Malin Falkenmark

• Professor
• Stockholm University

Precipitation is essential for food production in Sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 80 % of agriculture is rainfed. Although ~40 % of precipitation in certain regions is recycled moisture from Africa's tropical rainforest, there needs to be more knowledge about how this moisture supports the continent's agriculture. In this study, we quantify all...

The freshwater cycle over land is fundamental for sustainability and resilience, yet is extensively modified and shaped by a vast range of human interventions in the land, water, and climate systems. The consequences of human water-cycle modifications can be non-linear, delayed, and distributed across boundaries, sectors, and scale. This complexity...

Fresh water—the bloodstream of the biosphere—is at the center of the planetary drama of the Anthropocene. Water fluxes and stores regulate the Earth's climate and are essential for thriving aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, as well as water, food, and energy security. But the water cycle is also being modified by humans at an unprecedented scale...

The planetary boundaries framework proposes quantified guardrails to human modification of global environmental processes that regulate the stability of the planet and has been considered in sustainability science, governance, and corporate management. However, the planetary boundary for human freshwater use has been critiqued as a singular measure...

This article highlights green and blue water functions in the densely tied global water network, stabilizing the life support system and generating ecosystems and ecological services. Essential water challenges of the next half century are analyzed, identifying low-latitude dryland vulnerability and sharpening hydro-social water constraints. Attent...

The planetary boundaries framework has proven useful for many global sustainability contexts, but is challenging to apply to freshwater, which is spatially heterogeneous, part of complex socio-ecological systems and often dominated by local dynamics. To date, the planetary boundary for water has been simplistically defined by as the global rate of...

The planetary boundaries framework has proven useful for many global sustainability contexts, but is challenging to apply to freshwater, which is spatially heterogeneous, part of complex socio-ecological systems and often dominated by local dynamics. To date, the planetary boundary for water has been simplistically defined by as the global rate of...

Water is indispensable for Earth resilience and sustainable development. The capacity of social-ecological systems to deal with shocks, adapting to changing conditions and transforming in situations of crisis are fundamentally dependent on the functions of water to e.g., regulate the Earth’s climate, support biomass production, and supply water res...

Sub-Saharan Africa faces an enormous challenge in meeting the basic needs of a population that will nearly triple between now and the end of the twenty-first century. Managing water effectively, sustainably, and equitably will be a critical component for meeting this challenge, especially in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)....

With large development optimism and seen as rich in water resources, Africa is—except for the humid equatorial area—an arid continent, dominated by vast savannas, which require skilful manoeuvring between unreliable rain, very thirsty atmosphere, sharpening droughts and low runoff generation. With a four-folding population and six-folding water dem...

This article addresses the need to profoundly expand the way we think about freshwater. Stressing water’s role as the bloodstream of the biosphere, the article highlights water’s functions in sustaining life on the planet (control, state and moisture feedback functions), the role of water partitioning changes in inducing non-linear change at multip...

Water security needs priority in adaptation to global change. Most vulnerable will be the semi-arid tropics and subtropics, home of the majority of poor and undernourished populations. Policies have to distinguish between dry spells, interannual droughts and long-term climate aridification. Four contrasting situations are distinguished with differe...

We review and comment upon some themes in the recent stream of critical commentary on the assertion that “stationarity is dead,” attempting to clear up some misunderstandings; to note points of agreement; to elaborate on matters in dispute; and to share further relevant thoughts. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Meeting global food needs requires strategies for storing rainwater and retaining soil moisture to bridge dry spells, urge Johan Rockström and Malin Falkenmark.

The human influence on the global hydrological cycle is now the dominant force behind changes in water resources across the world and in regulating the resilience of the Earth system. The rise in human pressures on global freshwater resources is in par with other anthropogenic changes in the Earth system (from climate to ecosystem change), which ha...

This article aims to analyze the relationships between water and land. It posits that there is a disconnect between land and water management that needs to be rectified. To address the major challenges the world is facing in terms of feeding itself and securing adequate access to water there is a need to revisit the integrated water resources manag...

Humanity has entered a new geological era, the Anthropocene, where the world’s human population now constitutes the largest driving force of changes to the biosphere. Emerging water challenges require new system thinking and ideas for governance and management of water resources in the context of rapid global change. This book presents a new resil...

As water is an essential component of the planetary life support system, water deficiency constitutes an insecurity that has to be overcome in the process of socio-economic development. The paper analyses the origin and appearance of blue as well as green water scarcity on different scales and with particular focus on risks to food production and w...

Water security needs priority in adaptation to global change. Most vulnerable will be the semi-arid tropics and subtropics, home of the majority of poor and undernourished populations. Policies have to distinguish between dry spells, interannual droughts and long-term climate aridification. Four contrasting situations are distinguished with differe...

