Modeling the impacts of water-land allocation alternatives on food security and agricultural livelihoods in Egypt: Welfare analysis approach

Abstract

The Nile River Basin has received increasing attention recently as the conflict of utilizing the river's water between downstream and upstream countries have intensified. As a final downstream country, Egypt faces several challenges to improve its water use efficiency and sustainability to meet the increasing demands on water for irrigation, urban uses, and safeguarding its environmental assets. Improving food security and enhancing rural livelihoods would be conflicting objectives that need to be addressed conjointly. In this research, a hydro-economic framework that combines hydrology, land use, agronomy, economic, institutions, and policies has been developed and integrated with a welfare analysis and applied to Egypt's Nile Basin. The framework presents a quantitative analysis that explores the potential impact of different water-land allocation scenarios on national food security and rural livelihoods. Findings indicate that even under limited water resources, there is room for improving food security and rural livelihood through optimizing the water and land allocations, while maintain the resource's sustainability and environmental assets. However, improving food security would be linked with net benefits for food consumers, while it could be associated with some negative impacts on food producers that vary by region and crop types. The results provide a comprehensive design and policy tool to improve agricultural resources efficiency and sustainability under increasing water scarcity in arid and semiarid regions.