To sustain growing food demand and increasing standard of living, global
water use increased by nearly 6 times during the last 100 years, and
continues to grow. As water demands get closer and closer to the water
availability in many regions, each drop of water becomes increasingly
valuable and water must be managed more efficiently and intensively. However,
soaring water use worsens water scarcity conditions already prevalent in
semi-arid and arid regions, increasing uncertainty for sustainable food
production and economic development. Planning for future development and
investments requires that we prepare water projections for the future.
However, estimations are complicated because the future of the world's waters
will be influenced by a combination of environmental, social, economic, and
political factors, and there is only limited knowledge and data available
about freshwater resources and how they are being used. The Water Futures and
Solutions (WFaS) initiative coordinates its work with other ongoing scenario
efforts for the sake of establishing a consistent set of new global water
scenarios based on the shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs) and the
representative concentration pathways (RCPs). The WFaS "fast-track"
assessment uses three global water models, namely H08, PCR-GLOBWB, and
WaterGAP. This study assesses the state of the art for estimating and
projecting water use regionally and globally in a consistent manner. It
provides an overview of different approaches, the uncertainty, strengths and
weaknesses of the various estimation methods, types of management and policy
decisions for which the current estimation methods are useful. We also
discuss additional information most needed to be able to improve water use
estimates and be able to assess a greater range of management options across
the water–energy–climate nexus
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