Narrow Results

Severe water shortage and stress in pistachio farming areas of Iran have made pressurized irrigation systems unavoidable. Despite extensive subsidies, the adoption rate of these systems remains below 10% in pistachio orchards in Iran. This study employs logit, OLS and analysis of variance models to investigate the barriers to adopting pressurized irrigation systems in pistachio orchards in Kerman Province, Iran. Accordingly, all factors affecting the acceptance of pressurized irrigation systems were identified using research theory and the results of past studies. This study was accompanied by two innovations: first, analyzing both significant and non-significant influential factors in the logit model, and second, finding the roots of this influence. The results indicate that small-scale pistachio orchards, non-scientific horticulture systems, high-density planting, poor water quality and low farmers’ knowledge about irrigation systems are among the obstacles hindering the acceptance of pressurized irrigation systems. Additionally, energy subsidies for cheap water extraction, unclear and complex land ownership laws, water use permits, prohibition of transfer and trade of water, and lack of water market have been significant barriers to the adoption of new irrigation systems in pistachio orchards. Therefore, the Iranian government should reform the anti-technology structure of the agricultural sector, clarify water laws and regulations and modify water policies to incentivize the adoption of water-saving technologies.

South Africa is a water-scarce country, a challenge which has been exacerbated by reduced precipitation and high levels of evaporation. Despite this state of affairs, water use and consumption has increased three folds in the past 25 years and this is projected to continue increasing in the next 50 years. As a response to the current and projected water crisis, South Africa, has developed and started implementing progressive water resource policies and strategies to optimise its water resources. Post-independence in 1994, the government introduced the National Environmental Management Act of 1998, Water Service Act 108 of 1997, National Water Act (NWA) 36 of 1998 and National Water Resource Strategy 2004 (1), 2013 (2), 2020 (3), and numerous other strategies to improve the management of water resource. While some of these policies and strategies have achieved significant successes, a majority of them have failed to address the structural and systemic challenges of sustainably managing water resources in the country. This paper, using data obtained through an empirical investigation, presents and discusses systemic and structural processes and mechanism which hamper the sustainable management of water resources for socio-economic and national development. A key point of discussion for this paper revolves around the silo approach used in the management of water resources in South Africa which give rise to massive fragmentations in the policy framework. It is, thus, recommended that for South Africa, to achieve some of the sustainable development targets, there is an urgent need for the country to adopt and implement principles of water resource management embedded in the integrated water resource management (IWRM) framework.

In principle, the approach toward irrigation management in India has gradually shifted from a government-dominated, supply-side paradigm toward a user-preferred, demand-side paradigm. Yet, decisions regarding water allocation and irrigation charges do not adequately incorporate farmers' preferences and their willingness-to-pay (WTP) for improved irrigation. Since public investment on irrigation projects is sizeable and the opportunity cost of irrigation water is increasing, there exists a need to estimate the economic value of irrigation water in order to utilize it in an efficient manner. This paper presents results of a contingent valuation (CV) study conducted in a semi-arid region, namely, the Malaprabha Irrigation Project in Karnataka, India, which elicited farmers' preferences and their WTP value for improved irrigation. The results suggest that farmers predict a significant increase in agricultural benefits due to additional irrigation and they are willing to pay significantly higher than what they are currently paying to secure these benefits. It implies that improved irrigation increases not only the farmers' benefits but could potentially increase the government's revenue, resulting in a win–win outcome.

This paper presents a conceptual framework for both assessing the role of economic instruments, and reshaping them in order to enhance their contribution to the goals of managing water scarcity. Water management problems stem from the mismatch between a multitude of individual decisions, on the one hand, and the current and projected status of water resources on the other. Economics can provide valuable incentives that drive individual decisions, and can design efficient instruments to address water governance problems in a context of conflicting interests and relevant transaction costs. Yet, instruments such as water pricing or trading are mostly based on general principles of welfare economics that are not readily applicable to assets as complex as water. A flaw in welfare economic approaches lies in the presumption that economic instruments may be good or bad on their own (e.g., finding the “right” price). This vision changes radically when we focus on the problem, instead of the instrument. In this paper, we examine how economic instruments to achieve welfare-enhancing water resource outcomes can realize their full potential in basin-scale management contexts. We follow a political economy perspective that views conflicts between public and private interest as the main instrumental challenge of water management. Our analysis allows us to better understand the critical importance of economic instruments for reconciling individual actions towards collective ambitions of water efficiency, equity and sustainability with lessons for later-adopting jurisdictions. Rather than providing panaceas, the successful design and implementation of economic instruments as key river basin management arrangements involves high transaction costs, wide institutional changes and collective action at different levels.

