China, India face water risk from biofuel: IWMI

By Adam Cox

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Present plans by China and India for biofuel production could mean they face water scarcity by 2030, a researcher said.

Charlotte de Fraiture, a Colombo-based scientist with the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), said in an interview that she did not "see a lot of potential for biofuel production in either China or India because of the water.

"It's not that I'm saying don't go for biofuels. It's just that India and China are two water-short countries".

The IWMI carried out a five-year study on water which was completed in the spring of this year.

While water usage for biofuel crops is relatively small now, it is growing fast, as is the whole biofuel industry. Bioethanol production doubled between 1990 and 2003, de Fraiture wrote in a report, and is projected to double again by 2010.

About 7,130 cubic kms of water is used for food production, the IWMI says. One cubic kilometer is the volume of a cube with each side being one kilometer. It contains 1,000 trillion liters -- that's a 1 followed by 15 zeroes.

To put that in perspective, the runoff of the Nile river, for instance, is about 85 cubic kilolitres, de Fraiture says.

Right now, biofuel crops use about 100 cubic kilometers, or 1 percent of the total for food. Assuming biofuel usage rises as many expect, IWMI findings point to 180 cubic kilometers of water for irrigation being used for biofuel by 2030.