Rethinking the approach to groundwater and food security

This study is based on a project that began as an attempt to evaluate the implications of groundwater overabstraction in China and India, key countries for food production and food security. It focuses on the question of how well the interaction between groundwater and food security is understood and what types of information are essential to improve this understanding. The paper explores issues such as data availability, the dynamic nature of systems and the interaction between systems. The overall question of groundwater and food security is introduced from the perspective of both resource availability for production and the larger question of entitlements and access. The paper then focuses on groundwater issues per se and on how the combination of data limitations and regional-temporal variability constrains accurate assessment. It then draws implications for the analysis of food security and for groundwater management. The paper concludes with a discussion of the potential ways for addressing concerns relating to groundwater and food security.