Dec. 82fJan. 83 RAIN Page 28 From: lnll. Drinking Waler Supply and Sanilalion Decade Water For Food For People by Rob Baird Efforts by development agencies to assist countries improve their water supplies are limited by the political context in which they operate. More than one billion people - one quarter of the human race - suffer from chronic undernutrition. - World Bank - Nearly one out of three children in the developing world dies before the age of five, and inadequate diet is the single biggest factor. - UNICEF No matter how you state it, much of the world is hungry. As our population increases from four to six billion through the year 2000, the need for positive solutions is becoming even more pressing. In the long run, the solution is not to import food from countries with surpluses, but to increase food production within developing nations. The Brandt Commission, an independent commission on international development headed by former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, stated that of the many barriers to increasing food production "the most fundamental difficulty is the control and management of water." From a technical standpoint, this is an acct.Irate statement. But when considering the broader social and political context in which food is grown, the issue is not so much haw to control the water as it is who controls the water. In response to the problem of food production worldwide, irrigation issues have become increasingly important. Erik Eckholrn, in Losing Ground, explains, "One of the key factors permitting world food output to keep up with surging postwar demand has been the historically unprecedented explosion in irrigation capacity ... growing faster than world population so far this century." The world's total irrigated land has nearly doubled since 1950 from 110 million hectares (1 hectare equals 2.5 acres) to 200 million hectares in 1975. The great advantage of irrigation is that farmers are protected from unpredictable weather or arid climates. Once water is available all year round, farmers can improve planning of their crops, be more flexible in their choice of crops, farm more intensively, and be more inclined to adopt improved farming techniques. However there are several problems associated with irrigated cropland: salt accumulation, severe erosion from deforestation, and silt build-up in waterways due to cultivation of poor soil. Pakistan's Mangla Reservoir began operation in 1967 with a life expectancy of one hundred years. After only a few years, however, measurements showed that most of its water-holding capacity will be replaced by sedmient in seventy-five years. In
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