UN agency uses satellite data to aid farmers in Africa, Middle East boost water efficiency.
20 April 2017 – The United Nations agricultural agency created an online database that uses satellite data and Google Earth images to figure out how much water is being used to irrigate crops, focusing on parts of Africa and the Middle East that are facing water scarcity.
“Water use continues to surge at the same time that climate change – with increasing droughts and extreme weather – is altering and reducing water availability for agriculture,” said Maria Helena Semedo, Deputy Director-General of the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) Climate Change and Natural Resources.
“That puts a premium on making every drop count, underscoring the importance of meeting growing food production needs from efficiency gains.” Known as WaPOR, the open-access database measures evapotranspiration – how water evaporates and returns to the atmosphere, according to FAO.
“Evapotranspiration thus provides a direct measure of the water consumed by a crop during a growing season and, when related to the biomass and harvestable crop yield, allows for calculating the crop water productivity,” the UN agency said presenting WaPOR at a high-level meeting in Rome on “ “Coping with water scarcity in agriculture: a global framework for action in a changing climate”.
WaPOR sifts through data to produce maps that who much food is produced for every cubic meter of water consumed.
FAO, with support from the Government of the Netherlands, is currently focusing on African and the Middle East, with detailed data expected in October for pilot areas in Ethiopia, Lebanon and Mali.

Kuwait sounds alarm bell on water scarcity in GCC.
MANAMA, April 20 (KUNA) — Member of the Kuwaiti parliament Hamdan Al-Azmi on Thursday called for protecting water resources in the GCC and minimizing dependence on desalinated water.
Waters in the Arabian Gulf have been contaminated due to excessive usage of fertilizers and pesticides, thus hiking treatment costs, the Kuwaiti MP said, speaking at a forum held by the Bahraini parliament on "concerns for water and food security in the GCC states."
He urged for implementing guidelines by the World Bank on employing modern irrigation technology, using salty water for irrigation and growing new plant species that need less water and rationalizing consumption.
Moreover, GCC governments should adopt scientific research to find alternative resources, he has suggested.
Furthermore, NGOs and civil societies should be involved in the governments’ approach for coping with water scarcity.
Annual water consumption per capita in the GCC is estimated at 150 cubic meters, "putting the region below the line of water poverty," he opines.
He mentioned another challenge at this level, population growth, fearing that the per capita share might drop to 50 cm by 2050.
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Yogi Adityanath says drought-hit Bundelkhand’s water problems can end in 2 years, invokes PM Modi’s schemes.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, while addressing a gathering in Jhansi on Thursday, said Bundelkhand’s water scarcity problems can be solved in just two years if PM Narendra Modi’s schemes are implemented in the state.
“Problem of water scarcity will end in two years if all the schemes approved by Prime Minister for Bundelkhand are implemented,” Adityanath was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.
Taking a step in this direction, PM had launched his flagship Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana (PMKSY) from Mahoba district of Bundelkhand region on October 24 last year.
You may also want to watch: Back then, he revealed a comprehensive contingency plan to address the drinking water situation, especially in the districts of Mahoba, Chitrakoot and Banda.
Along with this, Rs 264 crore were released by the NITI Aayog on 31st March 2016 and it was agreed that the state government would complete the ongoing 37 piped water schemes on priority.
Also, Yogi Adityanath took a dig at the previous Samajwadi Party government led by Akhilesh Yadav by saying that it failed to fulfil its promise of electricity.
Speaking about the steps taken by his government in first 30 days, Adityanath said all the roads in the state will be repaired by 15th June.
He also mentioned that women of Jhansi will be provided better security.
“What kind of society, we live in that can’t provide security for women”, he asked.