Balancing Water for Humans and Nature, authored by two of the world's leading experts on water management, examines water flows - the 'blood stream' of both nature and society - in terms of the crucial links, balances, conflicts and trade-offs between human and environmental needs. The authors argue that a sustainable future depends fundamentally o...

This paper analyses the potential conflict between resilience of the Earth system and global freshwater requirements for the dual task of carbon sequestration to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere, and food production to feed humanity by 2050. It makes an attempt to assess the order of magnitude of the increased consumptive water use involved and analyse...

The purpose of the UNEP Foresight Process is to produce, every two years, a careful and authoritative ranking of the most important emerging issues related to the global environment. UNEP aims to inform the UN and wider international community about these issues on a timely basis, as well as provide input to its own work programme and that of other...

The IWRA founders have promised to take the association only to those missions which are not covered in depth by any other well-established water-related association. Vujica Yevjevich, IWRA founder, Brussels Congress, 1983

The paper aims at a scientifically based synthesis of water quality genesis and pollution problems arising from human interventions in the landscape, physical as well as chemical. First, water quality genesis is explained in terms of sources, water pathways and some time scales involved. It goes on to look closer at chemical reactions along water p...

The variability and unpredictability of rainfall is a neglected but most hazardous dimension of climate and water resources and a tangible development predicament. Describing and analysing the world and its water resources in terms of statistical averages and trends is natural and necessary, for example, as an input in planning and policy. But the...

Given that water is the core resource for plant production, the study analyses the carrying capacity overshoot threatening a large part of the planet by 2050 AD, in view of current dietary tendencies towards 3,000 kcal/day per person with 20% animal-based food. It shows the enormous unbalance caused by population growth and the ambitions of the Mil...

Agricultural systems as well as other ecosystems generate ecosystem services, i.e., societal benefits from ecological processes. These services include, for example, nutrient reduction that leads to water quality improvements in some wetlands and climatic regulation through recycling of precipitation in rain forests. While agriculture has increased...

Recent developments of global models and data sets enable a new, spatially explicit and process-based assessment of green and blue water in food production and trade. An initial intercomparison of a range of different (hydrological, vegetation, crop, water resources and economic) models, confirms that green water use in global crop production is ab...

This modeling study explores—spatially explicitly, for current and projected future climate, and for different management intensity levels—the potential for increasing global crop production through on-farm water management strategies: (a) reducing soil evaporation ('vapor shift') and (b) collecting runoff on cropland and using it during dry spells...

Anthropogenic pressures on the Earth System have reached a scale where abrupt global environmental change can no longer be excluded. We propose a new approach to global sustainability in which we define planetary boundaries within which we expect that humanity can operate safely. Transgressing one or more planetary boundaries may be deleterious or...

Climate change has exacerbated concerns about water security. The authors stress the need for countries in basins where populations are growing to anticipate the water shortage implications for food production. The paper analyses the future status of the interdependence among riparian states in four semi-arid transnational basins under the climate...

Identifying and quantifying planetary boundaries that must not be transgressed could help prevent human activities from causing unacceptable environmental change, argue Johan Rockström and colleagues.

The water cycle is the bloodstream of both biosphere and human society. Every human body contains some 70% water, which has to be partly renewed every day. The body does not function when the water content diminishes too much. Water – although chemically simple – is a highly complex substance with many different functions: health, income generation...

While past strategies for agricultural water management have focused on irrigation (use of blue water), this paper demonstrates the dominance of green water in food production. A global, yet spatially disaggregated, green-blue analysis of water availability and requirement, using the LPJmL dynamic vegetation and water balance model, indicates that...

The Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture recommended that future food production should be concentrated on existing agricultural land in order to avoid further loss of ecosystem functions from terrestrial lands. This paper is a green-blue water analysis of water constraints and opportunities for global food production on curr...

This book, which contains 14 chapters, covers all aspects of rainfed agriculture, starting with its potential, current status, rainwater harvesting and supplementary irrigation, to policies, approaches, institutions for upscaling, and impacts of integrated water management programmes in rainfed areas.

As societies develop, river basin water resources are increasingly controlled, diverted and consumed for agricultural, domestic and industrial purposes, hence reducing the ability to meet the growing demands from various sectors and interests. Basins are closed when additional water commitments for domestic, industrial, agricultural or environmenta...

IntroductionThe Global SystemAtmospheric Component and ClimateTerrestrial Component, Vegetation and Water SystemsThe Water Cycle and Human LifeReferences

Water Management and the Urgency of New PoliciesWater and LandWater in the LandscapeWater as a Constraint to DevelopmentIntegrated Land-Water ManagementAcknowledgmentsReferences

Securing sustainable livelihood conditions and reducing the risk of outmigration in savanna ecosystems hosted in the tropical semiarid regions is of fundamental importance for the future of humanity in general. Although precipitation in tropical drylands, or savannas, is generally more significant than one might expect, these regions are subject to...

