Salt of the Earth : Quantifying the Impact of Water Salinity on Global Agricultural Productivity

[摘要] Salinity in surface waters is on therise throughout much of the world. Many factors contributeto this change including increased water extraction, poorirrigation management, and sea-level rise. To date no studyhas attempted to quantify impacts on global food production.In this paper we develop a plausibly causal model to testthe sensitivity of global and regional agriculturalproductivity to changes in water salinity. To do so, weutilize several local and global datasets on water qualityand agricultural productivity and a model which isolates theimpact of exogenous changes in water salinity on yields. Wethen train a machine learning model to predict salinityglobally in order to simulate average global food lossesfrom 2000-2013. These losses are found to be high, in therange of the equivalent of 124 trillion kilocalories, orenough to feed over 170 million people every day, each year.Global maps building on these results show that pockets ofhigh losses occur on all continents but can be expected tobe particularly problematic in regions already experiencingmalnutrition challenges.

[发布日期] 2019-12-10 [发布机构] World Bank, Washington, DC

[学科分类] 社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

[关键词] WATER QUALITY;WATER SALINITY;AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY;ELECTRICAL CONDUCTIVITY;YIELD LOSS