PRESENT STATUS AND FUTURE PROSPECTS OF DRAINAGE IN RELATION TO THE ICID VISION 2030

Abstract

AbstractThe International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID) regularly updates the areas drained and irrigated in the world based on information provided via their national committees (www.icid.org). Modern land drainage planning, design and implementation include making drainage environmentally sustainable and achieve this through enhanced water balance assessments at regional and field scale, prevent excess water except for leaching salts, support ecological water requirements, and then, if any excess water remains, design a drainage system. The less water mobilized through the root zone, the better the quality of drainage water. No matter how efficiently our crops are watered, sooner or later we need to have a well‐functioning drainage system for complete in‐field water management. Agricultural land drainage should include various approaches to assessment and prevention of waterlogging and salinity problems, consider the water–food–energy nexus approach and give due attention to social, environmental and financial considerations (triple bottom line, TBL) for the best sustainable results. The most important consideration to be included in drainage system planning and design is the consideration of cause and effect. Waterlogging and salinity problems are the effect of something that is occurring most likely upstream; the cause. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.