Water sustainability is central to modern political and academic debates. Despite increasing efforts to promote regional and global integrated water management, climate change, population, and economic growth, and increasing consumption of water-intensive goods project higher water deficiency. Robust economic analyses rely on information about water supply and consumption across different production sectors, type of procurement source (public or private water supply), and water prices. Nevertheless, developing current and future economic water assessments and indicators is impeded by the absence of data. Despite the lack of official national statistics on water withdrawal and consumption, a small number of international and global databases have been constructed and attempt to combine available national water information into databases. Water databases do not commonly define and/or distinguish terms such as water use, water consumption, water supply, or water abstraction, and the associated aspects of water scarcity and sustainability. They comprise variable data quality, provided by numerous sources, and estimated values. This paper evaluates the current state of knowledge of national statistics, international and global water databases. We describe the data collection methods, identify basic concepts and definitions of water terms, followed by the criteria of consistent water databases. We inform about data availability across regions, and present the data content and definitions of national, international, and global water databases. The results show inconsistencies of data content and definitions, suggesting no evidence of data harmonization among databases. Therefore, our study cautions researchers to be careful when manipulating and comparing the available water data, especially when deriving policy recommendations or economic conclusions. In the long run, the headway of water research and political assessments depend on political enforcements to refine the meaningfulness of water data and support water collection, reporting, and monitoring. Alternatively, in the short- and medium-run, water data challenges can be addressed by joint research efforts for water data harmonization.

In this paper, we estimate the resource costs of agricultural water use and simulate the environmental and economic impacts of their recovery. To this end, we develop a socio-hydrology-inspired, dynamic, protocol-based modular approach that interconnects economic and hydrologic modeling via two-way feedback protocols. The hydrologic module is populated with the AQUATOOL model, the Decision Support System used in Spanish river basins; while the economic module is populated with an ensemble of four Mathematical Programming Models (MPMs) that capture human agency and responses. This allows us to sample uncertainty and provide a range for resource costs estimates and the environmental and economic impacts of their recovery, rather than a point estimate. Methods are illustrated with an application to the Órbigo Catchment, a sub-basin of the Douro River Basin in Spain. Our results suggest significant resource costs (a 34–62% increase in existing charges, depending on the model) with non-trivial impacts on income (2–27% reduction) and the environment (water savings range between 6% and 69%), while the impact on tax revenue is ambiguous yet potentially significant (between $-$2.3 million EUR/year and 5 million EUR/year).

This research analyzes the local implementation of China’s central clean water policies over the recent decades. Based on a series of panel data analyses on Chinese provinces between 2004 and 2015, this study empirically examines the impact of decentralization and interest groups on water policy implementation, leading to three main findings. First, fiscal decentralization has a significant positive effect on policy output as measured using per-capita provincial expenditures on industrial wastewater. But it has no significant influence on policy outcome as measured by per-capita emissions of chemical oxygen demand. Second, while increasing environmental decentralization at the provincial level tends to increase provincial expenditures, wastewater discharge also increases. Third, increased industrial contributions to the provincial economy are associated with increased environmental spending from the province, yet foreign trade and environmental petitions do not have the expected impact. The results suggest that China’s decentralization reforms appear to have increased provincial policy responses without improving the actual environmental outcomes. Experiences from authoritarian China may provide lessons for other countries.

Hydro-economic modeling (HEM) addresses research and policy questions from socioeconomic and biophysical perspectives under a broad range of water-related topics. Applications of HEM include economic evaluations of existing and new water projects, alternative water management actions or policies, risk assessments from hydro-climatic uncertainty (e.g., climate change), and the costs and benefits of mitigation and/or adaptation to such events. This paper reviews applications of HEM in five different categories: (1) climate change impacts and adaptation, (2) water–food–energy–ecosystems nexus management, (3) capability to link to other models, (4) innovative water management options, and (5) the ability to address and integrate uncertainty. We find that (i) the increasing complexity and heterogeneity of water resource management problems due to the growing demand and competition for water across economic sectors, (ii) limited availability and high costs of developing additional supplies, and (iii) emerging recognition and consideration of environmental water demands and value, have inspired new integrated hydro-economic problems and models to address issues of water–food–energy nexus sustainability, resilience, reliability through water (re)allocation based on the relative “value” of water uses. In the past decade, the field of HEM has improved the integration of ecosystem needs, but their representation is still insufficient and mostly ineffective. HEM studies address how to sustainably manage water resources, including groundwater which has become an area of particular interest in climate change adaptation. The current most used spatial and temporal resolutions (basin-scale and yearly time-step) are appropriate for planning but not for operational decisions and could be underestimating impacts from extreme events (e.g., flood risk) captured only by sub-monthly time scales. In addition, HEM primarily focuses on biophysical and economic indicators but often overlooks preferences and perspectives of stakeholders. Lastly, HEM has been widely used to analyze transboundary cooperation, showing benefits for increasing water security and economic development, particularly as climate change develops. We conclude that the field of HEM would benefit from developing more operational models and enhancing the integration of commonly neglected variables, such as social equity components, ecosystem requirements, and water quality.