Water scarcity is expected to increase in over 80 per cent of the world’s agricultural lands by mid-century, a new study warns.
The research, published in the journal Earth’s Future, assessed current and future water requirements for global agriculture and predicted whether the water levels available from rainwater or irrigation would be sufficient to meet those needs under the ongoing climate crisis.
For the study, scientists including those from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, developed a new index for two major sources of water for agriculture: soil water that comes from rain, called green water, and blue water which is via irrigation from rivers, lakes, and groundwater.
