The Impacts of Water Pricing and Non-Pricing Policies on Sustainable Water Resources Management: A Case of Ghorveh Plain at Kurdistan Province, Iran

Mohammad Ali Asaadi,Talal Yusaf,Omid Zamani,Seyed Salar Hoseini,Gholam Hassan Najafi,Seyed Abolghasem Mortazavi

doi:10.3390/en12142667

Abstract

As with other regions of Iran, due to excessive extraction of groundwater for intense agricultural activity, Ghorveh plain, a water-scarce irrigation district in the west of Iran, has faced a serious water crisis during the last decade. The present study investigates the impacts of two scenario policies, namely, non-price policy (as a supply-oriented policy) and water pricing policies (as a demand-oriented policy) on agricultural sector of Ghorveh Plain, using positive mathematical programming (PMP). The model was calibrated by using farm-level data for the crop years in 2016–2017. Our findings indicate that applying water supply constraint policy will change the land use and cropping pattern to the crops with higher water productivity. The increase of water resource constraints can lead to the increase of water economic return which indicates a rising value of water resources shortage, warning the producers of the agriculture sector to allocate water to the crops with higher economic value under the water resources shortage conditions. In addition, the findings underline that in a situation where the price of irrigation water is low due to the low elasticity of water demand in the agriculture sector, formulating the economic instruments such as rising water prices does not solely suffice to achieve sustainable water resource management. However, mixed scenarios emphasized that the water distribution policies should be aligned with the increases in water cost.

Highlights

Iran is amongst the most drought stricken countries in the world, in which the rainfall is one-third of the world’s average [1]
Regarding the fact that groundwater cost condition as a policy-based instrument can have an influential role on controlling the exploitation of the groundwater resources, different costs were determined per square and its effect on some of the economic and agricultural parameters of the region was studied
The increase of groundwater cost in all scenarios of water pricing, land use of potato and alfalfa crops increases compared to the base year while the land use of wheat, barley, and cucumber reduces compared to the base year

Summary

Introduction

Iran is amongst the most drought stricken countries in the world, in which the rainfall is one-third of the world’s average [1]. There are strong indications that Iran is experiencing a severe water crisis which further have been exacerbated by recent high population growth rates, in addition to mismanagement of agricultural irrigation water resources [2,3]. Increasing economic water productivity is among the top priorities for the Iranian policymakers in the agricultural sector [3,5]. The implemented policies on food security and the illusion of rapid economic growth have resulted in irregular use of water resources in agriculture [7,8]. In response to the current water crisis, the Iranian officials have recently emphasized the goal of water-conservation and water productivity as the binding obligations for the national water resource plans [5,10]. Opting for solutions for optimizing water consumption, in water shortage and drought conditions, has a great part to play

Methods

Results

Conclusion