Have you ever felt parched all of a sudden and bolted to go get a glass of water? Lucky you, that must have been a great feeling to quench that thirst. There are kids in Africa who don’t get that privilege. Maybe, add Earth to that club.
In late 2024, it was outlined that close to 80% of Earth’s land has experienced a drier climate in the last 3 decades leading up to 2020. Think of it as a permanent drought. There’s, also, something called global drylands, which have low precipitation and limited vegetation growth due to water scarcity. In the same aforementioned time frame, these drylands are said to have expanded by close to 4.5 million square kilometres. Plus, there’s a warning that if efforts to curb your enthusiasm and greenhouse gas emissions fail, 3% of the world’s humid areas may become drylands by the end of the century.
If you’d like to be spooked further, currently, the number of people living in drylands is nearly 2.5 billion, but the worst-case scenario might indicate the number would go up to 5 billion by 2100. Act now and by the year 2100, you can save those drylands people.
All in all, a couple of -ifications are taking place: aridification and desertification. That means a lot of places might become uninhabitable, but hopefully, there’ll still be some swimming pools to cool off in. Maybe, water could, even, become the new currency. It may be why the guy from The Big Short seems to be investing in it.
Maybe, climate conditions were never really the focus of startups and businesses. Maybe, they were in the periphery. Maybe, it was more like a buzzword to leverage. But now, it might be a sad reality to embrace that we will never be as wet as we once were.
And that just might mean agriculture would be hurt a little. Not as much arable land? That might probably mean lower crop yields, which might mean soaring food prices globally. And your almonds in California, one instance of water-intensive farming, won’t be sustainably growing. In fact, it might go off the market altogether. Would food be derived from more drought-resistant crops? A Shark Tank US pitch involved cacti, will that be the need of the hour? Could vertical farming be a solution here? And could that mean hydropower wouldn’t be as cool an energy source anymore? Dam!
They say a crisis is the best time for opportunity. So, is there anything here for AgriTech startups to do?
Introducing a new kind of innovation: WaterTech. Are we ready to look more closely at technologies to desalinate ocean water effectively?
So, who’s going to be left behind in the dust of a drying world? Water we waiting for?
