Releasing the Pressure

The report examines the relationship between water productivity, water flows, and ecosystem services, emphasizing that narrow agricultural efficiency often creates trade-offs with broader landscape health. It advocates for an integrated approach to water resource management that values regulating and supporting services alongside provisioning ones.

• Water productivity should be expanded from a narrow focus on crop yields to 'ecosystem services water productivity' (ESSWP), which accounts for the total material and non-material benefits generated per unit of water input.
• Rainfed agriculture represents a significant opportunity for increasing global food security without increasing water appropriations; closing yield gaps to 95% of potential could increase grain production by 2.3 billion tonnes (58%).
• Agricultural water productivity gains can create negative trade-offs for downstream users and aquatic ecosystems, such as reduced outflow and altered water quality.
• Wetlands provide critical regulating and supporting services—including flood protection, nutrient filtering, and carbon sequestration—that often outweigh the economic value of converting them into irrigated cropland.
• Livestock water productivity can be improved through managed grazing, manure management, and the use of climate-appropriate breeds, which can reduce soil compaction and increase green water infiltration.
• Forests should be viewed as productive water users because they provide essential non-timber forest products (NTFPs) and regulating services like watershed protection and carbon sequestration.
• Natural water storage (wetlands, soils, groundwater) is significantly larger than artificial storage; for example, global wetland storage is estimated at 17,000 km3 compared to 7,200 km3 for large dams.
• Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is a viable framework for governing the complexity of upstream-downstream dependencies, provided it is combined with bottom-up ecosystem service valuation.

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (n.d.). Releasing the Pressure. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Air-land-water-resources/sei-unep-releasing-the-pressure.pdf

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. Releasing the Pressure. n.d. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Air-land-water-resources/sei-unep-releasing-the-pressure.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=Releasing the Pressure |url=https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Air-land-water-resources/sei-unep-releasing-the-pressure.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{stockholmenvironmentinstitutendreleasing, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{Releasing the Pressure}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, url = {https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Air-land-water-resources/sei-unep-releasing-the-pressure.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }