ABSTRACT
Sustainable growth in agriculture is crucial for food security, rural development and the long-term economic growth of many poor nations in Asia and Africa, and it is well known that only those strategies which are built around agricultural growth can take hundreds of millions living in Asia and Africa out of the poverty trap (Schultz, 1979; DFID, 2004; Cervantes-Godoy and Dewbre, 2010). Recent analyses show that countries which face severe problems of hunger are also characterized by lower levels of water security (HDR, 2006; Kumar et al., 2008a; Kumar, 2011). Return on investment in water – in the form of infrastructure, institutions and policies – is expected to be high in countries which are low in the economic growth indices (Grey and Sadoff, 2007). A recent paper on the growth tragedy of East Africa mirrors the correlation between long-term reduction in rainfall and the decline in economic growth rates (Barrios et al., 2010). Analysis using global datasets to show the relationship between water security, food security, human development and economic growth is also available (Kumar et al., 2008a; Shah and Kumar, 2008; Kumar, 2011).
