Exploring the feasibility of integrating water issues into the CAPRI model

Although numerous modelling efforts have integrated food and water considerations at the farm or river basin level, very few agro-economic models are able to jointly assess water and food policies at the global level. The present report explores the feasibility of integrating water considerations into the CAPRI model. First, a literature review of modelling approaches integrating food and water issues has been conducted. Three agro-economic models, IMPACT, WATERSIM and GLOBIOM, have been analysed in detail. In addition, biophysical and hydrological models estimating agricultural water use have also been studied, in particular the global hydrological model WATERGAP and the LISFLOOD model. Thanks to the programming approach of its supply module, CAPRI shows a high potentiality to integrate environmental indicators as well as to enter new resource constraints (land potentially irrigated, irrigation water) and input-output relationships. At least in theory, the activity-based approach of the regional programming model in CAPRI allows differentiating between rainfed and irrigated activities. The suggested approach to include water into the CAPRI model involves creating an irrigation module and a water use module. The development of the CAPRI water module will enable to provide scientific assessment on agricultural water use within the EU and to analyze agricultural pressures on water resources. The feasibility of the approach has been tested in a pilot case study including two NUTS 2 regions (Andalucia in Spain and Midi-Pyrenees in France). Preliminary results are presented, highlighting the interrelations between water and agricultural developments in Europe. As a next step, it is foreseen to further develop the CAPRI water module to account for competition between agricultural and non-agricultural water use. This will imply building a water use sub-module to compute water use balances.

Policy processes and collective action in water reforms: the cases of Nicaragua and Suriname

Las reformas de agua en países en desarrollo suelen llevarse a cabo junto con cambios institucionales más profundos o, incluso, acompañadas de cambios constitucionales o de régimen político. Por lo tanto, los marcos institucionales adaptados a países gobernados sujetos al estado de derecho pueden no ser apropiados para contextos gobernados fundamentalmente, al menos en sus inicios, por instituciones informales o poco maduras. Esta tesis toma las reformas de agua como punto de partida y pretende contribuir a la literatura mediante una serie de análisis empíricos tanto del ámbito general como del plano individual o sujeto personal de la política del agua. En el ámbito general, el foco se pone en los factores que explican el fallo de la acción colectiva en dos contextos diferentes: 1) en la implementación de la nueva Ley de Aguas de Nicaragua y 2) en el mantenimiento y revitalización de las instituciones de riego en Surinam. En el plano del individuo, la investigación se centra en las decisiones de los usuarios de los recursos y analiza el papel crítico de las variables sociales para la gestión de los recursos comunes. Para ello, el método de investigación utilizado es mixto, combinando el análisis de entrevistas, encuestas y experimentos. En el ámbito general, los resultados muestran que las principales barreras para la implementación de la nueva Ley de Aguas de Nicaragua podrían tener su reflejo en el lenguaje de la Ley y, por tanto, en la forma en la que se definen y configuran las instituciones incluidas en dicha Ley. Así, la investigación demuestra que la implementación de políticas no puede ser estudiada o entendida sin tener en cuenta tanto el diseño de la propia política como el marco socio-ecológico en el que se enmarca. El contexto específico de Nicaragua remarca la importancia de considerar tanto las instituciones formales como informales en los procesos de transición política. A pesar de que las reformas de agua requieren plazos largos para su implementación, el hecho de que exista una diferencia entre las reglas tal cual se definen formalmente y las reglas que operan en la realidad merece una mayor consideración en el diseño de políticas basadas fundamentalmente en instituciones formales. En el ámbito de la conducta individual, el análisis de la acción colectiva ofrece una serie de observaciones empíricas interesantes. En el caso de Nicaragua, los resultados indican que la intensidad de las relaciones sociales, el tipo de agentes dispuestos a proporcionar apoyo social y el nivel de confianza en la comunidad son factores que explican de manera significativa la participación en la comunidad. Sin embargo, el hecho de que la gestión colectiva de riego se produzca, en la mayoría de casos, en torno a lazos familiares sugiere que las variables de capital social críticas se definen en gran medida en la esfera familiar, siendo difícil que se extiendan fuera de estos nexos. El análisis experimental de los resultados de un juego de uso de recurso común y contribución al bien público muestra que las preferencias pro-sociales de los individuos y la heterogeneidad del grupo en términos de composición por sexo son factores que explican significativamente los resultados y las decisiones de apropiación a lo largo del juego. En términos del diseño de las políticas, es fundamental tener en cuenta las dinámicas de participación y uso de los recursos comunes de manera que los niveles de cooperación puedan mantenerse en el largo plazo, lo cual, como se observa en el caso de Surinam, no es siempre posible. Finalmente, el caso de Surinam es un ejemplo ilustrativo de los procesos de acción colectiva en economías en transición. El análisis del fallo de la acción colectiva en Surinam muestra que los procesos políticos vinculados al período colonial y de independencia explican en gran medida la falta de claridad en las reglas operacionales y colectivas que gobiernan la gestión de los sistemas de riego y drenaje. Los resultados empíricos sugieren que a pesar de que la acción colectiva para la provisión de los servicios de riego y drenaje estaba bien establecida bajo el régimen colonial, la auto-organización no prosperó en un contexto dependiente del apoyo externo y regido fundamentalmente por reglas diseñadas al nivel competencial del gobierno central. El sistema socio-ecológico que se desarrolló durante la transición post-colonial favoreció, así, la emergencia de comportamientos oportunistas, y posteriormente la inoperancia de los Water Boards (WBs) creados en la época colonial. En este sentido, cualquier intento por revitalizar los WBs y fomentar el desarrollo de la auto-organización de los usuarios necesitará abordar los problemas relacionados con los patrones demográficos, incluyendo la distribución de la tierra, el diseño de instituciones y la falta de confianza en el gobierno, además de las inversiones típicas en infraestructura y sistemas de información hidrológicos. El liderazgo del gobierno, aportando empuje de arriba-abajo, es, además, otro elemento imprescindible en Surinam. ABSTRACT Water reforms in developing countries take place along deeper institutional and even constitutional. Therefore, institutional frameworks that might result in positive outcomes in countries governed by the rule of law might not fit in contexts governed mainly by informal or immature institutions. This thesis takes water reforms as the starting point and aims to contribute to the literature by presenting several conceptual and empirical analyses at both general and individual levels. At the general national level, the focus is on the factors explaining failure of collective action in two different settings: 1) in the implementation of the new Nicaraguan Water Law and 2) in sustaining and revitalizing irrigation institutions in Suriname. At the individual level, the research focuses on the actions of resource users and analyzes the critical role of social variables for common pool resources management. For this purpose, the research presented in this thesis makes use of a mixed-method approach, combining interviews, surveys and experimental methods. Overall, the results show that major barriers for the implementation of the new Nicaraguan Water Law have its reflection on the language of the Law and, therefore, on the way institutions are defined and configured. In this sense, our study shows that implementation cannot fruitfully be studied and understood without taking into account both the policy design and the social-ecological context in which it is framed. The specific setting of Nicaragua highlights the relevance of considering both formal and informal institutions when promoting policy transitions. Despite the unquestionable fact that water reforms implementation needs long periods of time, there is still a gap between the rules on paper and the rules on the ground that deserves further attention when proposing policy changes on the basis of formal institutions. At the level of the individual agent, the analysis of collective action provides a number of interesting empirical insights. In the case of Nicaragua, I found that the intensity of social networks, the type of agents willing to provide social support and the level of trust in the community are all significant factors in explaining collective action at community level. However, the fact that most collective irrigation relies on family ties suggests that critical social capital variables might be defined within the family sphere and making it difficult to go beyond it. Experimental research combining a common pool resource and a public good game in Nicaragua shows that individuals’ pro-social traits and group heterogeneity in terms of sex composition are significant variables in explaining efficiency outcomes and effort decisions along the game. Thus, with regard to policy design, it is fundamental to consider carefully the dynamics of agents' participation and use of common pool resources, for sustaining cooperation in the long term, which, as seen in the case and Surinam, is not always possible. The case of Suriname provides a rich setting for the analysis of collective action in transition economies. The analysis of decay of collective irrigation in Suriname shows that the lack of clear operational and collective choice rules appear to be rooted in deeper political processes that date back to the colonial period. The empirical findings suggest that despite collective action for the provision of irrigation and drainage services was well established during the colonial period, self-organization did not flourish in a context governed by colonial state-crafted rules and mostly dependent on external support. The social-ecological system developed during the post-colonial transition process favored the emergence of opportunistic behavior. In this respect, any attempt to revitalize WBs and support self-organization will need to tackle the problems derived from demographic patterns, including land allocation, institutions design and government distrust, in addition to the typical investments in both physical infrastructure and hydrological information systems. The leadership role of the government, acting as a top-down trigger, is another essential element in Suriname.

