Evaluation of drought management in irrigated areas

Abstract

This paper focuses on the economic consequences of droughts for the irrigation sector. We develop a dynamic‐recursive mathematical programming farm model that assumes imperfect mobility of capital and labour as well as rational expectations about future water availability. The model is calibrated to 12 representative farms belonging to three irrigation communities of the Guadalquivir Basin (south Spain) and used to simulate the 1991–1997 period, which included 3 years of intense drought. Results indicate that the drought imposed significant costs on farmers, but show also that water managers partly exacerbated these costs by allocating excessive amounts of water to irrigators in the abundant years. The model is also used to evaluate the benefits of a perfect water supply forecast and to simulate the economic gains of a voluntary water banking scheme. Results show that the benefits resulting from the perfect forecast of water supply 1 year ahead would represent a relative gain of 5%. However, a voluntary banking system would allow farmers to increase their benefits by 32–82% depending on the supply system.

Integrated assessment of policy interventions for promoting sustainable irrigation in semi-arid environments: A hydro-economic modeling approach

“…As reported in previous studies (see e.g. Iglesias et al, 2003;Reidsma and Ewert, 2008;Smit and Skinner, 2002), our results reveal that the structural and technical characteristics of the irrigation districts, such as farm size, cropping mix potential, type of irrigation systems, and farming operations, clearly determine farmer's capacity to adapt to different climate and political stimuli. It can be observed that CDO and MCM, characterized by large water concessions, the use of conventional gravity-irrigation systems and by predominance, notably in CDO, of small and non-diversified farms, will be the most negatively affected in economic terms by a reduction in irrigation water supply, and the most vulnerable when facing dry weather conditions.…”

Spatial and temporal analysis of droughts in the Iberian Peninsula (1910–2000)

“…Drought analysis in this area is important because droughts cause significant economic losses (Morales et al, 2000;Iglesias et al, 2003), and urban, tourist and agricultural water demands have increased considerably in recent years (Albiac et al, 2003;Del Moral et al, 2003), making the economy and the society more vulnerable to droughts. Moreover, the predicted precipitation decrease in the Mediterranean region ;…”

Developing drought resilience in irrigated agriculture in the face of increasing water scarcity

“…As farmers played an important role in reducing the impacts of the 2010-2012 drought on aquatic ecosystems through voluntary restrictions, they would like to see a more collaborative approach to the management of catchment water resources, with stakeholders being partners in water resource and drought planning; 2. Seasonal forecasting of water availability needs to be improved to allow farmers to better plan for future weather-and water-related risks, as pointed out by many authors (Iglesias et al 2003 Developing drought resilience in irrigated agriculture in the face of increasing water scarcity 1537 and the time required for approval (Cave 2009;Ofwat, Environment Agency 2008, 2009Severn Trent Water 2011), so water trading is rare (Defra and Welsh Government 2014). Overcoming these limitations within ongoing water abstraction reform could substantially improve drought management in the region.…”