Abstract

In the context of growing water scarcity, the agriculture sector is faced with a situation where more food will have to be produced with less water in order to ensure global food production and food security. These problems are of a national or local nature and need to be faced at the appropriate level. The potentially negative effects of transferring water from irrigation to urban and industrial uses can be mitigated through secure water rights, effective institutions, distribution of the burden over a large number of users, re-investing gains from reallocation in rural communities, and adequate compensation for sellers of water and of third parties involved in the process. Policy review and reform, promotion of equity, availability of suitable data, integrated approaches (in particular river basin management), capacity-building, technology transfer and knowledge management, and equity towards women and disadvantaged segments of society are main avenues for action to ensure that the given amount of water provides the required services to society.
 

Résumé

Dans un contexte de rareté croissante de l’eau, le secteur agricole se trouve confronté à une situation dans laquelle une quantité toujours croissante de nourriture doit être produite avec moins d’eau pour assurer la production alimentaire et la sécurité alimentaire au niveau mondial. Les effets potentiellement négatifs du transfert de l’eau de l’agriculture aux villes et aux industries peuvent être atténués par la mise en place de droits d’eau, des institutions efficaces, la distribution de la charge sur un grand nombre d’utilisateurs, le réinvestissement d’une partie des gains de production vers les communautés rurales et une compensation adéquate pour ceux qui vendent leurs droits d’eau et les tiers affectés par ce processus. Une revue et une réforme des politiques, la promotion de la notion d’équité, la disponibilité des données nécessaires, des approches intégrées - en particulier à travers la gestion des bassins fluviaux - le renforcement institutionnel, les transferts de technologies, la gestion del’information et l’équité vis-à-vis des femmes et des catégories sociales les plus faibles sont les éléments principaux d’une action visant à assurer qu’une quantité d’eau donnée fournisse à la société le service dont elle a besoin.
 

Resumen

En el contexto de una creciente escasez del recurso agua, el sector agricola se ve confrontado con una situacion en la cual mayor cantidad de alimentos deberan ser producidos con un menor insumo de agua, con el fin de asegurar la produccion global de alimentos y la seguridad alimentaria. Estos problemas se manifiestan al nivel nacional o local, donde deberan ser enfrentados. Los efectos potencialmente negativos de transferir agua del sector riego a los usos urbanos e industriales pueden ser mitigados a traves de derechos de agua seguros, instituciones efectivas, la distribucion de las cargas sobre un amplio numero de usuarios, la reinversion en las comunidades rurales de los pagos por cesion de agua, y en general la compensacion adecuada de los que venden derechos de agua asi como de las terceras partes afectadas en el proceso. La revision y reforma de las politicas, el fomento de la equidad, la disponibilidad de datos adecuados, los metodos integrados tales como el manjo de cuencas fluviales, el desarrollo de capacidad local, la transferencia de tecnologia y el manajo del acervo de conocimientos, la equidad hacia las mujeres y los segmentos desaventajados de la sociedad son otras tantas avenidas de accion para asegura que la cantidad dada de agua proporcione a la sociedad los servicios requeridos.
 

Introduction

Agriculture is globally the major user of water. Moreover, because the production of biomass requires the evaporation of large amounts of water, agriculture is essentially a consumptive user and water-efficient irrigation leaves practically no return water. In recent years, propelled by an irrigation-based green revolution, global agricultural production has increased significantly and the overall nutritional situation of the world has improved. However, at a time when concern about shrinking availability of water per caput hits the headlines, there is still a large number of people - over 800 million - that are not properly nourished. To overcome the hunger problem and ensure access to food, the income of the poorest people must grow faster than the cost of food. There are few opportunities to allocate more water to agriculture; the rate of increase in irrigated land is tapering off and pressure on agriculture to release already appropriated water for other uses is growing. Water, being a limited resource, needs to be allocated to the user that yields most benefits to society. This paper argues that water use in agriculture yields secondary benefits which largely off-set the apparently low-value use in irrigation. At this time the prevailing trend is for agriculture to produce more food with less water (Klohn and Wolter, 1997).
 

Global and local dimensions of water

Unlike many widely traded agricultural products, water is not easily transported over large distances. With some exceptions, most water questions are of a national or local nature. In the humid tropics, well endowed with water, existing nutritional problems are often caused by agronomical difficulties associated with excess humidity. In the arid and semi-arid belts of the world, many countries now facing water stress use a large part of their water in irrigated agriculture. In the temperate regions, highly populated and developed countries can cope with relatively small amounts of water available per caput because agriculture receives plenty of water from natural rainfall. Maximum yield can be obtained with relatively little supplementary irrigation. Indeed, in the temperate regions of the world there are countries in which agriculture is threatened by flooding and insufficient drainage. Every country needs to set up its own policies and institutional structures to deal with water in the wider context of national welfare.

