Salt of the Earth : Quantifying the Impact of Water Salinity on Global Agricultural Productivity

Russ, Jason ; Zaveri, Esha ; Damania, Richard ; Desbureaux, Sebastien ; Escurra, Jorge ; Rodella, Aude-Sophie

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: SALINITY;    AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY;    WATER QUALITY;    FOOD SECURITY;    CROP YIELD;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-9144
RP-ID  :  WPS9144

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Salinity in surface waters is on therise throughout much of the world. Many factors contributeto this change, including increased water extraction, poorirrigation management, and sea-level rise. To date no studyhas attempted to quantify the impacts on global foodproduction. This paper develops a plausibly causal model totest the sensitivity of global and regional agriculturalproductivity to changes in water salinity. To do so, itutilizes several local and global data sets on water qualityand agricultural productivity and a model that isolates theimpact of exogenous changes in water salinity on yields. Theanalysis trains a machine-learning model to predict salinityglobally, to simulate average global food losses over2000-13. These losses are found to be high, in the range ofthe equivalent of 124 trillion kilocalories, or enough tofeed more than 170 million people every day, each year.Global maps building on these results show that pockets ofhigh losses occur on all continents, but the losses can beexpected to be particularly problematic in regions alreadyexperiencing malnutrition challenges.