Unit 7 Outline - Water and Food Supply
As the global population grows we need to find ways to make sure that we can grow enough food and supply people with clean and reliable supplies of water. In MEDCs this is rarely a major problem, but LEDCs can have big problems dealing with both food and water supplies.
Key Content:
- Why do some areas not have enough food and water?
- What are the effects of poor food and water supplies?
- How can food and water supplies be improved?
Major Case Studies:
- Major water supply projects such as the Aswan High Dam in Egypt or the Sobradinho Dam in the Caatinga region of Brazil;
- Small scale water supply projects such as those promoted by NGOs like WaterAid in Burkina Faso
; - Food supply problems and management - such as in Niger in 2005 (map) and other solutions such as bunds, the green revolution or genetically modified crops or action by NGOs such as foodbanks (Cambridge Foodbank)
This is one of the areas of the course where the role of NGOs is particularly obvious. You need to know about organisations like WaterAid, Medecins sans Frontières and Oxfam.
Make sure that you can deal with the issues of desertification. This is an example of how people can make the problems of poor food or water supply worse. Schemes like the development of bunds (lines of stones) can improve things, but the issue is also linked to over-population in places close to the Sahara Desert for example (e.g. Burkina Faso or Niger)
Download the Water and Food Supply Revision Sheet
Download the Egypt Placemarks file for Google Earth. Read guidance on using Google Earth on the Google Earth Files page.