The river basin provides a preferred framework for water management because of its capacity to allow for a needed integrated approach. The hydrological dimension of the river basin and the administrative and legal dimensions deriving from political borders can be conciliated, although this may not be a simple task. While water problems must find their solution locally or regionally, the international community at large can support the process through the development of generally agreed principles, standards and rules, capacity building, access to finance and generally through an international environment that fosters efficiency, equity and sustainability. Often, comparative surveys of the situation in water management help political leaders to size the water problems that need to be faced in their jurisdiction.

The paucity of adequate frameworks and agreements to deal with transboundary water resources, whether surface or groundwater, can impede better use of the resource. Progress in international water law has been achieved recently through the Convention on the Law of the Non-navigational Uses of International Watercourses. However, international water law relies on concepts such as "equitable benefit and appreciable harm" which in practice convey only limited guidance to engineers and planners. International disputes over water can be severe in river basins where agriculture, with its traditional food security connotations, is the main user.
 

Socio-economic environment, food security and water management

Food security has been identified as a problem associated with economic and social access. Poverty must be overcome in some way so that people can have access to the food they need to lead a healthy life. The rural poor, which constitute the majority of the critically undernourished people, typically do not have the resources, such as capacity, land and finances, required to rise out of stagnation. Irrigation, where the water resource is available, can be an important element in a strategy to overcome poverty in rural areas through stabilized and intensified agriculture, multiple cropping, mixed cropping and the production of high-value crops. However, a development strategy cannot rely on water alone: it also requires an enabling environment, adequate infrastructure, capacity and know-how, accessible credit and markets, among other elements.

Together with a high rate of growth in developing countries, population projections show a strong trend towards urbanization. While often the negative consequences of rapid urban growth are emphasized, it is not to be forgotten that the cost per caput of establishing infrastructure is likely to be lower for urban agglomerations of moderate size than it is to bring adequate services and amenities to remote rural areas. People in rural areas are often severed from education, health services, information and employment, whereas in urban areas, where the informal production and services sector can be dynamic, there are more employment opportunities and services available. Urban food demand can create markets for food producers and transfer of funds from urban to rural areas can strengthen rural finances. Thus, a future, more organized world, given an adequate political and economic environment, may also be a world in which hard-core rural poverty is reduced through the integration of subsistence farmers into the market economy.
 

Agriculture and water pollution

Although irrigation water does not need to be drinking water grade, pollution can make water unsuitable for irrigation. High salinity levels constrain the range of crops and suitable soils and require adequate application and drainage of water to protect the soil; beyond certain salinity levels, agricultural water use is not possible. Sediments carried by water cause maintenance problems and weigh on the cost of operation and maintenance. Certain toxic wastes carried by industrial and urban wastewater should not come in touch with any food crop but can still be used for irrigating trees. Re-use of urban wastewater is practised in arid countries, subject, however, to constraints to ensure that disease germs and dangerous chemicals are not transferred to food crops. Recycled domestic wastewater, properly managed and treated, is a significant resource in some countries where other sources are not available. Overall, however, the quantity of wastewater generated by cities is small compared to the quantity of water needed for food production in an arid environment, and wastewater use cannot be expected to have a major impact on global food production. Recovery of highly salinie polluted water through evaporation and desalination is as yet far from economically attractive for the production of basic food crops.

Control of industrial (point source) pollution has made major strides in recent years and some heavily polluted rivers have significantly recovered their capacity to sustain ecosystems and landscapes. The water supply sector and environmental and sustainability concerns have been the main driving forces behind these changes. Agriculture is increasingly pinpointed as a serious polluter of water to the detriment of other users, in particular drinking water supply. Control of pollution caused by agricultural activities is being confronted through policy changes. Most agricultural pollution of water is caused by intensive activities such as livestock feeding lots and high-yield cropping heavily reliant on chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Such activities are encouraged by direct and indirect subsidies to agricultural inputs and outputs. Newly emerging agricultural policies in developed countries tend to suppress agricultural subsidies while channelling financial support, where justified by equity considerations, directly to the household groups concerned. Concurrently, the regulatory system is increasingly constraining the application of hazardous chemicals and the externalization of pollution to other users.

