Water scarcity and abundance, water productivity and their relation to poverty - Water Scarcity, Livelihoods and Food Security - page 34

Niger

Agricultural

Volta

Nile

IGBs

Limpopo

Transitional

Mekong

Karkheh Yellow

Industrial

Andes
São Francisco

Rural poverty

Figure 2.2 CPWF basins ordered according to rural poverty and agricultural contri-
bution to gross domestic product (GDP).
Source: Cook et al., 2012.

defined by the level of rural poverty or of urbanization and is strongly related
to the contribution of agriculture to GDP growth (Figure 2.2). This concept
classifies economies as they move from conditions that are described as
agricultural, through transitional to industrial. Here we organize observations
from ten river basins to focus on the characteristics of developing food and
water systems, and of the ecosystem services that support them.

Agricultural economies
Agricultural economies are characterized by a high dependence on agriculture
for GDP and widespread rural poverty. These conditions predominate in the
African basins (Niger, Volta and Nile, except Egypt) but also occur in parts of
other basins, such as in upper parts of the Mekong and Yellow rivers. Many of
these basins include semi-arid areas, but analyses by Awulachew et al. (2010),
Lemoalle and de Condappa (2012) and Ogilvie et al. (2012) indicate that the
relationship of poverty with water availability is weak. Other factors are more
important, including the vulnerability to drought and flood, and lack of access
to water and other benefits such as roads, safe water and sanitation.
Despite the influence of drought, water resources are hardly developed:
irrigation consumes less than 1 percent of water resources and covers less than
1 percent of the landscape in the Niger and the Volta Basins (Lemoalle and de
Condappa, 2012; Ogilvie et al., 2012). Even in the Nile, irrigation accounts
for less than 4 percent of the water balance, virtually all restricted to Egypt and