Optimization and Assessment of Agricultural Water-Sharing Scenarios under Multiple Socioeconomic Objectives
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Volume 133, Issue 3
Abstract
The allocation of irrigation water to multiple, spatially distinct sites is one of the oldest and most important problems in water resources planning and management. However, past technical investigations have focused almost exclusively on allocation for an optimization objective and have not diagnosed the tradeoffs existing between this objective and other important socioeconomic goals such as equity and security. A common optimization technique is reviewed and adapted to multiple levels of irrigation allocation. The process of spatial distribution is then investigated for five different hypothetical allocation scenarios, which represent various definitions of the objectives of efficiency, equity, and security. A semihypothetical case study for the Lake Victoria Basin in East Africa is used to illustrate international water and crop production distributional effects of the five water-sharing scenarios. It is found that pursuit of nonefficiency objectives does entail material costs. The magnitude of these costs is variable with the specific policy pursued and the total system allocation level. Pursuit of a single objective, equity, can lead to very different patterns of water allocation and crop production depending on how exactly the political-social idea is defined. Finally, physical limitations of the agricultural system may require an explicit choice between objectives as it is shown that food supply security may not be possible under certain equity-targeted policies.
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Acknowledgments
The work presented herein was funded as part of the Nile Basin Water Resources Project (GCP/INT/752/ITA). This project was carried out by the Georgia Water Resources Institute (GWRI), was funded by the Government of Italy, and was executed for the Nile Basin nations by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. GWRI and the writers are grateful to the Nile Basin nations (Burundi, Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda), their focal point institutions, their Project Steering Committee (PSC) members, and their National Modelers for working with us on this project. The writers are also grateful to the Government of Italy and to FAO for sponsoring this project and for providing dependable logistical and technical support through the FAO offices in Rome and Entebbe. Last, they appreciate the comments of two anonymous reviewers.
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© 2007 ASCE.
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Received: Nov 29, 2004
Accepted: Dec 29, 2005
Published online: May 1, 2007
Published in print: May 2007
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