Canal Company Research Articles

A top-secret game: metadiscourse analysis of the contractual discourse of purchasing 100 shares of the Suez Canal Company in 1947

Abstract This paper examines categories and functions of interactive and interactional textual elements used in the contractual discourse of selling/purchasing 100 shares of the Suez Canal Company in 1947. The exchanged documents between the involved parties, the Egyptian (buyer) and the American (seller), are analyzed using Metadiscourse Analysis (MDA) as an approach to analyzing the textual resources used in the selected corpus. Game Theory is also used in conjunction with MDA to allocate the strategic behaviors of the players within the competitive contextual surroundings of the selected discourse. The analysis explains the structural constructions of the correspondences exploring how interactional relations between the participants are linguistically crafted. The analysis of the contract discourse is argued to contribute to econo-linguistics by examining how MDA and Game Theory can be integrated to construe/construct discourses about economics. The article concludes that metadiscourse resources enable the discourse of contracts to maintain a dialogic interactional language between the seller and the buyer. This interaction assimilates a game where the author and the reader (or players) exchange moves strategically to reach the target payoff. Thus, it can be argued that integrating MDA and Game Theory benefits econo-linguistics in highlighting hidden agendas and understanding interactive and interactional meanings in the discourse.

Paul Romer, charter cities and lessons from historical big infrastructure?

This paper looks in detail at an innovative idea for new city governance promulgated by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Romer, that of charter cities. The main methodological conundrum in evaluating Romer's model is that there is no existing charter city to which he or others can use to demonstrate the developmental success or otherwise of the concept. This paper uses two innovative case studies to test Romer's idea. These case studies are the Suez Canal Company and the Panama Canal Company. These two companies received charters, were tasked with building cities (and infrastructure), were given long-term leases over land, and had sovereign guarantors – the two canals were in effect Romer-esque Charter City projects. This paper uses these case studies to examine issues related to the operation of a sovereign guarantee, financing new city construction, and the distributional consequences of new cities. The global renaissance in big infrastructure construction, much of which is being done under charter-like rules, gives the idea of charter cities a striking contemporary relevance.

Searching for a Past: French Colonial Memory of Ismailia in the early 20th Century

Memory of life in Ismailia as depicted in the newsletter of former French speaking expatriates, the Journal de Timsah, relating to the large saline rich interior body of water on which Ismailia looks upon, and connecting Ismailia and Egypt to the imagery of a crocodile. The newsletter, used to update former/exiled French speaking expatriates (and Egyptians in France, who also appear on the membership list), provided photographs, essays and, in several issues, recipes to remind the readers of an idyllic past life of semi-colonial past. Descriptions of Egyptian dishes and full-on recipes were meant to be easily replicated to recreate the smells and tastes of an earlier time, while the photographs painted a picture of water, gardens, beach outings, parties, schooling and villa-life of the European elite of the town who worked for the Suez Canal Company. These memories of a colonial past-life are similar to that of other colonial settings and situations, such as the French-colonial white family in Ousmane Sembène’s film La Noire de… The Ismailia families who immigrated after the nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956, or even earlier, looked to keep a piece of the colony with them even after their return to the metropole. This paper thus attempts to interrogate the ideas of memory and space as they appear in issues of Timsah. Using the newsletter, I show how the former residents, even in a semi-colonial space or company town setting, cannot let go of their hold on the former spaces. As they try to keep pieces and recreate smells and tastes, they demonstrate their colonial and orientalist gaze on the landscape of Ismailia and the region of the Suez Canal – not the Ismailia or Canal of the present, but one of the past. Methodologically, I use the photography and texts from the newsletter as a collage that I layer with a discursive interrogation of the fragments.

