Water and Agriculture in U.S. Foreign Assistance

Which Areas of World Will Be Under Greatest Water Stress

Mon, Mar 30, 2009

Thank you very much. Before we open this up to general discussion, I'd like to ask you both a handful of questions to get your perspectives, to try to round this out, building on the points that you've raised and also on our discussion this morning. The first one is looking forward into the future. We heard a lot about trends in different areas of the world and a number of the key issues associated with water, and the link between water and agriculture. But it would be very useful to get your perspective in terms of looking out to the horizon, which areas of the world do you see under the greatest water stress? Where are the dislocations most profound, from your perspectives? Jim, would you begin on that one, please?

Right now we have a focus on Africa. And it's a number of different things driving that, but mainly it's due to a lack of investment in Africa. And so our water program, our priority right now is Africa. I believe that our Ag program, our food security, is going to have a high priority for Africa. There's work in Central America, and there's work in South Asia. And those are the areas right now that USAID is focusing on, as far as priority areas as far as agriculture and water. Now at the same time, there's going to be spot cases of, like, Haiti. Or there's other places that we're working in. India has a groundwater, energy, and agriculture nexus. So, those three areas that I mentioned would be the primary ones as far as USAID's focus. Now having said that, again, countries will rise up for a variety of reasons and if you look at Africa for example, I mean the work we were doing with Sudan and Ethiopia, and it was based more on relief and refugees, and that would be water and agriculture. And so, if you ask me which areas, we have some main areas to focus on. But primarily, it usually comes down to relief activities that drive a particular country focus.

And I would just add to that, I think even one of the earlier speakers today... that China is a major area where water issues will be a big problem in the coming decades, particularly because of the linkages between water quality and water availability. Many of the food crops we're growing -- at least in our country we use fairly high quality water, but difficulties with finding that kind of high quality water in China, I think will be a major issue, and so, trying to produce a clean water supply for agriculture is going to be a major challenge in that country.