Asia needed a "Blue Revolution" to reform its water usage in order to feed another 1.5 billion people by 2050, Colin Chartres, Director General of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), told Xinhua in a recent exclusive interview in London.

He also praised China's efforts in making more efficient use of its water resources in agriculture.

Chartres was commenting on a report released at the World Water Week being held in the Swedish capital of Stockholm between August 16 and 22, saying the best way for Asia to meet its food demand, which is forecast to double by 2050, is to revitalize its vast irrigation systems, which cover 70 percent of the world's total irrigated land.

The report, named "Revitalizing Asia' s Irrigation to Sustainably Meet Tomorrow's Food Needs", contains research by IWMI and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). It says Asia's population will expand by 1.5 billion over the next 40 years, and many developing nations may have to import more than a quarter of the rice, wheat and maize they will need by 2050.

However, "relying on trade to meet a large part of this demand will impose a huge and politically untenable burden on the economies of many developing countries," said Chartres.

There was a "Green Revolution" in Asia during the 1960s and 1970s, which increased food productivity through a combination of irrigation, improved crop varieties and fertilizers.

Since Asia is already the world's most intensively irrigated continent, what it needed now was a "Blue Revolution" to reform its irrigation systems.

The report recommended five strategies for the revolution.

The first is to modernize yesteryear's schemes for tomorrow's needs. For example, surface irrigation schemes could be used to recharge aquifers or fill intermediate storage structures, such as farm ponds, providing farmers with greater reliability and control.

The other strategies consist of supporting farmers' initiatives of using locally adapted irrigation technologies, introducing private investment or public-private partnerships into irrigation, conducting in-depth training workshops for farmers and irrigation officers, and helping Asia's wider political economy become more friendly towards the irrigation sector.

Chartres set the Blue Revolution's objectives as doubling food productivity and reducing the percentage of agricultural water usage to 65 percent of Asia's whole water supply on average. Current usage is as high as 90 percent in some South Asian countries.

He praised what China had done in this field. China not only fed more than a billion population by itself, but also had increased its irrigated area and food production capacity without allocating more water to irrigation.

"China has made significant achievements in saving water in agriculture, thanks to institutional and technological innovations. In the past decade, China's water use per hectare dropped from 7,935 to 6,450 cubic meters nationwide."

But Chartres also pointed out that climate change would be a hazard for China and other countries in Asia. The scenarios presented in the IWMI-FAO report do not factor in climate change, which will likely make rainfall more erratic and increase the strain on already overstretched irrigation systems.

As a result, "even the study's pessimistic assumptions may prove overly optimistic," he said.

Chartres said worsening water scarcity and increased uncertainty from climate change would make the situation harder to manage. Nonetheless, the Blue Revolution was what people could do and it would have a positive effect, he said.

(Xinhua News Agency August 18, 2009)