Water is essential for life of plants, animals, humans, and human civilization. The rapidly growing human population is causing energy crisis, ozone depletion, global warming, and scarcity of cropland and this is also leading to water scarcity, water pollution, and water-related land fertility degradation. Incoming rainwater generates two types of...

Water-Dependent Livelihood Security Water Requirements To Feed Humanity The Global Perspective: Potential Water Sources To Meet Future Needs Of Additional Green Water Attention Needed To Trade-Offs Involved Comparing The Hunger Gap Regions Major Shifts In Thinking Needed Summary

The article presents the authors' claim that the concept of stationarity, the idea that the systems for management of water fluctuate within an unchanging domain of variability, is dead. According to the authors, the idea of stationarity had ceased due to the substantial anthropogenic change of the Earth's climate which alters the means and extreme...

This article analyzes the water implications in 92 developing countries of first attaining the 2015 hunger target of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals and then feeding a growing population on an acceptable standard diet. The water requirements in terms of vapor flows are quantified, potential water sources are identified, and impacts...

The overarching problem behind the need for good ecosystem governance is the fact that human needs for water, food, energy, etc., generally demand manipulations of landscape components. Due to water’s role as the bloodstream of the biosphere, with many parallel functions in the landscape, and ecosystems’ water-dependence, ecosystems tend to get imp...

The present water policy debate is dominated by the 30 yr old mission to secure water supply and sanitation to all people. The water needed to produce a nutritionally acceptable diet for one person is however 70 times as large as the amount needed for domestic water supply. The food security dilemma is largest in arid climate regions, a situation c...

Agricultural systems depend fundamentally on ecological processes and on the services provided by many eco­systems. Agricultural management during the last century has caused widescale changes in land cover, watercourses, and aquifers, contributing to eco­system degradation and undermining the processes that support eco­systems and the provision of...

From p. 3: "The 2006 Human Development Report, 'Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Crisis,' (United Nations Development Programme 2006) considered water scarcity from two points of view: (1) as a crisis arising from a lack of services that provide safe water and (2) as a crisis caused by scarce water resources. It concluded that the wor...

"Agriculture depends on ecosystem functions such as pollination. This means it is closely linked with the health of surrounding ecosystems and should be considered an agro-ecosystem. Crop production systems have been managed as though they were disconnected from the landscape in general. Since the complex systems that make up the landscape are inte...

The production of biomass for direct human use—e.g., as food and timber—is by far the largest freshwater-consuming human activity on Earth. However, water policy and development con-centrate on a fraction of the water for food challenge, namely, irrigated agriculture, which uses an estimated 25% of the global water used in agriculture, and on the i...

The present water policy debate is dominated by the 30 yr old mission to secure water supply and sanitation to all people. The water needed to produce a nutritionally acceptable diet for one person is however 70 times as large as the amount needed for domestic water supply. The food security dilemma is largest in arid climate regions, a situation c...

Humans and many of their activities depend on clean water but pollute it during use. Water—a unique solvent—when moving through the landscape on its way to the river mouth, meets pollutants almost “everywhere” along its pathways. As a result, water pollution has been building up over time in rivers, lakes, aquifers and coastal waters. The pollution...

It is well documented that human modification of the hydrological cycle has profoundly affected the flow of liquid water across the Earth's land surface. Alteration of water vapor flows through land-use changes has received comparatively less attention, despite compelling evidence that such alteration can influence the functioning of the Earth Syst...

The number of local and regional-scale water management failures appears steadily to increase despite an apparently higher level of engineering solutions at hand. The objective of this paper is to examine the challenges the existing education system needs to meet in order to produce water engineers capable of responding to the complexity of contemp...

"Water was one of five priority issues at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. It is recognised increasingly as an essential component in the dynamics of poverty; poor water management can indeed create and perpetuate poverty. Not only is secured access to water essential for poverty alleviation, but water development i...

"Since the 2nd World Water Forum in The Hague in 2000, water professionals have been working to develop a 'land/water integration in a catchment-based ecosystem approach.' As part of the development, it is important to realise that there is an existing dichotomy in the understanding of the concept of the 'ecosystem approach.' The two approaches mig...

Since in large parts of the world it is getting difficult to meet growing water demands by mobilising more water, the discourse has turned its focus to demand management, governance and the necessary concern for aquatic ecosystems by reserving an "environmental flow" in the river. The latter calls for attention to river depletion which may be expec...

The drainage basin, including the coastal zone, may be seen as a large-scale system of interlinked natural resources and ecosystem services which support human activities on land and in the sea. Social and economic activities in the drainage basin have to be consistent with the hydrological and ecological needs for human well-being. Proper attentio...

