Yale Environment 360 | By: Richard Schiffman | June 29, 2017:
The breadbasket regions of India and Pakistan are rapidly depleting their underground aquifers. In a Yale e360 interview, climatologist Sonali McDermid explains why this overexploitation, combined with global warming, is creating an urgent need to change local farming practices.
India and Pakistan are among the most heavily irrigated nations on earth, producing enough wheat, corn, and other crops to feed their combined populations of 1.5 billion. But in South Asia’s breadbasket, which includes the Punjab region, farmers have pumped water out of the ground so heedlessly for so long that scientists now estimate aquifers there could run dry by mid-century. Add to that the disruptive effects of climate change and it’s clear that South Asian agriculture is facing a perilous future.
Sonali McDermid, a climatologist at New York University, has been working to better understand this gathering threat and help find potential solutions. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, McDermid explains why India and Pakistan have the world’s most overburdened aquifers, describes how the scale of South Asian irrigation is so vast that it’s actually moderating temperature increases and altering the monsoon, and discusses why crop diversification is vital to mitigating the impacts of climate change.
“You are going to have to plant multiple crops in case you lose one,” says McDermid. “Farmers will need to experiment with crops that are heat-tolerant and drought-resistant. Diversification will need to be the leading component of adaptation.”
Yale Environment 360: Groundwater supply is critical to farming. You have said that it may soon run out in parts of India. Could you elaborate?
Sonali McDermid: South Asia is currently one of the most heavily irrigated areas on earth. Worldwide, about 70 percent of the water that we take out of the ground goes to agriculture. In the U.S., that proportion is slightly less because of efficiencies and precision irrigation techniques. In India, however, it is over 90 percent. As a result, India has by far the most stressed aquifers in the world. Eastern China is also stressed, as are parts of the southern Oglala aquifer in the U.S., which are overdrawn, but not to the same degree. The U.S. is wealthy enough to have irrigation practices that are more conservation-oriented and reliable. Virtually all global groundwater aquifers are being depleted. But there is no question that India is going to be experiencing this problem first.
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