A team of researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have created novel ultrafiltration membranes that considerably enhance the virus-removal process from treated municipal wastewater used for drinking in cities facing water scarcity.
Existing membrane filtration approaches require intensive energy to effectively remove pathogenic viruses without the need for chemicals like chlorine, which can pollute the water with disinfection byproducts.
The teams at UIUC and BGU joined forces on the new method for virus pathogen removal.
The research findings have been published in the current issue of Water Research.
“This is an urgent matter of public safety,” the researchers say.
“Insufficient removal of human Adenovirus in municipal wastewater, for example, has been detected as a contaminant in U.S. drinking water sources, including the Great Lakes and worldwide.” The norovirus, which can cause nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, is the most common reason for viral gastroenteritis in humans, and is assessed to be the second leading cause of gastroenteritis-associated mortality.
In the research, Prof. Moshe Herzberg of the Department of Desalination and Water Treatment in the Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research at BGU and his team grafted a unique hydrogel coating onto a commercial ultrafiltration membrane.
It comprises of both positive and negative charges and increases efficiency by weakening virus buildup on the modified filter surface.
Prof. Nguyen, Department of Chemical Engineering, UIUC Prof. Herzberg and his student, Maria Piatkovsky, worked on this groundbreaking research with Prof. Thanh H. Nguyen and her student, Ruiqing Lu, Department of Chemical Engineering, UIUC as well as Professor Dr. Mathias Ulbricht, chair of Technical Chemistry II, University Duisburg-Essen, Germany.
The project was supported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA grant RD83582201-0) and the German-Israeli Water Technology Cooperation Program, which is funded by the Ministry of Science & Technology of Israel and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany (BMBF-MOST, BMBF grant # 02WA1261B, MOST grant # GR-2394).

Lokesh Show Outsmarted Jabardast!.
YSR Congress party MLA from Nagari and actress R K Roja does not want to give up any chance to attack Telugu Desam Party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu and his son Nara Lokesh.
Particularly, she has started targeting Lokesh of late, making fun of his speeches and comments.
And on Thursday, Roja went a step ahead and described Lokesh as a stand-up comedian seen in reality shows like Jabardast, telecast by ETV.
Roja, who anchors the programme and witnesses several comedians doing skits to entertain the audiences, feels Lokesh is no way inferior to them.
“In fact, Lokesh show in public has outsmarted Jabardast programme on TV,” she commented, referring to the recent goof-ups of the TDP general secretary.
“When there were several seniors and experienced people in the TDP, Naidu has given cabinet berth to his son, who cannot speak proper Telugu and does not differentiate between Vardhanti and Jayanti (death and birth anniversaries),” she said.
Referring to the reports that Lokesh was contemplating filing cases against those who are making negative comments against him in social media, Roja said if at all cases have to be filed, they should be done against Lokesh.
“In his speech, Lokesh said he would bring water scarcity to the people (instead of mitigating water scarcity).
Immediately, his father-in-law Balakrishna implemented the promise in Hindupur, which is now struggling for drinking water,” she said.

U.N. tool uses satellite data to help farmers save water.
ROME, April 20 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A new Google-powered online tool that uses satellite data to map water consumption in Africa and the Middle East aims to help farmers produce more crops with less water, the United Nations said on Thursday.
WaPOR, an open-access database developed by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) enables countries to easily monitor how efficiently farms use water, allowing for improvements in irrigation and food production, the agency said.
As agriculture is responsible for 70 percent of all water used on the planet, it will be critical to increase "crop per drop", experts say.
"Water use continues to surge at the same time that climate change – with increasing droughts and extreme weather – is altering and reducing water availability for agriculture," said FAO’s deputy director-general Maria Helena Semedo.
The tool allows users like governments or farmers to spot areas where water is used inefficiently and take action by changing the irrigation system or switching to a more water-efficient crop, FAO said.
"You can compare with your neighbour and say: ‘Look he is planting his wheat field one month ahead of me or using this kind of irrigation system or fertilizer and he is doing much better’," FAO technical officer Livia Peiser, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Two thirds of the world’s population live in areas experiencing water scarcity at least one month a year, according to the United Nations.
(Reporting by Umberto Bacchi @UmbertoBacchi, Editing by Katie Nguyen.
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Fighting water scarcity: Experts urge farmers to grow less water-intensive crops.
FAISALABAD: In a bid to fight water scarcity, the farmers should plant less water-intensive crops amid the situation when Pakistan is standing among the countries ranked at the bottom of per capita water availability index.
This was said by University of Agriculture Faisalabad Vice-Chancellor Dr Iqrar Ahmad Khan on Wednesday.
He was meeting a delegation of Bonn University, Germany at the Syndicate Room.
He suggested taking measures, including high efficient irrigation system, increased water storage capacity, short duration varieties and to create awareness among the people about rational water usage He said, “One kilogramme of rice production requires 4,000 liters of water which is not suitable in the prevailing situation.” He lamented the rice was highly water intensive crop.
“We are exporting rice worth Rs2 billion at the cost of water worth Rs10 billion.” Meanwhile, Dr Ing Bernhard Tischbein from University of Bonn stressed the need to cement academia and research ties between both institutions.
He said, “Interdisciplinary approaches are need of the hour to fight modern challenges, including agriculture, climate change and eco system.” He said efficient irrigation system would pave the way to reduce water wastage.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 19th, 2017.

