Water and Economy-Wide Policy Interventions

The water–energy–food (WEF) nexus approach is important in promoting sustainable management of resources, alleviating poverty and achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs). Given the importance of the WEF nexus, it is currently being promoted and developed in most countries via policy interventions as a response to climate change‐related problems and other nexus challenges. In the past, Kenya faced numerous challenges in achieving SDGs concerning food, water, and energy security. To address this, cross‐sectorial policy interventions, legal instruments, and institutional frameworks have been developed. Therefore, this review evaluates the major policies, interventions, and strategies related to WEF, their interconnection, and their relevance to SDG targets. The review also assesses the efficacy of the policies and highlights gaps and potential for policy change. The key strategic interventions considered include Kenya Vision 2030, agriculture, energy, and water policies. From the review, there have been some successful policy measures. However, the intricate interconnections between the water, energy, and food sectors necessitate a more integrated strategy for achieving sustainability. The water policy is central to the achievement of SDGs for WEF security. Therefore, there is a need for the implementation of a holistic approach between the WEF agencies and stakeholders to address the policy interventions required for sustainable development. Water policies should be aligned with other interlinked policies on food, energy, and the environment.

Three economists, based on World-Bank-sponsored field research in 1994 and 1995, review land use and water policies in Uzbekistan and assess their feasibility with respect to current agrarian reform initiatives. Initial sections of the paper focus on cropping patterns, land tenure systems, and water management practices inherited from the Soviet period. Subsequent sections are devoted to describing processes of land reform and evaluating production and resource use efficiency in Uzbekistan in the period following the dissolution of the USSR. Final sections explore the potential role of state intervention and interstate water basin management initiatives in shaping land and water policies. 9 tables, 5 figures, 35 references. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: R14, Q15, Q20.

China’s water resources are scarce. Given its limited water resource, policies in China have been traditionally focused on meeting sectoral demands for water by increasing the supply rather than managing demand. However, effective water resource policies that focus on demand management and encourage efficient water use remain the main weakness of China’s water policy. Main potential for efficiency gain is the agricultural sector, which accounts for 65 percent of the nation’s total water withdrawals. Due to major inefficiencies in irrigation water systems only about 45 percent of water withdrawals for agriculture are actually used by farmers to irrigate their crops. In addition to inefficiencies, the equity of the agricultural water policies is questionable, That is, existing policies lead to an inequitable allocation across different parts of the basin and within a given irrigation system. Designing policies that are both efficient and equitable is a challenge that has yet to be met. In this paper we explore the potential for an improvement in policies that address water use efficiency and equity in one of China’s rural regions. A spatial water allocation model is employed to maximize water use efficiency at both public water conveyance system and private on-farm water use in one of the irrigation districts in Northwest China’s Shaanxi Province. First-hand data which were collected from our field survey will be used in the water allocation model. Water is provided by a government authority via a public canal to farmers. Water use efficiency is modeled along with efficient and optimal cropping patterns to be endogenously determined by the decision makers in the region. The public water conveyance system has a given efficiency that can be improved with investment to reduce deep percolation. This can be done either by farmers or through cost sharing arrangements between farmers and the government. Pumping water from the canal is not regulated and sequencing of the farmers along the canal dictates the amount of water to be used by each farmer. Under the unregulated case equity may be the lowest, where the upstream users may pump unrestricted amounts and the downstream users may use the remainder. Increased efficiency of the public canal may lead to more available water to the upstream users. In a parallel venue, when on-farm efficiency is improved, less water is returned to the aquifer, leaving less water as a return flow to be available to the downstream users. Hence equity is always an issue whenever efficiency is improved. Specifically in our study area farmers’ lands are covered by one irrigation authority and situated along a canal. All farmers have access to public canal water and groundwater. For those situated at plain area, where winter wheat is grown, they have better access to abundant and cheap public canal water. For those farmers living at hilly, higher elevation area, where apple production is dominating, they get water from public canal with a higher price of about 40% compared with the price their counterparts at the plain area due to an additional (stage 1 station) lift-height pumping cost. At last, water will be delivered to mountainous area where corn is grown. A stage 2 lift-height pumping station lifts the water again to irrigate the corn’s fields. Consequently the water price is doubled as compared to the original water price at the plain area. Corn needs less water than wheat and apple. Farmers may reduce their water costs either by reducing canal water application, and groundwater pumping, or by dry land farming. A canal controller or examiner will be introduced to the canal management. By doing so, the policy impacts of regulated and unregulated cases are analyzed. Our framework includes water use efficiency, water pricing and various policy interventions that are aimed at both increasing total welfare and improve income distribution along the canal. We show how important it is for the public agency and the private users to cooperate in order to achieve water use efficiency and equity within the irrigation network. Policies include various water pricing schemes, the unregulated case, increased monitoring and enforcement of various water allocation methods, cost sharing arrangements, side payments, and trade in water rights (that will be allocated by the government). A General Algebraic Modelling System (GAMS) is employed to achieve the optimization process under the water system constraints and other policy regulation constraints.

