The Australian Director General of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Dr Colin Chartres, said it was very likely that current water shortages are the result of climate change.

He said they were "a window into the future" when water scarcity and resulting food insecurity will be the norm for many countries unless action was taken now to overcome them.

Far less money is spent now on maintaining the vast networks of water drainage and irrigation that crisscross the country than was expended under communism. The authorities spend about $12 a hectare on maintenance, down from $120 a hectare in Soviet times, according to the International Water Management Institute. Blocked drainage pipes push salt levels up, damaging the land and dragging crop yields ever lower.

Far less money is spent now on maintaining the vast networks of water drainage and irrigation that crisscross the country than was expended under Communism. Authorities spend about $12 per hectare on maintenance (a hectare is around two and a half acres), down from $120 per hectare in Soviet times, according to the International Water Management Institute. Blocked drainage pipes push salt levels up, damaging the land and dragging crop yields ever lower.

With river water fully used, Indian farmers have been trying to increase supplies by tapping underground reserves. In the last 15 years, they have bought a staggering 20 million Yamaha pumps to suck water from beneath their fields. Tushaar Shah, director of the International Water Management Institute's groundwater research station in Gujarat, estimates those farmers are pumping annually to the surface 100 cubic kilometers more water than the monsoon rains replace. Water tables are plunging, and in many places water supplies are giving out.

These improvements in water management as a concept violate current legal, institutional, and professional understanding, but time has come for change. Even the International Water Management Institute teaches the world the error that the improved water management is bad water management. The Institute should be professionally ostracized and then disbanded for such a serious error. The ongoing research in the Arkansas Valley is directed with the emphases from earlier experiences of improving irrigated agriculture.

On the 19th May 2008, Pascal Vine, Director General of Cemagref and Colin Chartres, Director General of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in Antony, France, with the intention of developing a medium term collaborative research program in water management.

Cemagraf and IWMI, who have been in partnership since 1992, hope to pursue this collaboration in a range of research topics covering selected areas of water management from irrigation systems to hydrographic basins.

According to estimates from the International Water Management Institute, one-third of the world population will be affected by water scarcity by 2025. What does this mean for us in the desert? Well for starters, one of the places listed that suffers from growing water scarcity is the Colorado River basin, and a good portion of the water we use comes from the Colorado River. However, issues of water scarcity are not necessarily a result of insufficient water sources, but instead it is because of the choices people make of how they use their water.

As food prices escalate and water scarcity extends worldwide, the best solution to both issues would be a global reduction in wasted food, a new international report says. Inefficient harvesting, transportation, storage, and packaging ruin 50 percent of food, according to the report, which was released last week by the Stockholm International Water Institute, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, and the International Water Management Institute. Add up how much food consumers simply throw away, especially in developed nations, and a whole lot of water is being wasted as well.

Jointly authored by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), in collaboration with the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), the 26-page study points out that water will be a key constraint to food production -- "unless we change the way we think and act about water resources."

Anders Berntell of SIWI points out that food production and agriculture were the biggest global users of water. On average, about 70 percent of all water extracted was going into agriculture.

Nearly one-sixth of the population of China and India are fed using amounts of water that can't be sustained. Some nations have even resorted to importing grain and soybeans rather than grow it themselves to save water. But this stopgap approach can't help hold off inevitable shortages: According to the International Water Management Institute, future farmers will need 17% more water than the world now has available. Just as nations compete for oil, China's move into foreign farms suggests competition for water isn't far off, either.