Abstract
The challenge of unstainable agricultural water usage in Korea has continued interminably despite persisting climate change impacts; thus, necessitating urgent actions to forestall future water crises. However, achieving this goal requires the involvement of stakeholders to develop an effective governance policy concerning water saving. This study investigates the components of water governance following existing water policy gaps. A multi-level Delphi-AHP technique was used to identify and prioritize the essential components of agricultural water governance that can specifically enhance water-saving policy in Korea. The analysis of twenty-nine formulated components (six main and twenty-three sub-components) based on the OECD water policy gaps was conducted. A Delphi-AHP technique with process evaluation of the agricultural water experts’ opinions under pairwise comparisons was used to arrive at the relative order of importance of the components. The order of main components based on the consolidated weight follows core actors (0.316), law, policies, and systems (0.069), budget support (0.135), information sharing and communication (0.099), mutual learning (0.142), and external experts (0.239), while village representatives (0.353), legislation (0.358), central government (0.311), policy committee (0.309), education course (0.374), and facilitator (0.402) were considered as priorities, respectively, for the sub-components of water governance. The findings indicate that strengthening the informal institution could address the water governance gaps in the agricultural sector to achieve water-saving policies. This study recommends a bottom-up approach to water governance that could promote the active participation of core actors such as farmers and villagers in the design of policy and management of agricultural water resources.
Highlights
Climate change and its associated impacts have continued to threaten the socioeconomic development of many nations
The main components include core actors, external experts, information sharing and communication, mutual learning, budget support, and laws, policies, and systems, which were formulated based on the literature review of the reported gap in water governance in 17 OECD countries
The finding in this study indicates that the role of external experts as a component of agricultural water governance is ranked as the seventh priority
Summary
Climate change and its associated impacts have continued to threaten the socioeconomic development of many nations. This development has resulted in some countermeasures being promoted, including one of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations (SDG 13–Climate action) [1], to mitigate this menace of our era. South Korea, one of the industrialized countries in the Asian continent with low ratings on climate policy [5], has continued to experience severe and frequent drought periods, with water scarcity problems which have continued to impact the existing fragile agriculture and crop production system [6,7]. Sustainability 2022, 14, 3248 are essential for unhindered agricultural production continuously experience depletion, in terms of quality and quantity, despite the increasing demand by both agriculture and non-agricultural sectors [8,9]. Recent studies have predicted an increase in future water scarcity and drought risk by 2031–2060 and 2071–2099, respectively [10,11], thereby signifying a need for immediate short and long term mitigation strategies
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