The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) with the collaboration of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), has developed a system that enables rational land-use planning on the basis of an inventory of land resources and evaluation of biophysical limitations and potentials. This is referred to as the Agro-ecological Zones (AEZ) methodology.

The map shows the total annual water withdrawal. Water withdrawals are downscaled to to a five arc-minute grid. Water is considered scarce when the withdrawals exceed 40% of the renewable resource. According to statistics compiled by FAO (FAOSTAT), several countries in North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia withdraw more water than their total renewable resources. Domestic water withdrawals are downscaled by applying the per capita domestic water use to population of each pixel. Industrial water withdrawals were downscaled by using the industrial water use per unit GDP and applying downscaled information on GDP. Water consumption is assumed to be 30% of domestic use and 10% of industrial use. Finally, agricultural water consumption is assumed to be the crop water deficit in irrigated areas generated in the AEZ analysis and water used for livestock consumption, applied to a global spatial data set of livestock distribution prepared by FAO. Source of the map: GAEZ 2009 and AQUASTAT; downscaling simulations by authors.

This map builds upon work done by Dixon (Dixon et al., 2001) in an attempt to propose a general classification of major farming systems. Based on a combination of global dataset, the map proposes a harmonized classification of major agricultural systems used as the basis for the analysis of SOLAW's Systems at risk. The map is based on an interpretation of global land cover data, combined with thematic datasets showing irrigated land and paddy rice extent. The map is published in SOLAW Report: The state of the world's land and water resources for food and agriculture - Managing systems at risk (2011) and SOLAW Thematic Report 15: Sustainable options for addressing land and water problems - a problem tree and case studies (links in the online resources section).

Delineation of Communal Conservancies in Namibia, that share geographical overlapping with the Okavango Basin. Source: Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry of Namibia. This dataset is part of the GIS Database for the Environment Protection and Sustainable Management of the Okavango River Basin project (EPSMO). Detailed information on the database can be found in the “GIS Database for the EPSMO Project” document produced by Luis Veríssimo (FAO consultant) in July 2009, and here available for download.