The role of land and water for trade and food production in Latin America: Environmental trade-offs of agricultural intensification versus extensification

One of humanity’s major challenges of the 21st century will be meeting future food demands on an increasingly resource constrained-planet. Global food production will have to rise by 70 percent between 2000 and 2050 to meet effective demand which poses major challenges to food production systems. Doing so without compromising environmental integrity is an even greater challenge. This study looks at the interdependencies between land and water resources, agricultural production and environmental outcomes in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), an area of growing importance in international agricultural markets. Special emphasis is given to the role of LAC’s agriculture for (a) global food security and (b) environmental sustainability. We use the International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT)—a global dynamic partial equilibrium model of the agricultural sector—to run different future production scenarios, and agricultural trade regimes out to 2050, and assess changes in related environmental indicators. Results indicate that further trade liberalization is crucial for improving food security globally, but that it would also lead to more environmental pressures in some regions across Latin America. Contrasting land expansion versus more intensified agriculture shows that productivity improvements are generally superior to agricultural land expansion, from an economic and environmental point of view. Finally, our analysis shows that there are trade-offs between environmental and food security goals for all agricultural development paths.

Optimal water allocation in shortage situations as applied to an irrigation community.

This work studies the most beneficial way of allocating water in an irrigation community in water shortage situations. Therefore, it proposes that the irrigation surface area be divided into homogeneous zones, each with a beneficial relationship with respect to the water applied. The mathematical formula that enables one to obtain the optimal quota for the users or irrigation community as a whole has been found for individual relations of a quadratic or power type, and these have yielded different and complementary characteristics. Dimensionless variables have been used to display the results, and to compare with other alternative allocation rules such as the proportional rule, referencing the situation without water restrictions. As a result, for each water shortage situation, the water that is allocated to each user is obtained, together with the losses in individual income and the losses for the community as a whole. Furthermore, a proposal is put forth for establishing the marginal benefit from the water available, which could be of interest in enabling each community to analyze whether it is in its best interest to invest in increasing the resource, or to sell the resource to other users. Finally, an example is given to demonstrate how the method works and to show that, when the differences between the production schemes are considered, the differences in benefit reduction between the proportional allocation and the optimal allocation are also sizeable. Read More: http://ascelibrary.org/doi/abs/10.1061/(ASCE)IR.1943-4774.0000667

The optimal allocation rule and the water market as the most effective tools of managing water shortage in an irrigation district

The conference program will cover all areas of environmental and resource economics, ranging from topics prevailing in the general debate, such as climate change, energy sources, water management and ecosystem services evaluation, to more specialized subjects such as biodiversity conservation or persistent organic pollutants. The congress will be held on the Faculty of Economics of the University of Girona, located in Montilivi, a city quarter situated just few minutes from the city center, conveniently connected by bus lines L8 and L11.

Climate Change, Water Scarcity in Agriculture and The Country-Level Economic Impacts. A Multimarket Analysis

Climate Change, Water Scarcity in Agriculture and the Country-Level Economic Impacts. A Multimarket Analysis. Abstract: Agriculture could be one of the most vulnerable economic sectors to the impacts of climate change in the coming decades. Considering the critical role that water plays for agricultural production, any shock in water availability will have great implications for agricultural production, land allocation, and agricultural prices. In this paper, an Agricultural Multimarket model is developed to analyze climate change impacts in developing countries, accounting for the uncertainty associated with the impacts of climate change. The model has a structure flexible enough to represent local conditions, resource availability, and market conditions. The results suggest different economic consequences of climate change depending on the specific activity, with many distributional effects across regions

Optimization of water procurement decisions in an irrigation district: the role of option contracts

Water supply instability is one of the main risks faced by irrigation districts and farmers. Water procurement decision optimisation is essential in order to increase supply reliability and reduce costs. Water markets, such as spot purchases or water supply option contracts, can make this decision process more flexible. We analyse the potential interest in an option contract for an irrigation district that has access to several water sources. We apply a stochastic recursive mathematical programming model to simulate the water procurement decisions of an irrigation district?s board operating in a context of water supply uncertainty in south-eastern Spain. We analyse what role different option contracts could play in securing its water supply. Results suggest that the irrigation district would be willing to accept the proposed option contract in most cases subject to realistic values of the option contract financial terms. Of nine different water sources, desalination and the option contract are the main substitutes, where the use of either depends on the contract parameters. The contract premium and optioned volume are the variables that have a greater impact on the irrigation district?s decisions. Key words: Segura Basin, stochastic recursive programming, water markets, water supply option contract, water supply risk.