As market forces come into play, the risk of increasing food prices because of pollution control and environmental considerations is cushioned by the free play of comparative advantage in open markets, and by the fact that only a fraction of the price paid by consumers for food reverts to agriculture. However, in food-insecure countries, where local agricultural production and food prices have an immediate bearing on the food intake of the poorer segment of the population, priority will still be attached to ensuring the health of the people through the provision of food, safe drinking water and environmental hygiene, as a pre-condition for economic and social development. Typically, in such countries the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides is anyway limited because of the cost of these inputs.
 

Consequences of allocating water from agriculture to other users

Because supply expansion cannot meet increasing demands, in the search for better overall benefits deriving from the use of a limited resource, water may in the future be increasingly reallocated from agriculture to other users. The implied concept is that diverting a little from the entire irrigation sector should be easy, inexpensive and painless. However, the implementation of this reallocation bears the potential of causing negative effects on food production and rural income. One risk is rooted in increasing prices of staple cereals resulting in negative impacts on poor consumers and more generally on the economy of low-income food-insecure countries. Another problem is that urban centres tend to take all their incremental needs from the immediately adjacent irrigated areas for physical and economic reasons. In doing so they will cause substantial impact on the production of the affected farmers and the economy of the villages, creating serious social and economic consequences. The impact of localised water acquisition will call into play the same reimbursement and resettlement policies (with like unit costs) as those adopted under land acquisition for reservoirs and canals, except many more people will be affected by the reallocations.

Some of the negative effects can be mitigated through the establishment of secure water rights anchored in effective institutions so that users are ensured proper compensation; distributing the burden of reallocation over a large number of users so that it can be absorbed in efficiency gains; re-investing gains from reallocation in rural communities; and establishing adequate compensation for sellers of water and for third parties involved in the process. Properly established markets in tradable water rights can facilitate painless water transfers and create situations in which both sides in the trade find their advantage (Rosegrant and Ringler, 1998).
 

Technology for better use of water in agriculture

Irrigated agriculture requires an infrastructure to lead the water to the root area of the crop, the cost of which needs to be absorbed in higher productivity and higher value of crops. In an era of abundant water, irrigation used and misused it freely. As water scarcity overtakes the scene, more accurate water management is required to ensure as much as possible that the water abstracted is taken up by the crop and not lost unproductively. Typical unproductive water losses occur in conduction, owing to leaky canals and during water application on the farm, when excess water may evaporate from the soil, infiltrate the ground or return unused to scheme tailwater. Some of these inefficiencies are already ingrained in the water balance of the river basin, so that losses to upstream systems become resources for downstream schemes and are not effectively lost for the basin. Indeed, it has been pointed out that a river basin ridden with inefficient irrigation schemes may still show a very efficient overall water use as measured in the amount of fresh water transferred by the river to the ocean (Seckler, 1996). Therefore, improving scheme efficiency does not necessarily free more water within the river basin, and changes in the way water is used can result in damage to third parties that needs to be assessed. However, as far as unproductive evaporation and deterioration of water can be prevented, more will be available for agriculture or other users.

The advent of the age of the microprocessor in communications and computation, jointly with agronomic research, has resulted in revolutionary developments in irrigation technology and management and yielded a wide array of proved, reliable tools for accurate and timely water application to the crop. These tools are inexpensive and can, with some adaptation, also be used in the rural environment of developing countries. For example, the application of motor farms by farmers to extract water from shallow aquifers has had a tremendous impact on agricultural productivity and income in certain countries, and water is applied efficiently because the costs that are borne by the unsubsidized farmer are directly proportional to the amount of water applied to the field . Unfortunately, few large-scale irrigation systems provide on-demand irrigation services to farmers which are a precondition for efficient water use. There is an urgent need for modernization and upgrading of the water control sytem in most large irrigation schemes to enable the introduction of modern management principles, such as volumetric water charges, and to facilitate crop diversification. Application of new technology generally requires a conducive environment, including knowledge, finance and markets, and needs to be inserted in adequate policies that lift the constraints to agriculture.
 

National policies and strategies and financing water development.

Emerging issues such as imbalance between water supply and demand, poor quality of water services, deteriorating water quality, deteriorating financial performance, transfer of water to other sectors and other symptoms of conflict point to the need for policy review and the formulation and implementation of adequate strategies. This is a complex process, not the least so because many societies mark water as different from other goods and attach special cultural, religious and social values to it. Water becomes an even more sensitive topic when emotionally loaded in association with national food security. However, neighbouring countries have usually more in common than shared water resources. Potential conflicts about water may be mitigated by increased recognition of mutual dependency and a joint vision of river basin development. Reforming public behaviour towards water is a difficult task entailing political and administrative costs. Virtually every sector in society is concerned with water and a large measure of public intervention is inevitable. Governments have a responsibility to manage water in a way consistent with national welfare, meaning at the very least that appropriate laws, regulations, institutions and incentives should be placed to underwrite the public interest. Governments may have to stand ready to invest in water where the market will not.

