Food Ethics Council

Water scarcity will be one of the sharpest environmental, social and economic challenges of coming decades, and the food sector will feel this keenly. A report of our Business Forum meeting on water scarcity is now available and we can also announce contributors to our Spring ’08 magazine, which will explore the issue in depth.

Water scarcity will be one of the sharpest environmental, social and economic challenges of coming decades, and the food sector will feel this keenly. A report of our Business Forum meeting on water scarcity is now available and we can also announce contributors to our Spring ’08 magazine, which will explore the issue in depth.

The January meeting of the Food Ethics Council’s Business Forum discussed how food businesses are addressing the challenge of water scarcity and what more they should do. The meeting was chaired by David Croft, Director of Conformance and Sustainability at Cadbury Schweppes and a member of the Food Ethics Council. We are very grateful to our speakers, Tim Hess and Keith Weatherhead from Cranfield University (view slides).

We have published a summary of the meeting. The key points we took from it include:

• Irrigated agriculture accounts for around 70 percent of all abstracted blue water.
• It takes anywhere between 1,000 L and 5,500 L to produce the food we eat in a day, depending on our diet. By contrast, UK daily water use in the home averages 153 L.
• Yet the pressure food places on water resources depends on where and how it is produced. The impact depends on more than just the quantity.
• Water stress, which is already a serious problem in the UK and globally, will be made worse by climate change.
• Water is already a survival issue for some food businesses and commercial concerns are driving water efficiency.
• However, business responses are not necessarily in the wider public interest and there is a risk food companies will simply cut and run from water-stressed regions.
• Embedded water is unsuited to labelling but there is an urgent need to standardise water footprinting methods businesses use for benchmarking and accreditation.
• Businesses should take part in wider social and policy debates about regulation, technology, land use and dietary shifts to mitigate water stress, and support the broader policy shifts needed to underpin better water management.
• ‘No regret’ adaptation and mitigation measures are a priority.

We will follow this initial work on water scarcity with a water-focused edition of our magazine, Food Ethics, due out on 4th March. Many of the key experts and commentators on water issues, in the UK and internationally, are contributing. Confirmed contributors include: Tony Allan, who coined the concept of ‘virtual water’; Lord Rooker, UK Minister for Sustainable Food and Farming; David Molden of the International Water Management Institute; food policy expert Tim Lang; Wenonah Hauter, head of Food and Water Watch; Nick Reeves, Executive Director of the Chartered Institute of Water and Environmental Management; Jeanette Longfield, who runs Sustain; Johan Rockström, Executive Director of the Stockholm Environment Institute; WWF UK’s Stuart Orr; Lyla Mehta from the Institute of Development Studies; Lord Selborne, who chaired a UNESCO commission on water ethics; farmers John Turner and Mikel Ateka; Clive Bates, head of UNEP in Sudan; Jacob Tompkins, who runs WaterWise; Stuart Downward, from Kingston University; the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology's Mike Acreman; Ramon Llamas, the groundwater  expert; water footprint researcher Maite Aldaya; and Maria Arce from Practical Action.

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