The yield from borewells has come down, water purifying facilities are in a shambles, Metrowater has stopped supply in sumps and the Amma canteen workers get water primarily from unsafe sources.
But Metrowater has reduced supply to many of the canteens to once in four or five days.
According to estimates, normal operations have been affected in more than 50% of the canteens in various parts of the city as Metrowater supply has been irregular.
Another former councillor, Kalarimuthu, said workers of the canteen walk 50 metres to get water for the canteen.
“Only one of the two canteens in the neighbourhood of Ripon Buildings has Metrowater water supply and a borewell,” he said.
Decline in supply Chennai Corporation officials said more than 100 Amma canteens rely on borewells for water supply.
The supply of water in many such canteens has come down for the first time, said an official.
“Some Amma Canteens are unable to source water even for cooking,” said an official.
Metrowater has stopped giving water also to private operators, reducing commercial supply to hotels.
“The number of visitors to our Amma Canteen has reduced by 20% because of water scarcity.

Larkana’s temperature touches 50°C.
Four cities witness hottest days in their history KARACHI: The hottest day for the month of April in the history of Pakistan was observed on Wednesday when Larkana touched 50°C, followed by Moenjo Daro (49°C), the Pakistan Meteorological Department said.
“Never in the history of the Sindh province, had temperature risen to 50°C in the month of April,” the officials said.
“Today, four cities of Pakistan witnessed the hottest days of their history in the month of April, including Larkana (50°C), while its previous highest temperature was 48.5°C, followed by Sibi (49°C) where the previous highest temperature was 48°C,” Pakistan Meteorological Department Director General Ghulam Rasool told ‘The News’ on Wednesday.
Terming the current spell of extremely hot and dry weather as a ‘very alarming situation’, the director general said that the ongoing heatwave in the central parts of Pakistan was in fact related to climate change.
“Yesterday, Lahore witnessed the hottest day of its history when the temperature rose to 45°C,” the director general said and warned of more extreme weather events in the days to come.
Ghulam Rasool further said that the month of April was the onset of summers in Pakistan.
The weather pundit predicted that power crises and water scarcity would intensify in the coming days due to extremely hot and dry weather as no rains were witnessed in the months of May and June in entire Pakistan.
“Drastic measures would have to be taken in order to manage the power and water situation,” he said.
“There is no water in rivers, dams and canals at the moment and the water requirement of humans, animals and the agricultural sector would intensify in the days of scarcity of water.”

Water crisis acute in Nizamabad, Kamareddy districts.
People living in the remote corners of the villages are finding it extremely difficult to get water for drinking and irrigation purposes and they are forced to trek more than 1 km to fetch a pail of water.
Although the State government has chalked out an action plan to tide over the water scarcity in the two districts at an estimated cost of Rs 1 crore, it rained only on paper and the government has not released even a single pie for the purpose.
Even the ponds are drying up.
The severity is even more in the villages of Gandhari mandal.
People living in the 20 hamlets in Reddipet village of Ramareddy mandal.
Water is being supplied through tankers in Chandapalli and Devaipur villages of Tadvai mandal.
People living in several villages within Jukkal mandal like Gulla thanda, Vithalvaadi and Shivapur villages are facing the problem of water shortage.
The situation is no different in Madnoor mandal.
They have to start struggling for water from 4 AM.