User:Askal216/sandbox/Water Security and Climate Change in Arid Region (2018). By: Ashok Alva

Water Security and Climate Change in Arid Region (2018). By: Ashok Alva This book compiles comprehensive assessment on: trends in water scarcity in arid region; impact of climate variability on water availability and use; strategies to enhance water productivity; changes in agricultural and food systems to adapt to water scarcity; managing multiple competing sectors of water use; and increased utilization of alternate water sources within the integrated water management strategies to address continuing deficit of renewable water resources. As the global population is expected to increase by 2+ billion within the next two decades, food production needs to be increased by 70 percent of the current production. Fresh water demand will increase by 55 percent to meet the needs of the global population. The global freshwater resource is predicted to decrease by 40 percent, in part, due climate variability. This indeed is a wake-up call to world leaders, scientists, and policy makers to address this crisis before it is too late. The renewable water resources (RWR) are continuously shrinking around the world due to erratic weather patterns. Impact of climate change is enhancing the extreme weather patterns, i.e., dry areas get drier and vice versa. Therefore, the arid regions are and will continue to be severely impacted by decreased precipitation. This is very true for many countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region which includes Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, where water scarcity is already acute (annual per capita RWR less than 500 cubic meters) and impact of climate change continues to be severe. Several countries in the MENA region are experiencing high population growth rate. The oil-based economies of some GCC countries have experienced unprecedented economic growth in the recent decades which, in part, has resulted in population expansion. Some GCC countries invested heavily in agricultural expansion despite the water scarcity to make progress in food security and reduce high dependency on food import. This resulted in excessive pumping of non-renewable groundwater that lead rapid depletion of groundwater resources and deterioration of water quality by increased salinity. Withdrawal of RWR is almost 75 percent in MENA countries as compared to 6 to 8 percent in North America and Europe. Economically prosperous GCC countries have invested heavily on desalination to make up for the shortage of fresh water to supply increasing demand for water for their rapidly growing population. Production of desalinated water in the GCC countries account almost 70 percent of the global production (95 million cubic meters per day). Cost of the desalination is highly subsidized by the states to continue to make the fresh water available at well below the cost of production. Domestic water use in some GCC countries is as high as 500-600 liters per capita per day. This trend is unsustainable both in terms of economic burden of desalination and more importantly the negative environmental impact of energy use for desalination and disposal of high salinity brine, which also contains several pollutants, into sea with negative impacts on the marine life. The current system of high dependency on desalinated water is giving a false sense of water security which will soon be proven unsustainable as the demand for fresh water continue to increase with increase in population and economic growth. Therefore, there is compelling need for rigorous educational programs and introduction of incentives to promote water conservation for all users, increase agricultural water use efficiency, and use of alternate water sources. Furthermore, there should be serious efforts to promote the reuse of treated wastewater (TWW) as an integral part of total water management for all sectors. This requires careful monitoring and control of water treatment processes by the government agencies to ensure quality of the TWW within the recommended standards to ensure no negative effects on the crop quality and/or ecosystem and environmental quality. Considerable public education is necessary to disseminate the long-term research conducted by reliable sources to demonstrate safe use of TWW for agricultural irrigation. Mean across all GCC countries, only about 60 percent of total wastewater produced is treated and about 59 percent of the TWW is reused, despite tertiary and tertiary plus reverse osmosis (RO) wastewater treatment technologies are used in some GCC countries. For example, in Kuwait about 30 percent of TWW is unaccounted and likely discharged to sea. This proportion is likely to increase in the future as the production of total TWW quantity increase to meet the demand of increasing population. Discharge of TWW to sea should be avoided considering the acute shortage of renewable water resource in this arid region. It is worth reminding the following quote, By: Ismail Serageldin, former Vice-President of the World Bank, August 1995: ‘If the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water – unless we change our approach to manage this precious and vital resource’. Target Audience: This book is intended for general readers, including: Water/Climate Change/Food systems organizations/agencies – leaders, policy makers, regulators, field staff; Graduate/Undergraduate students in: Environmental studies, Food security/safety, Water resources/management, Agriculture, Plant sciences, Irrigation management, Sustainable ecosystems & environment specialization; Agri-business, Consultants and Agricultural Extension agents, Water management districts and Soil and Water conservation districts employees; Commodity commissions and traders, and farmers; Land Grant University faculties and staff, Employees of USDA, USAID, FAS, Rural Development, FAO, UN, UNDP, World Bank and other development institutes. Authors Short Bio: Dr. Ashok Alva received PhD from Pennsylvania State University, MSc from Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, and BSc from University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore. He served as a Senior Research Scientist at the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research – Environment and Life Sciences Research Center. Previously he worked as a Supervisory Research Soil Scientist, at the USDA – ARS, Northern Plains Agricultural Research Laboratory, Sidney, Montana, and a Research Leader and Location Coordinator for the USDA-ARS Vegetable and Forage Crops Research Center in Prosser, Washington. He provided supervision and leadership to 40+ employees on research programs to develop: (i) economically important germplasms of specialty crops, forages, and edible legumes to improve resistance to diseases, pests, abiotic stresses, and enhance processing and market qualities, and phytonutrient traits; and (ii) sustainable management technologies for specialty crops and biofuel crops production systems in the irrigated US Northwest to minimize negative environmental impacts of agricultural production practices while enhancing soil quality. He also served as an Associate Professor at the University of Florida. He led a statewide multidisciplinary research team to develop nutrient best management practices for citrus to mitigate potential nitrate loading to groundwater while maintaining high yields and quality. He has also worked and continue to collaborate with researchers in India, China, Australia, Denmark, Egypt, Kuwait, and most recently in Middle East and North Africa region. He is author/coauthor of 250+ refereed papers, 4 sole-authored books, 3 co-edited books, 25 book chapters, 110+ non-refereed publications. He delivered 200+ invited speeches at the International, National, and Regional professional and/or customer meetings. He is a ‘Fellow’ of the American Society of Agronomy and the Soil Science Society of America. He has mentored 50+ postdoctoral fellows, graduate/undergraduate students, summer interns, high school students on specialized science projects. He serves in the editorial board of five peer reviewed journals, and technical reviewer for 20+ international peer reviewed journals and competitive grant proposals. In addition to his distinguished scientific career, he has demonstrated excellence in leadership, communication and interpersonal skills, strategic planning, stakeholder relations and service, team building, mentoring, employee development, conflict resolution, budget management, recruitment, diversity and inclusion. He has successfully completed the United States – Office of Personal Management (OPM) sponsored – ‘Senior Executive Service’ candidate development program. Most recently he served as an Embassy Science Fellow in Amman, Jordan, to provide expertise to USAID sponsored project on ‘Water and Livelihood Initiative’ for agricultural adaptations to extreme water scarcity in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries impacted by climate variability. External Links: https://www.morebooks.shop/store/gb/book/water-security-and-climate-change-in-arid-region/isbn/978-613-9-87955-7 https://www.amazon.de/dp/6139879558/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536571210&sr=8-1&keywords=9786139879557 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-new-book-water-security-climate-change-arid-region-ashok-alva/?published=t https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/impact-future-trends-population-food-habits-climate-variability-alva?published=t