Land-use response to drought scenarios and water policy intervention in Lijiang, SW China

Water policy is often designed and implemented without negotiation with or participation from the intended beneficiaries. This is often the case in the implementation of global water policy initiatives that aim to benefit rural households in the developing world. Evidence of water policy responding to the locally defined preferences of the rural majority without improved water services is weak. Significant efforts have made to unpack quantity, quality and source attributes of domestic water supply to the least well-served populations in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. This effort has been limited to evaluating individual attributes in relation to health, productivity and usage criteria rather than a ‘user evaluation’ of these attributes together. The advantage of the latter approach is that trade-offs between attributes can be estimated to provide parameters for each attribute and marginal rates of substitution between attributes. A choice experiment in rural South Africa examines the preferences of households to changes in domestic water sources, water quantity, water quality, stream-flow failure and productive uses of domestic water. Trade-offs in rural household domestic water preferences estimate welfare coefficients that provide a ‘user evaluation’ of water policy interventions. The findings provide defensible estimates of the magnitude and direction of the utility gain/loss from water attributes that allows a more evidenced-based understanding of rural households' preferences to water policy interventions.

Policy intervention is a critical measure to address water resources challenges and improve water governance capacity. The strictest water resources management (SWRM) policy is an important water policy system that aims to deal with water shortage, water pollution, and institutional dysfunction in China. This study conducts a quantitative analysis for policy text characteristics of the SWRM through the methods of text mining and content analysis. First, we construct an analytical framework with the combination of policy instruments and policy targets, and then code and classify policy instruments in policy text and conduct statistical analysis. Finally, the research conclusions and policy suggestions are put forward. The results show that major policy instruments are structurally imbalanced in China’s SWRM policy. China’s government prefers to issue a mandatory, standardized, and restrictive policies in water resources management. Most of the policy instruments are focused on institutional management, followed by resources allocation, technological progress, and the ecological environment. This study contributes to the knowledge body of water policy evaluation and water governance, provides decision-making references for optimizing and promoting China’s water resources management policy, and offers a peer reference for water governance in other developing countries.

Farmer pathways to sustainability in the face of water scarcity

Utilizing panel data collected in 27 countries from 1960 to 2010, we demonstrate that the relationship between per capita urban water consumption and per capita gross domestic product exhibits an N-shaped pattern. Following the environmental Kuznets curve literature, this relationship can be named the cubic water Kuznets curve. We also demonstrate that water policies significantly influence per capita urban water consumption, which implies that appropriate policy interventions might allow developing countries to achieve economic development with less per capita water consumption.

