Water Use Efficiency in Agriculture is Low
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Many Transfers

• From main Source to Irrigation System (T-1)
• From Irrigation to local canal (T-2)
• From Local canal to field (T-3)
• From Field to plant (T-4)
• Plant uptake (T-5)

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Water Use Efficiency (T-1) x (T-2) x (T-3) x
(T-4) x (T-5)
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Water Use Efficiency 0.8 x 0.8 x 0.8 x 0.8 x
0.8 0.33
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Water Use Efficiency 0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9 x
0.9 0.59
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Quality and Quantity of WaterPollution Reduces
Available/useable water
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Pollution!
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Freshwater Fish Are Going Extinct at Five Times
the Rate of Marine Fish Species
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Changing the Way We Manage Water
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Workable Approaches
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More Crop Per Drop!
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Crop yield per unit of waterwheat kg/cu.m
2.2
0.8
0.3
RAINFED
IRRIGATED
SUPPLEMENTAL IRRIGATION
Source ICARDA
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Increasing Water Use Efficiency

• Reuse of drainage water from irrigated fields (as
  in Egypt)
• Better management of the System (less losses)
• More efficient delivery techniques
• More appropriate cropping patterns
• Precision farming on water use

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Water is re-used multiple times
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Increasing Water Use Efficiency

• Reuse of drainage water from irrigated fields (as
  in Egypt)
• Better management of the System (less losses)
• More efficient delivery techniques
• More appropriate cropping patterns
• Precision farming on water use

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Increasing Water Use Efficiency

• Reuse of drainage water from irrigated fields (as
  in Egypt)
• Better management of the System (less losses)
• More efficient delivery techniques
• More appropriate cropping patterns
• Precision farming on water use

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Increasing Water Use Efficiency

• Reuse of drainage water from irrigated fields (as
  in Egypt)
• Better management of the System (less losses)
• More efficient delivery techniques
• More appropriate cropping patterns
• Precision farming on water use

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Selecting The Most Appropriate Cropping Patterns
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Increasing Water Use Efficiency

• Reuse of drainage water from irrigated fields (as
  in Egypt)
• Better management of the System (less losses)
• More efficient delivery techniques
• More appropriate cropping patterns
• Precision farming on water use

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Precision Farming
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Increasing Water Use Efficiency

• Reuse of drainage water from irrigated fields (as
  in Egypt)
• Better management of the System (less losses)
• More efficient delivery techniques
• More appropriate cropping patterns
• Precision farming on water use

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Reforms
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Reforms

• IWRM
• More efficient use of water
• Promoting P4
• New water (Alternative sources)
• Regional and international cooperation

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Reforms

• IWRM
• More efficient use of water
• Promoting P4
• New water (Alternative sources)
• Regional and international cooperation

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Reforms

• IWRM
• More efficient use of water
• Promoting P4
• New water (Alternative sources)
• Regional and international cooperation

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P4 People Public Private Partnerships

• Putting people first
• Mobilizes stakeholders and involves them in the
  design and implementation of the PPP
• Recognizes community action

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Reforms

• IWRM
• More efficient use of water
• Promoting P4
• New water (Alternative sources)
• Regional and international cooperation

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New Water Sources(US cents /cu.m)

• Reduce demand 10 - 70
• leakage repair 10 - 70
• Desalination 20 - 40
• (brackish water)
• Wastewater reuse 10 50
• (Only for irrig. some industry)
• Desalination 50 90
• (sea water)

Source World Bank est. 2003 in WB,from scarcity
through reform to Security, for WWF3, Kyoto Japan
2003, p.13
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Using Treated Wastewater
Sorghum and Topinambur irrigated with Treated
Wastewater in Sorbulak area, Kazakhstan
Courtesy ICARDA
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Reforms

• IWRM
• More efficient use of water
• Promoting P4
• New water (Alternative sources)
• Regional and international cooperation

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Reforms

• IWRM
• More efficient use of water
• Promoting P4
• New water (Alternative sources)
• Regional and international cooperation

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Essential Questions

• Always ask 
• Who pays?
• Who benefits?
•  
• Always trace the shifting and incidence of
  taxation and subsidies

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Climate Change And Its Impact
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Ozone Hole, 1998 image
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Hottest Year on Record?
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Hottest Year on Record?
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La Nina in the Pacific
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Hurricane Bonnie
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Extreme Variability Africas Burden
Kenya Annual Rainfall Variation about the Average
160
140
120
100
80
60
1956
1958
1960
1962
1964
1966
1968
1970
1972
1974
1976
1978
1980
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Climate Variability (Change?)Index of Rainfall
in Sahel 1941-1990
Source Departure from standard deviation
Climate Prediction Center 1991, Prrsentation by
South Africa at Camdessus Panel meetings
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Climate Variability (Change?)Index of Rainfall
in Sahel 1941-1990
Source Departure from standard deviation
Climate Prediction Center 1991, Prrsentation by
South Africa at Camdessus Panel meetings
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Vulnerability Of The Poor

• The Ability To Accumulate Capital Is Reduced
  (Selling Off Assets In A Downturn)
•  
• Overall Economic Growth Is Reduced (Less Poverty
  Reduction)
•  
• Rebuilding Social Structures empowerment Is Key

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Food Production and Global Environmental Issues
Land degradation
Climate change
Food supply and demand
Biodiversity loss
Unsustainable forestry
Source The World Bank and the Global
Environment, A progress report, adapted from
Watson, et. al. 1998.
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In General

