Water theft is an existential threat
Approximately 30% of freshwater ecosystems and 87% of wetlands have disappeared globally due to water overuse, while water-stressed regions have seen their annual GDP growth rates decline by as much as 2.5% due to shortages. Growing competition for the resource is driving higher water theft, which already claims between 30% and 50% of the global water supply—particularly from agricultural uses.
If current water theft trends continue, global water demand could exceed supply by as much as 40% by 2030, thus further depleting water bodies and decreasing GDP growth rates in water-stressed regions by up to 6%. In this context, the design of novel approaches to tackle water theft is a prerequisite for achieving sustainable and equitable development.
Research efforts to tackle theft have focused on detection, using satellite-based monitoring of irrigation to produce increasingly reliable estimates of illegal water use. Yet, despite these technological advances, policy approaches to tackle water theft have not only remained ineffective, but also often backfired. Amnesties have spurred further theft, the closure of illegal abstractions has led to unregulated water trading, theft sanctions have been consistently offset by the growing value of water due to increasing scarcity, aggravating non-compliance.
At the core of all these ineffective policies lies a fundamental failure to understand the nonlinear adaptive responses by economic agents like irrigators. These responses can affect and be affected by other socioeconomic and ecological processes via feedback loops with cascading impacts that are difficult to foresee.
This can give rise to surprises: unexpected events that can have disproportionate consequences.
