Food Ethics Council

The world uses 200,000,000 litres of water a second to grow its food – like gulping down the Amazon River day in, day out. By 2025 an estimated 1.8 billion people will be living without enough water to survive. We need to change how we use water, but is simply using less the answer? In the latest edition of Food Ethics we find out.

We cannot sustain our current water habits. In some places rivers and aquifers are sucked dry. In others there is still water but not enough to support ecosystems or people’s livelihoods. Where water is scarce injustice abounds. 

Because irrigation uses 70 percent of abstracted freshwater, food is on the front line. As concern over water escalates, food production will be affected and blamed in equal measure. Big food companies are worried – water shortages already strain production in some regions, so they know there’s more than reputation at risk. In the policy stakes, meanwhile, water scarcity is up there with climate change. 

Like hunger, water scarcity is a social and economic condition, not simply a physical one – rich people don’t starve or go thirsty. Unless efforts to address water problems start with that fact, we duck the biggest issue. 

This edition of Food Ethics examines recent food industry pledges on water efficiency – notably the UK Federation House Commitment – and explores what citizens and governments should do.

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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