The past decade has witnessed a growing sense of urgency in reforming water sectors in developing countries like India faced with acute water scarcity. India, like many other developing countries, is still focused on building water infrastructure and services, and making these sustainable in all senses of the term. The new wave of ideas is asking it to move from this supply-side orientation to proactive demand management by reforming water policy, water law and water administration, the so-called 'three pillars' of water institutions and policies. But making this transition is proving difficult in India and elsewhere in the developing world. Here, making water laws is easy - enforcing them is not. Renaming regional water departments as basin organizations is easy - but managing water resources at basin level is not. Declaring water an economic good is simple - but using the price mechanism to direct water to high-value uses is proving complex. This chapter explores why. It distinguishes between Institutional Environment (IE) of a country's water economy, which comprises the 'three pillars', and the Institutional Arrangements (IAs), which refer to the humanly devised rules-in-use, which drive the working of numerous informal institutions that keep a vibrant economy well lubricated. The relative influence of IE and IAs varies in high- and low-income countries because the water economies of the former are highly formalized, while those in the latter are highly informal. In high-income countries' formalized water economies, IE has an all-powerful presence in the water economy; in contrast, in highly informal water economies of low-income countries, IAs have a large role with the IE struggling to influence the working of countless tiny players in informal water institutions. The emerging discussion exhorting governments to adopt demand-side management overestimates the developing-country IE's capacity to shape the working of their informal IAs through direct regulatory means, and underestimates the potential for demand management through indirect instruments. Demand-management reforms through laws, pricing and rights reforms in informal water economies are ill advised, not because they are not badly needed but because they are unlikely to work. The real challenge of improving the working of poor-country water economies lies in four areas: (i) improving water infrastructure and services through better investment and management; (ii) promoting institutional innovations that reduce transaction costs and rationalize incentive structures; (iii) using indirect instruments to work towards public-policy goals in the informal sectors of the water economy; and (iv) undertaking vigorous demand management in formal segments of the water economy such as cities and industrial water users. Facilitating these requires that water resources managers adopt a broader view of policy and institutional interventions they can catalyse to achieve policy goals.

A water allocation policy that aimed to balance water demand with water availability to ensure sustainability was implemented in an arid region of China over ten years ago. This policy’s success was assessed across three dimensions: society, the environment, and the economy. While the assessment was not intended to be comprehensive, it highlighted the best outcomes of the policy intervention while revealing some hidden issues. It was found that although the policy was successful in placing a ceiling on water use in the middle reaches of the Heihe River, the Water User Association, one of the main actors in water policy implementation, was under-recognized, even though it functioned well. Moreover, the economic structural adjustment at the macro level had not led to any significant reduction in water use, the reasons for which were explored.

It is widely ackowledged that the world water crisis is mainly a crisis of governance. However, there is no shared understanding of what "governance" means, how it works, who are its actors. The prevailing conceptions of governance in mainstream water policy documents tend to be instrumental and idealistic. Perhaps the most important consequence of instrumental and idealistic understandings of governance is the rhetorical depoliticization of what is, paradoxically, a political process. The main mechanism of this "depoliticization" of governance" is the exclusion of the ends and values informing water policy from the debate. Instrumental and idealistic understandings of governance constitute a major obstacle for the scientific understanding of the process and for achieving success in policy interventions directed at tackling the water crisis. The paper argues for the development of a balance between the techno-scientific, socio-economic, political, and cultural aspects of water management activities, which may help in superseding the artificial separation of water research and practice in disciplinary and corporatist feuds.

The Hexi Corridor, an important part of the Silk Road Economic Belt, is considered the poorest, most water scarce, and most ecologically fragile area in China. Establishing efficient strategies for water management in an integrated manner is utterly important. This paper evaluates the spatio-temporal trends of water stress (2003–2015) in the Shule (SLRB), Heihe (HHRB), and Shiyang (SYRB) River Basins in the Hexi Corridor based on the Water Poverty Index (WPI). For SLRB, the WPI ranged from 55.3 to 66.4, followed by HHRB (40.1–58.2) and SYRB with WPI = 20.0–43.9. Both SYRB and HHRB showed an improvement in the water situation based on increasing trends, whereas SLRB demonstrated a small decrease. The effectiveness of water policy interventions was evident in SYRB and HHRB, standing at odds with SLRB where interventions required adjustment to ameliorate the water stress. For the start and end years, pentagrams for five components (Resource, Access, Capacity, Use, Environment) demonstrated the merits and weaknesses of WPI as a comparative framework for assessing the water situation. This study also reaffirms the importance of WPI, utilized for investigating the efficacy of implemented water policies and benchmarking the future priorities in basins not only in China but also in other locations where water resources management is a key issue.