Agriculture worldwide is often considered as a low-value, low-efficiency and sometimes highly subsidised enterprise ill-prepared for economic competition. In this aspect, policies need to be seen as fair in their impact and protecting equity among various socio-economic groups. Because economic and engineering concepts tend to override cultural considerations, attention should be paid, in the implementation of policies, to the perceived need of community members. Many countries with serious water problems also have weak public finances and the fiscal impact of policies is an important criterion. Policy changes should as far as possible be acceptable to the parties affected and meet political support. Indeed, policies that arouse public hostility while achieving little progress are clearly undesirable. Generally, policy-makers find that support to the farmers own efforts does pay off; more sharing of information and consensus-building on priorities is needed, irrigation schemes seek and do receive more autonomy, the financial responsibilities and accountability of managers increase and, last but not least, that less public intervention in water management is in order.
 

Elements for action

1. Review and reform national water resources development and irrigation policies and strategies to meet the objectives of food security and sustainable agricultural development. Water resources development and irrigation expansion programmes should be compatible with broader national development and agricultural policies, and encompass efficient use and conservation of natural resources. Reallocation of water from agriculture to other uses should be done with care and in full knowledge of the consequences. Former water users must be compensated or water right must be bought from previous users.

2. Water legislation and institutional reforms should be formulated and implemented in conjunction with water policies. Legislation should address: water rights, customary legal rules and practices, water allocation, transferability of water use rights, security of land tenure, water pricing, water pollution control, and the organization of water users’ associations.

3. Central administration and control of many irrigation projects have led to their inefficiency and have placed heavy burdens on governments. This should be remedied by devolution, with specific responsibilities being given to local and autonomous institutions that are closer to actual operations. Private sector involvement in irrigation management should be encouraged. Increasing responsibility should be vested in rural communities and farmers’ associations.

4. The increasing complexity of water and nutrition issues owing to demographic change, economic development and scarcity of resources requires that an ever-larger array of related matters be taken into account. The river basin provides a convenient planning unit to deal with water-related matters in an integrated way. A new generation of river basin agencies, based on practical, low-overhead approaches and self-financing principles, represents a practical and viable approach to implementing water policy in a widely integrated approach.

5. Infrastructure, at national, local and scheme levels should be developed to ensure economic and social viability of irrigation projects. This implies that irrigation should not be developed in isolation, but should be part of a wide-ranging area development programme. At the scheme level public authorities should be responsible for construction and operation of dams, headworks and main irrigation and drainage canals, while water users’ associations or the private sector should be responsible for building and operating the final distribution system. New innovative ways to finance irrigation investment have to be developed. Donor governments and external support agencies are urged to reverse the trend of declining investment in irrigation.

6. In addition to technology, the success of irrigated agriculture hinges on economic factors and the presence of adequate services. Inadequacies of market systems, storage facilities, management of agricultural produce and credit sources have contributed to failures in the past. These constraints must be eliminated through sound government macro-economic policies to permit increases in production and to ensure the economic viability of projects.

7. Efforts should be made to reduce the cost of irrigation development. An important aspect of cost reduction can be employment of national engineering and construction firms for the design and construction of projects. Promoting local manufacture of irrigation material and equipment is equally important. Government policy should encourage the "localization" of the irrigation industry and regional cooperation.

8. There is a growing realization that knowledge matters more than hardware. Participation of Stakeholders at every level is essential for success in overcoming stress situations. The essential ingredient of cooperation cannot be obtained unless there is equity in the approach. National and community efforts to build capacity and appropriate adequate technology deserve support
 

References

FAO 1996. World Food Summit. Technical Background Documents, Vol. 7

Klohn, W. and Wolter H. 1997. Perspectives of food security and water development. Proceedings of the International Workshop on Irrigation. DVWK, Bonn.

Rosegrant, M. and Ringler, C. 1998. Impact on food security and rural development of reallocating water from agriculture for other uses, Paper presented at the Expert Group Meeting on Strategic Approaches to Freshwater Management, Harare, 27 - 30 January 1998.

Seckler, D. 1996. The new era of water resources management: from "dry" to "wet" water savings. IIMI, Colombo.