Water Security

I have been keeping an eye on the political and economic implications of water for about 15 years. In my joint book with Jason Drew, The Protein Crunch, we devoted a chapter to water and its prospects. This textbook based on a master's course on water security addresses all the key themes in an interdisciplinary fashion, highlighting close linkages between water, food and human security: water security has become a foreign policy issue, especially where resources are shared between countries, as is the case with the River Nile. One of the most useful models in the book is a web of sustainable water security including climate security, national security, water resources security, energy security and food security. One can readily appreciate that a dynamic systems approach is required to manage this kind of complexity, and indeed one of the contributions is specifically devoted to water security for ecosystems in terms of optimum allocation. Other key issues include flooding and pollution, and it is interesting to learn that 1 billion people live in conditions of chronic water shortage, which may demand radical changes in water distribution. The concluding chapters provide many useful policy pointers, reminding the reader that 90% of food-water is under the control of farmers and providing the reader with a useful conceptual framework for governance as well as security.