• Climate change will increase variability of
  weather phenomena
• Generally mean declining rain-fall over the
  long-term
• Increase vulnerability of poor farmers in the
  arid and semi-arid zones

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Questions on Dams
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The Role Of Science
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Science Can Help

• Agriculture
• Water purification and waste management
• Environmental management (new Industries)

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Science Can Help

• Agriculture
• Water purification and waste management
• Environmental management (new Industries)

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Traditional Wisdom and Modern Science
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The Genetic Imperative
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Harnessing the Genetics Revolution

• Going beyond marker-assisted selection, tissue
  culture and genetic maps
• Recognizing the new revolution in genomics, and
  QTL analysis
• Selecting for valuable genes, and not only on
  phenotype

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Major Effort at Developing Better Suited Plants

• Drought tolerance
• General resistance to stresses
• Salt water plants? Halophytes, Mangroves, etc.

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Why Not Super Upland Rice by 2020?
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Science Can Help

• Agriculture
• Water purification and waste management
• Environmental management (new Industries)

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The Biotechnology RevolutionPromise and Peril
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Science Can Help

• Agriculture
• Water purification and waste management
• Environmental management (new Industries)

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Oil Dispersing ChemicalsTokyo Bay, July 1997
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Opens Amazing New Possibilities
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Here industrial biotechnology can be very helpful
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Benefits of Industrial Biotechnology

• Compared to traditional industrial processes it
  is more efficient, renewable and cleaner
  (improvements include from 3 to 10 times
  reduction in waste)

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New paradigm of research in industrial
biotechnology

• Gene shuffling and biochip screening
• Enormous new power
• Faster, cheaper better designed products

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Gene Shuffling As a Research Strategy

• Basically it uses the way nature works, and
  accelerates it
• We can do in one week what natural processes
  would do in one million years
• Where nature screens by the local environment, we
  screen by desirable traits
• The systems power is when we combine the
  laboratory shuffling with the huge diversity
  available in nature

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Biochips
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Testing with biochips
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Biochips

• Useful to find out which genes are turned on when
  we look for high producing strains
• Biochips can now assay tens of thousands of
  reactions at single go
• Move to wafers of biochips, now in development,
  could lift that number up to 60 million probes!

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IPR and Lawsuits
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New paradigm is affecting all aspects of industry

• The preparation of industrial enzymes a-la-carte
• The acceleration of drug design and testing
• And so much more

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The power of the new technologies

• Old paradigm of site directed mutagenesis you
  could develop 3-6 new protein molecules per month
• Now we can produce 100,000 different protein
  molecules per day
• To analyze this huge diversity we screen them
  through biochips, and select for the desirable
  traits

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The key and the effect of the new technologies

• The breakthroughs are robotic screening and small
  (chip) size. The two tools work in concert.
• We now are convinced that we can make any
  industrial enzyme needed at an industrial scale.

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Exciting applications

• Industrial enzymes are an environmentally
  friendly Clean Technology because they are
  biodegradable, a renewable resource, energy
  efficient, recycle and reduce waste and replace
  harsh chemicals
• Industrial enzymes have demonstrable benefits in
  detergents, textiles, baking, animal feed and
  biofuel

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Examples of dramatic changes (due to new
enzymatically based processes)

• Textile treatments 10 times savings in use of
  caustic soda and 2.5 times in water
•  
• Antibiotic production over five times savings in
  solvents, environmentally problematic chemicals,
  steam, CO2 emissions and waste water.

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And This Is Just the Beginning
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Also The Science of Remote Sensing!
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Remote Sensing As a Tool
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From Global to Local

• Remote sensing and fast computers make it
  possible to link global data bases to local
  realities
• Enormous increases in precision NRM

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Desertification
In one year (1984-1985), Saharas boundary
shifted 110 km decreasing an area 724,000 sq. km
(21.3 times the Netherlands)
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Challenges Human Activity and Ecosystem Linkages

• Spatial
• Location-specific

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Remote Sensing Makes Detailed Ecological Analysis
Possible
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Urbanization Can Also Be Tracked
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Remote Sensing and Water

• Classical approaches
• Large variations
• Depend on quality data (e.g. stream flow)
• Systemic measurements at regular intervals
  difficult
• Remote sensing
• Strategic, precise information
• Water availability at basin level
• Better understanding of systems at low cost

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Irrigation in the Desert
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Evaluating water resources

• Combining satellite estimates with ground-based
  rainfall data
• Allows volumetric estimates of water outflow
• Vital for planning water at the basin level

(Total kg/m3, June to November, 1999)
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Measuring total evaporation_at_ 1 km resolution,
Jun-Nov 99

• Map answers the question where is water being
  consumed?
• Helps water resource planners allocate water and
  manage its distribution
• Information that can be used by poor farmers

(Total mm, June to November, 1999)
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Precision Farming
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Technology Upgrades
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Understanding and Predicting the Weather
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Envoi
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We Need a Collaborative Approach Among Science
Organizations for a Systematic Attention to Water
and Development Issues
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International Agencies (UNU, CGIAR Especially
ICARDA) and Regional Institutions Must Work
Together to Harness Science for Water and
Development Issues
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Innovate! Unleash the Creativity of the
Various Actors!
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It Can Be Done!
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Towards Better Tomorrows
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