Increased water charges improve efficiency and equity in an irrigation system

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Conventional wisdom in many agricultural systems across the world is that farmers cannot, will not, or should not pay the full costs associated with surface water delivery. Across Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, only a handful can claim complete recovery of operation, maintenance, and capital costs; across Central and South Asia, fees are lower still, with farmers in Nepal, India, and Kazakhstan paying fractions of a U.S. penny for a cubic meter of water. In Pakistan, fees amount to roughly USD 1-2 per acre per season. However, farmers in Pakistan spend orders of magnitude more for diesel fuel to pump groundwater each season, suggesting a latent willingness to spend for water that, under the right conditions, could potentially be directed toward water-use fees for surface water supply. Although overall performance could be expected to improve with greater cost recovery, asymmetric access to water in canal irrigation systems leaves the question open as to whether those benefits would be equitably shared among all farmers in the system. We develop an agent-based model (ABM) of a small irrigation command to examine efficiency and equity outcomes across a range of different cost structures for the maintenance of the system, levels of market development, and assessed water charges. We find that, robust to a range of different cost and structural conditions, increased water charges lead to gains in both efficiency and concomitant improvements in equity as investments in canal infrastructure and system maintenance improve the conveyance of water resources further down watercourses. This suggests that, under conditions in which (1) farmers are currently spending money to pump groundwater to compensate for a failing surface water system, and (2) there is the possibility that through initial investment to provide perceptibly better water supply, genuine win-win solutions can be attained through higher water-use fees to beneficiary farmers.

Conceptualizing Serious Games as a Learning-Based Intervention in the Context of Natural Resources and Environmental Governance

“…Lebel [14] used a serious game in a similar way-albeit combined with other methods of data collection-in a case of fish farming in Thailand. Meinzen-Dick et al [15] used serious games in field experiments in India, while Bell et al [16] used (a tablet-PC-based) serious games in field experiments about an irrigation system in Pakistan.…”

Evaluating the Effect of Farmers’ Participation in Irrigation Management on Farm Productivity and Profitability in the Mubuku Irrigation Scheme, Uganda

“…Based on the RAP definition, the assigned weights to variables correspond to their potential positive effect on system performance, such as irrigation-efficient management at the scheme level. In order to set standard weights for practices and align them to the overall objective of Mubuku scheme, a literature review is undertaken, which is followed by validation through the local expert pool [36][37][38][39][40]. While considering the weights according to RAP, the most important piece of criteria was the direct effect on improved water delivery service.…”

Flexible water allocations and rotational delivery combined adapt irrigation systems to drought

“…This provides socioeconomic and demographic information because those systems tend to be more collectivist, less capital intensive, physically smaller, less market oriented, utilize animal fertilizers, grow heirloom crops, and have historically been persecuted, oppressed, and excluded from governance processes (Rivera 1998, Rodriguez 2006. The installation of sprinkler irrigation and irrigator-reported infrastructure quality are also proxies for the cost structure and capital available to individual farmers and the irrigation system (Bell et al 2016). Irrigation system area also correlates with the number of irrigators, a key variable important for the extent of and difficulty of solving collective action Table 1.…”

“…Climate change and self-governing irrigation systems Improving global food security will be made more challenging by a changing climate (Turral et al 2011, Wheeler and von Braun 2013, Bell et al 2016). Because climate change will alter water supplies, irrigated agriculture in particular will suffer (Gleick 2003, FAO 2012.…”