Against the backdrop of the water and energy sector reforms enunciated by the state government in Gujarat, this paper reviews the important policy changes and outcomes of farm-level adoption of water-saving technologies, on the one hand, and the effective implementation of energy tariff policies, on the other hand. Following an assessment of the water and energy policy and regulatory interventions, the paper provides an overview of the farm-level adoption micro irrigation (sprinkler and drip irrigation) systems over the past one decade of the policy reforms. The paper then examines the case of energy sector reforms enunciated by the state in coordination with the energy regulator through establishment of the distribution companies (DISCOMs). The paper brings out that the policy and regulatory interventions in the water and energy (power) sectors have been successful in terms of wider promotion of micro irrigation systems and deregulation of power generation and distribution activities by establishing dedicated DISCOMs. Thus, the policy initiatives were able to address several challenges facing the water and energy sectors in the state. Firstly, the wide-scale promotion of micro irrigation schemes has significantly reduced the groundwater over-extraction for agriculture. Second, the energy sector reforms have shown a significant progress towards rationalisation of tariffs across sectors. However, it emerges that the policy and regulatory reforms need to (i) go beyond the narrow confines of promotion of micro irrigation systems towards sustainable management of water resources and (ii) move beyond rationalisation of power tariffs by offering sustainable solutions to the problems of water and energy security amidst increasing competition for inter-sectoral allocations. Essentially, the energy sector policies and reforms may explore the potential of renewable energy sources through decentralised investments in solar and wind energy systems in the rural areas involving different public–private community partnership models.

Arid regions face acute water scarcity, posing significant challenges to agriculture. Limited water availability restricts crop cultivation and affects agricultural productivity, ultimately impacting food security and livelihoods. Water scarcity exacerbates soil degradation, salinization, and desertification, further reducing arable land and agricultural yields. This added to the current erratic changes in levels of what the area faces, which have become increasingly unpredictable due to climate change. It therefore faces numerous challenges that threaten food security and rural livelihoods Inefficient water management practices exacerbate the impact of water scarcity on agriculture, leading to unsustainable use and depletion of water resources. Addressing water scarcity in arid agriculture requires integrated water resource management strategies, including sustainable water use practices and water conservation measures which are adept to climate change and its impacts. Integrated approaches that integrate advanced irrigation techniques, water management strategies, and policy and governance frameworks are crucial for enhancing water productivity and conserving resources. For building the capacity of institutes collaboration among stakeholders, investment in water-efficient technologies, and policy interventions. The capacity building around arid regions and water management techniques requires working on growing the already existing water systems in hand artificially and by natural means, and second optimizing the water bank in hand by increasing the awareness around the resource and advancement of techniques which adept us to march forward. In this chapter, we discuss the challenges posed by water scarcity and climate change and highlight the importance of integrating these diverse water management approaches,including irrigation technologies, agronomic practices, and soil manipulations, to enhance water availability and resilience in arid agricultural systems. Finally, we focus on the role of policy development and stakeholder engagement in promoting sustainable water management

Spring is vital in all hilly areas. Without question, springs have aided in the advancement of human civilization. Mountain springs supply water to rural families in the Northeast. This spring ecological study was conducted in Dhalai, Tripura, with socio-economic policy significance. The springs chosen were Jamircherra (JS) and Govindabari (GS). The seasonal features of each spring were studied. The monsoon season is used to bring the life-giving flow of perennial springs. Several water quality indicators like WT, pH, EC, TDS, Turb, TH, DO, BOD, Ca+2, Mg+2, Cl−, No3, Po4 were examined to assess the risk of spring contamination. The most common aberrant results are samples having excessive phosphate (PO42−) and turbidity levels compared to norms. The spring's water quality was tested using the weighted arithmetic index methodology. The water quality at the two springs was adequate but not great throughout the year, causing human deaths from water-borne diseases. Thus, policy implementation was emphasized to save the spring and human life. A physicochemical evaluation of both springs was used to describe a techno-legal component of Environmental regulations.