Beyond water stress: Exploring the wastewater-irrigation nexus for sustainable Agriculture

Abstract

Water management is one of the crucial factors that impact the operation of agriculture globally. As droughts become more frequent due to global warming, the management of this limited resource becomes increasingly important. Lately, the potential utilization of wastewater for irrigation purposes is considered a game changer, overlooking that in many cases, wastewater treatment is poorly studied. This work aimed to examine the EU member states water management practices based on the FAO database. The Kruskal-Wallis test of the clustered countries revealed that the developing regions pay the most attention to wastewater treatment within the EU. Even though the most developed countries treat quite low amount of wastewater, and based on previous studies they are more likely to face water scarcity, the applied methods did not reveal any difference between the water stress levels of the clustered member states. The run of the statistical tests highlighted that the various water stress levels of the examined countries could not be connected with the utilization of the existing irrigation systems. Based on these results, increasing the application of the built-out system may in many cases be sufficient to serve and even increase the operation of the agricultural production without putting additional strain on the resources in the short term. However, the development of wastewater-based irrigation systems could be useful in those regions where the utilization of the existing irrigation system is already high, or face elevated water stress. Since we are still learning how to deal with this new resource, the farm-scale utilization of less contaminated water sources like collected rainwater or greywater could facilitate the development of the new system. This promising approach could not only contribute significantly to several Sustainable Development Goals but also has the potential to enhance and over time even supersede the current method.