A recently launched international initiative on “Hydrology for the Environment, Life and Policy” (HELP) aims at a science‐based approach to integrated catchment management, and in particular to facilitating the dialogue needed between scientists, stakeholders and policy makers. The ultimate challenge of a sustainability‐oriented environmental manag...

The paper has its focus on water's key functions behind ecosystem dynamics and the water-related balancing involved in a catchment-based ecosystem approach. A conceptual framework is being developed to address fundamental trade-offs between humans and ecosystems. This is done by paying attention to society's unavoidable landscape modifications and...

The distinction of ‘blue’ (liquid) and ‘green’ (vapour) water flow is introduced to make possible an assessment of water flows to be appropriated for future food production. The author offers a ‘backcasting approach’ in assessing the consumptive water requirements for feeding humanity by 2050 and from where the needed water may be provi...

Earlier Symposia stressed the importance of both a radical shift in thinking and of a radically improved governance. This is not possible without cross-sectoral bridge building through dialogue--the theme of this year's Symposium. The ongoing globalization is strong and complex with three main categories of country responses: integration into the w...

This paper attempts to clarify key biophysical issues and the problems involved in the ethics of socio-ecohydrological catchment management. The issue in managing complex systems is to live with unavoidable change while securing the capacity of the ecohydrological system of the catchment to sustain vital ecological goods and services, aquatic as we...

The world is moving towards a dangerous situation of societal instability due to our failing ability to manage the life support system on the human-dominated planet. Contributing to this problem are inherited and biased ways of thinking, originating from the 17th century and based on fragmentation and sectorization. A fundamental shift in thinking...

"The water necessary to produce the food required for an expanding human population is usually discussed only as an issue of blue water (the water we use from rivers and aquifers). This discussion neglects all the food produced from rainfed farming, which is critical not least in hunger and poverty stricken areas with rapid population growth, areas...

Rapid population growth in the dry climate regions, arable land scarcity, and irrigation expansion limitations direct our interest to possibilities of yield increase in rainfed agriculture. Literature, however, indicates large differences between actual and potential yields, and between yields on farmers' fields and research stations. This article...

A river basin approach focusing on upstream/downstream conflicts of interest has to involve attention both to the services that water itself provides to society, and to water-related ecosystem services, terrestrial as well as aquatic. Besides “blue water” flow, i.e., liquid water flows in rivers and aquifers, attention has to be paid to “green wate...

"The paper has been divided into two main parts. The first part puts forward a strong case for applying IWRM globally and defines the IWRM concept and process. The second part provides additional advice and guidance on how IWRM could be implemented in different conditions. Readers with limited time may decide to concentrate on the first part and us...

"Global freshwater assessments have not addressed the linkages among water vapor flows, agricultural food production, and terrestrial ecosystem services. We perform the first bottom-up estimate of continental water vapor flows, subdivided into the major terrestrial biomes, and arrive at a total continental water vapor flow of 70,000 km3/yr (ranging...

Humanity's dependence on ecosystem support is “mentally hidden” to large segments of society; it has no price in the market and is seldom accounted for in decision making. Similarly, the needs of ecosystems for fresh water for generation of nature's services are largely invisible. Freshwater assessments predominantly have focused on human uses of l...

This paper focusses on the widespread but false belief that water is very simple and can be handled within a 'water sector'. Water's multifunctionality is discussed in terms of its manifold appearances in relation to a simple mental image of the interaction between human society and the physical landscape hosting its life-support system. Fundamenta...

This paper focusses on the widespread but false belief that water is very simple and can be handled within a "water sector". Water's mutifunctionality is discussed in terms of its manifold appearances in relation to a simple mental image of the interaction between human society and the physical landscape hosting its life-support system. Fundamental...

Against the background of a Mar del Plata 20 year Anniversary Seminar, a global overview of the current water resources dilemma is presented. Three main security threats are highlighted that should be reason for strong concern: continued water quality degradation, slowly reducing the use options of accessible water; food insecurity risk, introducin...

The decade of the 1990s has seen an awakening understanding by the global community of the importance of freshwater for societal and environmental vitality. In 1994, the Scientific Committee on Water Research (SCOWAR) was established by the International Council for Scientific Unions (ICSU) to address frontier freshwater-related science issues. Thi...

Abstract This paper takes as its starting point today's paradoxical situation where a global water crisis is threatening a world in which water illiteracy is widespread among,those expected to cope with that crisis. This creates a huge communication challenge for hydrologists, having to brief decision makers, diplomats and politicians in a manner,t...

Water availability in the root zone (green water) is a critical component of plant production, but is often deficient in many Third World regions. When deficient, runoff water (blue water) can be added. Focusing on ten physiographic regions in Africa and Asia, characterized by mainly or partly dry climates and rapid population growth, this study an...