Technology Adoption for Long-Term Drought Resilience
Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 140, Issue 3
Abstract
In this paper, a mathematical model of optimal management of prolonged and consecutive drought events is developed to evaluate circumstances under which the adoption of a water-efficient technology may offer long-term drought resilience. The decision over technology adoption and its timing is affected by the objective of surviving a certain number of consecutive droughts besides being influenced by the costs of technology and the farmer’s endowments. A key finding is that planning for surviving through a longer drought period may discourage early technology adoption among poorer farmers faced with groundwater scarcity. Compared with wealthy farmers, the tendency to conserve groundwater for the poorer farmers when the drought planning horizon is longer gets reversed with an increase in the risks of repeated droughts. At low risks, groundwater conservation increases with the drought-planning horizon, but at higher risks, groundwater is depleted faster as the drought-planning horizon increases. Technology adoption may be discouraged when the possibility of repeated droughts is imminent or when the risk of an irreversible loss of groundwater is present.
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Acknowledgments
This work benefited from the author’s association with an ACIAR funded project (LWR/2006/072).
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Published In
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 140 • Issue 3 • March 2014
Pages: 384 - 392
Copyright
© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: May 14, 2012
Accepted: Nov 5, 2012
Published online: Nov 7, 2012
Discussion open until: Apr 7, 2013
Published in print: Mar 1, 2014
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