"If we look at how much more water we will need for food and how much more for biomass for energy going forward ... it is quite worrying," said Jan Lundqvist, who heads the scientific programme at the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI).

Global food needs are expected to roughly double by 2050, at the same time as climate change and dwindling oil reserves are pressuring countries to set aside ever more land for producing biomass to replace greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels.

These parallel global trends risk colliding with "the water-constrained biophysical reality of the planet," according to SIWI, which hosted the the World Water Week in the Swedish capital last week.

"Almost every increase in water used in agriculture will affect water availability for other uses, including that needed to keep ecosystems healthy and resilient in the face of change and perturbation," the institute said in a recent study.

According to Lundqvist, the global population today uses around 4,500 cubic kilometres of water each year to cover all water needs, including for agricultural irrigation, urban use and for energy production.

While that is below the level of what is considered environmentally irresponsible, he stressed that future needs could rapidly push water use to dangerous levels.

"It might be environmentally reasonable to withdraw maybe 6,000 (cubic kilometres), but if we withdraw more water it would be at a very high environmental cost, because we need water to flush the system and for different ecosystem services," he said.

"It is simply not advisable."

According to SIWI project director Jakob Granit, recent studies indicate that "by 2030, the same amount of energy that we produce today with fossil fuels will have to come from biomass."

At the same time, scientists predict we will only be able to "meet food demands by 2050 if we have a much more efficient use of water ... That does not include the water we need for all that biomass," he told AFP.

In addition to questioning whether it is realistic to expect biomass to cover a large share of our energy needs in the future, the best way to address the problem of shrinking water reserves is to better manage water and land use, experts say.

According to Lundqvist, there is a dire need to shift the world's focus away from irrigation systems, which are putting so much pressure on rivers, lakes and groundwater.

"We are at the end of the road when it comes to irrigation, because all the water available in rivers and so on has already been now more or less used up," he said, insisting that much more attention must be paid to the potential of rainfall.

"In a large part of Africa, if you look at the total rainfall throughout the year the amount is usually enough ... to grow many crops," he said.

"If you can capture that rainfall, and store it as soil moisture or in local dams, it would be possible to significantly increase food production in these areas," he added.

related report
Wasted food draining the world of water, experts say
As much as half the water used to grow food worldwide is lost due to waste, experts said at a Stockholm conference that wrapped up Friday, pointing out that the squandered resources are a major contributor to global water shortages.

"There is huge waste and loss of water through food that is produced, since roughly 50 percent of the food that farmers grow is lost or wasted," said Jan Lundqvist, who heads the scientific programme at the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI).

"There is a need for a mentality shift... It would make a lot of sense for people to waste less," he told AFP.

According to SIWI, which hosted the annual World Water Week in the Swedish capital, tremendous amounts of food, and thus water, are discarded in the fields, during processing, in transport, in supermarkets, restaurants and in people's kitchens.

In a new report on saving water the institute points out that in the United States, 30 percent of food, worth 48.3 billion dollars (32.5 billion euros), is thrown away each year.

"That corresponds to 40 trillion litres of irrigation water, enough water to meet the household needs of 500 million people," said the report, entitled Saving Water: from Field to Fork -- Curbing Losses and Wastage in the Food Chain.

Food wastage depended largely on the society in which it was grown and consumed. In poor countries most food was lost in the fields or due to lack of storage and cooling systems or poor transport mechanisms.

"In many areas of the world you simply cannot store food efficiently, because it is not handled well," SIWI project director Jakob Granit told AFP.

In richer societies, most waste happened at the consumer level, while changing diets and an increased appetite for water-intensive foods like dairy products and meet, especially beef, in these regions amplified the water drainage, according to experts.

"In urban settings, we have lost touch with realities. People do not know where food comes from, they do not know what it takes to produce food," Lundqvist said, pointing out that it takes between 10 and 15 tonnes water to produce a single kilo (2.2 pounds) of beef.

"Now if you throw away half of that kilo, that means you've thrown away 7.5 tonnes of water," he said.

As the world struggles to feed and provide water to growing populations, it was essential that governments strived to reduce the amount of food wasted by at least 50 percent by 2025, according to the SIWI report.

"Unless we change our practices, water will be a key constraint to food production in the future," Pasquale Steduto of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's Water Resources, Development and Management Service said in a statement.

For change to happen, economic incentives were essential, according to Granit.

"The key incentive to make change is the price," he said, pointing out that in Sweden the consumption of beef had recently "gone down by 30 percent because the price went up."

And in Kuwait, where water remained a free commodity, each person on average used 600 litres of water a day, while in water-rich Sweden the average was just 150 litres, he said.

"We pay a price here for water that is not very high, but we also couple that with education and awareness so people know there is a cost to the environment to use that water," Granit said.

According to Lundqvist, today's massive food waste actually has a silver lining.

"It means there is a huge potential for improvement," he said.

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