Abstract
AbstractDrought frequency and intensity is expected to increase in many regions worldwide, and water shortages could become more extreme, even in humid temperate climates. To protect the environment and secure water supplies, water abstractions for irrigation can be mandatorily reduced by environmental regulators. Such abstraction restrictions can result in economic impacts on irrigated agriculture. This study provides a novel approach for the probabilistic risk assessment of potential future economic losses in irrigated agriculture arising from the interaction of climate change and regulatory drought management, with an application to England and Wales. Hydrometeorological variability is considered within a synthetic data set of daily rainfall and river flows for a baseline period (1977–2004) and for projections for near future (2022–2049) and far future (2072–2099). The probability, magnitude, and timing of abstraction restrictions are derived by applying rainfall and river flow triggers in 129 catchments. The risk of economic losses at the catchment level is then obtained from the occurrences of abstraction restrictions combined with spatially distributed crop‐specific economic losses. Results show that restrictions will become more severe, more frequent, and longer in the future. The highest economic risks are projected where drought‐sensitive crops with a high financial value are concentrated in catchments with increasingly uncertain water supply. This research highlights the significant economic losses associated with mandatory drought restrictions experienced by the agricultural sector and supports the need for environmental regulators and irrigators to collaboratively manage scarce water resources to balance environmental and economic considerations.
Highlights
Global aridity and drought‐affected regions have increased substantially since the middle of the twentieth century (Dai, 2011; Dai & Zhao, 2017), with climate projections suggesting future increases in drought frequency and severity in Europe (Lehner et al, 2017; Spinoni et al, 2017). Wanders et al (2015) showed the proportion of Europe with higher future drought frequency and greater drought severity to be 55–85% and 30–35%, respectively, by the end of the 21st century
This study provides a novel approach for the probabilistic risk assessment of potential future economic losses in irrigated agriculture arising from the interaction of climate change and regulatory drought management, with an application to England and Wales
This study provides a novel approach to evaluate the risk of economic losses in irrigated agriculture due to water abstraction restrictions implemented during current and future drought conditions under climate change, using England and Wales as a case study
Summary
Global aridity and drought‐affected regions have increased substantially since the middle of the twentieth century (Dai, 2011; Dai & Zhao, 2017), with climate projections suggesting future increases in drought frequency and severity in Europe (Lehner et al, 2017; Spinoni et al, 2017). Wanders et al (2015) showed the proportion of Europe with higher future drought frequency and greater drought severity to be 55–85% and 30–35%, respectively, by the end of the 21st century. Many previous studies have evaluated the impacts of drought on crop yields for rainfed (e.g., Popova et al, 2014; Potopová et al, 2016) and irrigated (e.g., Daryanto et al, 2016, 2017; Sweet et al, 2017; Trnka et al, 2016) systems This has extended into the economic impacts of drought using market prices and production functions at the basin scale (e.g., Kirby et al, 2014), input‐output analysis (e.g., Pérez y Pérez & Barreiro‐ Hurle, 2009), Ricardian cross‐sectional analysis of net revenues, and computable general equilibrium models to capture economy‐wide and global‐scale changes of climate change (Mendelsohn & Dinar, 2009). Studies that consider uncertainties due to natural hydrometeorological conditions in the evaluation of the economic impacts on agriculture are still needed
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