Graph of the Day: Increase in Annual Water Demand, 2005-2030

By 2030, demand in India will grow to almost 1.5 trillion m3, driven by domestic demand for rice, wheat, and sugar for a growing population, a large proportion of which is moving toward a middle-class diet. Against this demand, India’s current water supply is approximately 740 billion m3. As a result, most of India’s river basins could face severe deficit by 2030 unless concerted action is taken, with some of the most populous — including the Ganga, the Krishna, and the Indian portion of the Indus — facing the biggest absolute gap. China’s demand in 2030 is expected to reach 818 billion m3, of which just over 50 percent is from agriculture (of which almost half is for rice), 32 percent is industrial demand driven by thermal power generation, and the remaining is domestic. Current supply amounts to just over 618 billion m3. Significant industrial and domestic wastewater pollution makes the “quality adjusted” supply-demand gap even larger than the quantity-only gap: 21 percent of available surface water resources nationally are unfit even for agriculture. Thermal power generation is by far the largest industrial water user, despite the high penetration of water-efficient technology, and is facing increasing limitations in the rapidly urbanizing basins. … Agriculture—primarily in India and sub-Saharan Africa—will create the bulk of the additional demand to 2030 (Exhibit 5), although with significantly different underlying dynamics. In India, projected agricultural water withdrawals per capita are almost 800 m3/year in 2030, while in sub-Saharan Africa they are 323 m3/year on average, and in South Africa only 150 m3/year. Irrigated crops mainly responsible for the withdrawals include rice and wheat in India and maize, sorghum, and millet in Sub-Saharan Africa. The comparison between China and India is also instructive to understand the underlying drivers of demand. While both have large agricultural sectors, in India, agriculture will still be a significant driver of GDP in 2030 with a share of ~10 percent, while in China it will account for only 4 percent. In China, unlike in most other large economies, industrial demand for water dominates overall demand growth. In contrast, municipal and domestic demand will grow significantly across all emerging markets.

Charting our water future: Economic frameworks to inform decision-making [pdf]