02/05/14

Q&A: Exploring South Asian food, water and energy links

Copyright: IRRI

By: Mallika Aryal

We encourage you to republish this article online and in print, it’s free under our creative commons attribution license, but please follow some simple guidelines:

You have to credit our authors.
You have to credit SciDev.Net — where possible include our logo with a link back to the original article.
You can simply run the first few lines of the article and then add: “Read the full article on SciDev.Net” containing a link back to the original article.
If you want to also take images published in this story you will need to confirm with the original source if you're licensed to use them.
The easiest way to get the article on your site is to embed the code below.

For more information view our media page and republishing guidelines.

The full article is available here as HTML.

Press Ctrl-C to copy

<div class="article-wrap">
<div id="article-introduction">
<h1>Q&A: Exploring South Asian food, water and energy links</h1>
<h4>By: Mallika Aryal</h4>
</div>
<br />
<br />

<div id="article-body">
<p><iframe loading="lazy" frameborder="no" height="450" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/147552276&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&visual=true" width="100%"></iframe></p>
<p>Ensuring <a href="https://www.scidev.net/agriculture/food-security/">food security</a> while providing access to safe drinking <a href="https://www.scidev.net/environment/water/">water</a> and <a href="https://www.scidev.net/environment/energy/">energy</a> for all remains a key challenge in South Asia — home to a quarter of the world’s population. Rice and wheat, the region’s staple crops, require huge amounts of water and energy to grow. Fresh water is no longer abundant and climate change brings new uncertainties. With a rapidly expanding population, growing water stress and limited land resources and energy supply, South Asian countries must find a way to produce more food with less available land, using less water, and with increasing energy costs.<br />
 <br />
Jeremy Bird, director-general of the <a href="http://www.iwmi.cgiar.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">International Water Management Institute</a>, a non-profit research organisation that focuses on the sustainable use of water and land resources in developing countries, explores how hydropower could help to achieve this goal.</p>

</div>
<div class="quick-links-wrapper">
<h3>You might also like</h3>
[related-articles]
</div>
<p>This article was originally published on <a href="https://www.scidev.net" target="_blank">SciDev.Net</a>. Read the <a href="https://www.scidev.net/global/multimedia/q-a-exploring-south-asian-food-water-and-energy-links/" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
<script type="text/javascript">
(function(e,t,n,r,i,s,o){e["GoogleAnalyticsObject"]=i;e[i]=e[i]||function(){(e[i].q=e[i].q||[]).push(arguments)},e[i].l=1*new Date;s=t.createElement(n),o=t.getElementsByTagName(n)[0];s.async=1;s.src=r;o.parentNode.insertBefore(s,o)})(window,document,"script","//www.google-analytics.com/ga.js","ga");var _gaq=_gaq||[];var _gaq=_gaq||[];_gaq.push(["_setAccount","UA-3223906-8"],["_trackEvent","article interaction","republished","https://www.scidev.net/global/multimedia/q-a-exploring-south-asian-food-water-and-energy-links/",null,true])
</script>
</div>

Ensuring food security while providing access to safe drinking water and energy for all remains a key challenge in South Asia — home to a quarter of the world’s population. Rice and wheat, the region’s staple crops, require huge amounts of water and energy to grow. Fresh water is no longer abundant and climate change brings new uncertainties. With a rapidly expanding population, growing water stress and limited land resources and energy supply, South Asian countries must find a way to produce more food with less available land, using less water, and with increasing energy costs.

Jeremy Bird, director-general of the International Water Management Institute, a non-profit research organisation that focuses on the sustainable use of water and land resources in developing countries, explores how hydropower could help to achieve this goal.