Balancing water allocation between uses

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Balancing water allocation between uses

• Frank Rijsberman
• Director General
• International Water Management Institute
• Sri Lanka

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1 Sectoral water management

• may optimise water use for a single use, but does
  not provide tools or institutional arrangements
  to allocate water across users.

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2 Management at community level,

• or by water user associations, may allocate
  water across uses at the local (village or
  irrigation system) level, but does not provide an
  institutional framework at the basin level.

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3 River basin authorities

• may allocate water across uses, but are
  difficult to implement because
• water service values across uses are only
  partially known and
• there is only limited dialogue among users.

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Zhang He Reservoir, China
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At Zhang He, China, rice yields doubled, while
water productivity per unit supply nearly tripled.
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Re-allocation to municipal/industrial

• use without destroying agriculture, but strong
  physical scarcity, and water pricing, leading to
  innovative farmer decisions (at individual and
  community level) backed by government.

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Assessing values means leaving water use
efficiency

• and moving to water use productivity in
  physical or monetary terms.

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We need a Blue Revolution in agriculture that
focuses on increasing productivity per unit of
water more crop per drop.
Secretary General Kofi Annan in his report to
the Millennium Conference
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Productivity of Water at 40 Irrigation
Systems There is ample scope for improvement.
Source Sakthivadivel et al, 1999
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At basin level, water productivity needs to be
understood in the widest possible sense

• including crop, livestock and fishery yields,
  wider ecosystem services and social impacts such
  as health,
• together with the systems of resource governance
  that ensure equitable distribution of these
  benefits.

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If productivity is a techno-economic concept,
then dialogue

• is more of a social science concept focusing on
  social learning. These approaches can complement
  each other.

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The Water-Ag-Environment issue On the one hand,
the fundamental fear of food shortages encourages
ever greater use of water resources for
agriculture. On the other, there is a need to
divert water from irrigated food production to
other users and to protect the resource and the
ecosystem. Many believe this conflict is one of
the most critical problems to be tackled in the
early 21st century (GWP, 2000, p58).
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Dialogue on Water, Food and Environment
FAOGlobal Water Partnership- GWPInt. Cie. on
Irrigation and Drainage-ICIDInt. Fed. of
Agricultural Producers-IFAPIUCN - the World
Conservation Union IWMI (host of Dialogue
Secretariat)UNEPWWF - the Worldwide Fund for
NatureWorld Health Organisation- WHOWorld Water
Council
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Dialogue on Water, Food Environment