Food security and water governance are deeply intertwined

Access to water is key to food security and as climate change makes rainfall still more erratic and unpredictable the access to water for supplementary irrigation becomes increasingly important.

Two chapters of the book “New Challenges to Food Security” deal with the intricate link between food security and water access in the context of growing competition for water.

In the chapter “Water Competition, Water Governance and Food Security”, Helle Munk Ravnborg describes how growing water competition has contributed to motivate a recent wave of water governance reform across the developing world which in many places entails a process of transformation of water rights. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the implications for water access for farming, in particular smallholder farming and for food security.

Drawing on field work conducted as part of the Competing for Water programme in southern Zambia, Mikkel Funder and colleagues describe how rural poor households respond to and are affected by local water-related conflicts. The chapter illustrates how – if unchecked – attempts to improve water access through the introduction of new water infrastructure may reproduce inequality of access as benefits are captured by the better-off.