Agriculture, the main cause of water stress in Latin America

The agriculture is the main responsible for the water stress suffered by the region of Latin America and the Caribbeanas revealed this Thursday at the Water Conference held in the UN from yesterday to Friday.

Specifically, agriculture is a 74% of the total water extraction in the entire region, as warned by the representatives of PLACA, an acronym for Platform for Climate Action in Agriculture, made up of 16 countries in the region in the framework of the parallel event “Water and agriculture for the climate in Latin America and the Caribbean”.

There are several countries in the region with high levels of water stress and that have suffered prolonged droughts in all or part of their territory, such as the case of Peru, Chile and Mexico, the three agricultural powers, or the one known as “Central American dry corridor”.

The Caribbean, where seven countries registered severe droughts in 2020, does not escape this reality, nor even the Amazon, considered one of the wettest natural regions in the world, which is also becoming more arid.

For all these reasons, the PLACA signatory countries have called for a more sustainable use of water, because the demand for water will only grow due to factors such as population growth, urbanization and climate change, so it is crucial to equip of more efficient systems of water use, also in the agricultural field.

At the event at the United Nations, some cases of good practices in the region applied by peasant families in the region to optimize the use of water were shown, but Hivy Ortiz, coordinator of the FAO Regional Initiative for Sustainable and Resilient Agriculture, put the stress that it is important to join the ministries of Agriculture to address the issue of water stress and climate change.

PLACA is an initiative launched at COP25 as a regional voluntary mechanism to share knowledge, technologies and collaborative practices in agriculture to address climate change.

The platform’s technical secretariat is made up of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

To date, 16 countries in the region have joined this initiative: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Bahamas, and Uruguay. ).

Source: EFE