Water scarcity and abundance, water productivity and their relation to poverty - Water Scarcity, Livelihoods and Food Security - page 20

Table 2.1 Agricultural use of AET and rainfall.

Annual Mean Mean AET for Agricultural Agricultural

total AET productive use of AET use of rainfall

rainfall mm/yr pastures and % %

mm/yr agricultural

areas
mm/yr

Andes 784 632 43 7 5

Ganges 1073 746 499 67 47

Karkheh 348 291 13 4 4

Limpopo 547 640 103 16 19

Mekong 1713 1049 393 37 23

Niger 1017 804 116 14 11

Nile 618 606 36 6 6

São Francisco 975 928 94 10 10

Volta 973 910 98 11 10

Yellow 438 458 229 50 52

Source: Mulligan et al. (2012a).

seasonality, water resources infrastructure, groundwater resources, water access
for direct consumption or for agriculture, PET and AET, agricultural water
demands, domestic and industrial use (Mulligan et al., 2012b).
A series of water use accounts gave details of catchment-lumped water avail-
ability and water balances in all ten basins (e.g. Kirby et al., 2010b; Eastham et
al., 2010). Kirby et al. (2010a) discussed the methods used. The CPWF
published the principal research outputs of the BFPs and syntheses of the
various components in Water, Food and Poverty in River Basins: Defining the
Limits (Fisher and Cook, 2012). We shall draw further on the BFP research in
several of the following chapters.

The multiple dimensions of farm-level water scarcity

Problem definition
Global- and basin-level estimates of present and future water supply and
demand are important to establish the limits for water allocation and use by
helping to define problems of water scarcity and WP. However they gloss over
the many complex ways in which water scarcity affects farm productivity and
family livelihoods.
In this section, we focus on the components of water scarcity and their
effects on how families manage their farm systems. In this context, we define
water scarcity as a failure to achieve the right amount of the right quality of water for
the right purpose at the right time for the right people .
To make this definition operational, we need to define what we mean by
“right” in each context, understanding that its meaning depends on whose