Singapore - Himalayan river basins in China, Bangladesh, India and Nepal will face a massive water depletion within 20 years, leading to a decline in food and mass migration, a research group warned Monday.

Due to natural reasons like glacial melting, the four countries would lose almost 275 billion cubic meters of annual renewable water in the next two decades, more than the total amount of available water in Nepal at present, India-based Strategic Foresight Group said in a report.

"What we are looking at here is a major catastrophe ... going to happen in 20, 25 years," the group's president, Sundeep Waslekar, told a seminar at the Singapore International Water Week.

Water scarcity and effects like desertification and soil erosion would bring rice and wheat yields in China and India down by as much as 50 per cent by 2050, the report said.

"China and India alone will need to import more than 200 to 300 million tones of wheat and rice," it said.

"This will create a havoc in the global food market ... for people[...]

[Published in GreenNews - Read the original article]