Efficient water conservation in agriculture for growing urban water demands in Jordan

Abstract

A significant worldwide challenge is to increase the food supply to accommodate a population growing to 9,000,000,000 in the face of climate change. Per capita water supply in Jordan is among the world's lowest. Despite this scarcity, three-quarters of Jordan's water use is consumed by irrigated agriculture, while producing low economic values from additional water used compared to urban uses. However, irrigated agriculture supports Jordan's food security, so its policymakers continue to examine measures to produce more crop per drop in irrigated agriculture, to permit scarce water to meet growing urban demands. This paper examines economically efficient measures to conserve water in irrigated agriculture to sustain growing urban water demands. Using a sample of one-third of the farms in Jordan's Mafraq Basin, an econometric model is formulated to identify factors influencing irrigation water use and economic productivity. Findings show that the price of water is the overarching factor influencing both. A low water price discourages water conservation even if other institutions promote it. A high price of water encourages conservation even in the presence of other discouraging factors. Results suggest that water-conserving policies in Jordan's irrigated agriculture can be more effectively implemented where water institutions and programs are designed to be compatible with the underlying economic scarcity of water. Results carry significant implications for the design and implementation of development programs affecting the use of water in the world's dry areas.

Mitigating the Risk of Extreme Water Scarcity and Dependency: The Case of Jordan

“…In theory, irrigation water use can be reduced by increasing the price of irrigation water [3,[69][70][71], introducing improved irrigation systems [6,[72][73][74], and training farmers in irrigation practices [29,69]. Furthermore, reinforcing private ownership of wells may be an option, since well owners have been shown to use irrigation water and groundwater resources in a more sustainable way than well leasers [69].…”

Key issues and trends in the water policy literature

“…Narayanamoorthy (2010) examined the sustainability of India's use of groundwater for irrigation, Bartolini et al (2010) used multi-criteria analysis of policy scenarios for Italian irrigated agriculture, Huffaker (2010) examined water use and biofuel production, while Jothiprakash and Mohandoss (2010) at an planning model for a run-of-the-river system, and Palerm-Viqueira (2010) examined historical irrigation water management in Spain and Latin America. In 2011, two papers examined participatory water management (Boyer, Speelman et al 2011;Kumnerdpet and Sinclair 2011), while three papers related to the efficiency of irrigation water use (Kumar and Palanisami 2011;Qureshi, Grafton et al 2011;Ramirez, Ward et al 2011), and three papers discussed decision support systems or modelling tools (Hadihardaja and Grigg 2011;Jothiprakash, Arunkumar et al 2011;Khan, Rana et al 2011). Two papers considered water usage and forestry (Keles and Baskent 2011;Nordblom, Reeson et al 2011), and a paper by Speelman et al (2011) examined irrigation water rights.…”

Cost–benefit and water resources policy: a survey

“…Pricing this additional use at its full marginal cost can contribute to economically efflcient growth pattems in a system's scale, both in terms of hmiting urban sprawl and limiting expensive, self-supplied connections that occur in rural areas. Charging for extemahties, especially where there are important upstream-downstream interactions among multiple users in an interconnected river basin, is a form of marginal cost pricing (e.g., Ramirez et al, 2011).…”