Feedbacks between vegetation pattern and resource loss dramatically decrease ecosystem resilience and restoration potential in a simple dryland model

Conceptual frameworks of dryland degradation commonly include ecohydrological feedbacks between landscape spatial organization and resource loss, so that decreasing cover and size of vegetation patches result in higher water and soil losses, which lead to further vegetation loss. However, the impacts of these feedbacks on dryland dynamics in response to external stress have barely been tested. Using a spatially-explicit model, we represented feedbacks between vegetation pattern and landscape resource loss by establishing a negative dependence of plant establishment on the connectivity of runoff-source areas (e.g., bare soils). We assessed the impact of various feedback strengths on the response of dryland ecosystems to changing external conditions. In general, for a given external pressure, these connectivity-mediated feedbacks decrease vegetation cover at equilibrium, which indicates a decrease in ecosystem resistance. Along a gradient of gradual increase of environmental pressure (e.g., aridity), the connectivity-mediated feedbacks decrease the amount of pressure required to cause a critical shift to a degraded state (ecosystem resilience). If environmental conditions improve, these feedbacks increase the pressure release needed to achieve the ecosystem recovery (restoration potential). The impact of these feedbacks on dryland response to external stress is markedly non-linear, which relies on the non-linear negative relationship between bare-soil connectivity and vegetation cover. Modelling studies on dryland vegetation dynamics not accounting for the connectivity-mediated feedbacks studied here may overestimate the resistance, resilience and restoration potential of drylands in response to environmental and human pressures. Our results also suggest that changes in vegetation pattern and associated hydrological connectivity may be more informative early-warning indicators of dryland degradation than changes in vegetation cover.

Perspectives in Resource Management and Climate Change Adaptation in the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean. MEDPRO Policy Paper No. 6, March 2013

This policy paper focuses on the sustainable management of some key natural resources in southern and eastern Mediterranean countries (SEMCs) under climate change and anthropogenic pressures. In a business-as-usual and even more so in a failed cooperation scenario, water resources, ecosystems and biodiversity in the region are under stress, with negative consequences for agriculture, food security, tourism and development. However, proper adaptation strategies are shown to be effective in reconciling resource conservation with GDP, trade and population growth. These need be implemented in different ways: technological, institutional, behavioural; and at different levels: regional, national and international. There is ample room for fruitful cooperation between the EU and SEMCs in this area, which can take the form of EU direct financial and technical support when resources in SEMCs are scarce, and of multilateral and bilateral cooperation programmes to improve resource efficiency. The EU could also take on the role of coordinating these different bilateral actions and, at the same time, support SEMCs to establish a structured programme focused on the communication and dissemination of emerging best practices.

In situ pore water oxygen microprofiles from the Polar Front, Southern South Atlantic Ocean

Without doubt, global climate change is directly linked to the anthropogenic release of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (UN IPCC-Report 2007). Therefore, research efforts to comprehend the global carbon cycle have increased during the last years. In the context of the observed changes, it is of particular interest to decipher the role of the hydro-, bio- and atmospheres and how the different compartments of the earth system are affected by the increase of atmospheric CO2. Due to its huge carbon inventory, the marine carbon cycle represents the most important component in this respect. Numerous findings suggest that the Southern Ocean plays a key role in terms of oceanic CO2 uptake. However, an exact quantification of such fluxes of material is hard to achieve for large areas, not least on account of the inaccessibility of this remote region. In particular, there exist so far only few accurate data for benthic carbon fluxes. The latter can be derived from high resolution pore water oxygen profiles, as one possible method. However the ex situ flux determinations carried out on sediment cores, tend to suffer from temperature and pressure artefacts. Alternatively, oxygen microprofiles can be measured in situ, i.e. at the seafloor. Until now, no such data have been published for the Southern Ocean. During the Antarctic Expedition ANT-XXI/4, within the framework of this thesis, in situ and ex situ oxygen profiles were measured and used to derive benthic organic carbon fluxes. Having both types of measurements from the same locations, it was possible to establish a depth-related correction function which was applied subsequently to revise published and additional unpublished carbon fluxes to the seafloor. This resulted in a consistent data base of benthic carbon inputs covering many important sub-regions of the Southern Ocean including the Amundsen and Bellingshausen Seas (southern Pacific), Scotia and Weddell Seas (southern South Atlantic) as well as the Crozet Basin (southern Indian Ocean). Including additional locations on the Antarctic Shelf, there are now 134 new and revised measurement locations, covering almost 180° of the Southern Ocean, for which benthic organic carbon fluxes and sedimentary oxygen penetration depth values are available. Further, benthic carbon fluxes were empirically related to dominant diatom distributions in surface sediments as well as to long-term remotely sensed chlorophyll-a estimates. The comparison of these results with benthic carbon fluxes of the entire Atlantic Ocean reveals significantly higher export efficiencies for the Southern Ocean than have previously been assumed, especially for the area of the opal belt.

Institutional bases for control of nonpoint source pollution under the Clean Water Act, with emphasis on agricultural nonpoint sources /

Mode of access: Internet.

Resource recovery and waste reduction activities : a nationwide survey /

Mode of access: Internet.

An evaluation of the resource recovery demonstration project, Baltimore, Maryland : executive summary /

Mode of access: Internet.

Parameters of water quality,

Cover title.

Developing a state resource conservation and recovery program /

Mode of access: Internet.