Moving toward Sustainable Irrigation in a Southern Idaho Irrigation Project

HighlightsPrivate and public irrigation development was important for expanding agricultural production in the western U.S.The Twin Falls Canal Company is an excellent example of a successful Carey Act project.Cooperative efforts during the last 30 years have dramatically improved the water quality of irrigation return flow.Electricity generated by six hydroelectric facilities improves the sustainability of the irrigation project.Abstract. Private and public irrigation development projects were fundamental to bringing irrigation to arid regions of the western U.S. The Twin Falls Canal Company in southern Idaho provides a case study of private and public irrigation development because the project was developed by private investors under the Carey Act and receives a portion of its irrigation water supply from U.S. Bureau of Reclamation reservoirs. The project survived initial financial struggles and waterlogged soil to focus on sustaining crop production by reducing chronic furrow irrigation erosion and nutrient losses in irrigation return flow. Average sediment loss from the project was 460 kg ha-1 in 1970. A cooperative effort by the canal company, state and federal agencies, and farmers improved water quality by installing sediment ponds on fields, applying polyacrylamide with furrow irrigation, converting from furrow to sprinkler irrigation, and constructing water quality ponds on irrigation return flow streams. From 2006 to 2018, more sediment and total phosphorus flowed into the watershed than returned to the Snake River, and the project removed 13,000 Mg of sediment and 30 Mg of total phosphorus from the Snake River each year. However, nitrate-N from subsurface drainage was lost at 10 kg ha-1 each year, or 800 Mg year-1, for the entire watershed. While sediment and phosphorus concentrations in irrigation return flow have decreased, these concentrations were still greater than the irrigation water, indicating that more can be done to reduce the project’s influence on water quality in the Snake River. Keywords: Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Sediment, Soluble salts, Water quality.

Project Finance: Fundamental Elements and Critical Issues

In 1859 Ferdinand de Lesseps and his Suez Canal Company started what was considered at the time as an impossible infrastructural project, linking the Mediterranean with the Red Sea. Ten years and countless intricacies later, the Suez Canal opened for business. The project‟s characteristics were precarious international financing, technical and political difficulties, unexplained cost variations 1 and mediocre business results. 2 If these bear the hallmarks of pure project finance, then probably the Suez Canal can be considered as its prototype. This Paper is neither a technical nor a financial analysis of the Suez Canal project. 3 It unfolds emphatically from this historical juncture because the characteristics and issues pertaining at the time 4 are those still prevailing today. The technology, the formalities and the language of financing as well as the legal niceties of the relationships might have suffered progressive format changing, yet the underlying mechanics have remained unaltered. Central to the Paper‟s objective is the assessment and management of the various risk/return factors and how this impinges on the motivation 5 of the various participants of the project. Risk is thus considered as the leading fundamental element 6 which may, or may not lift off the project from its drawing board. The second part of the Paper deals with contemporary thematic issues affecting the use or non-use of project finance. It considers that the credit crisis, the very recent sovereign bankruptcies, regulatory constraints and socio-economic considerations have given a new definition to project finance. 1 The final cost was more than double the original estimate. 2 Compared to those expected. 3 In fact, it has absolutely nothing to do with it except for the fact that the Suez Canal was a massive project financed internationally. 4 Of the Suez Canal project. 5 Read, roles and objectives. 6 Together with others, considered as secondary elements. PROJECT FINANCE: FUNDAMENTAL ELEMENTS AND CRITICAL ISSUES 3

“Put One Irishman on a Spit and Another Will Turn Him”: A Postrevolutionary Episode in South Carlow, 1804

“Put One Irishman on a Spit and Another Will Turn Him”: A Postrevolutionary Episode in South Carlow, 1804* James G. Patterson (bio) From August to November 1804 officials at the highest levels of the Irish government came to believe—or more pointedly, found utility in claiming to believe—the information provided by a pair of highly questionable informers. The men had supposedly uncovered a revolutionary plot coordinated by a surviving republican directorate in Dublin and acting in concert with France. The conspirators intended to enlist thousands of disaffected farmers, laborers, and artisans in south Carlow who would then rise in conjunction with a promised French invasion force. At the center of the conspiracy were the Catholic officers and men of the Borris yeomanry corps, whose Lieutenant Hagerty was to lead the rising. However, it is evident that no such conspiracy existed and that ranking members of the Irish administration knew this, or certainly suspected as much. This fact raises the essential questions of what purpose was served by claiming that a plot existed, and who benefited from pretending that it was real and posed a legitimate threat to the state.1 The Irish yeomanry were established in 1796 to serve as a counterweight to the United Irishmen on the local level. From the outset units with substantial Catholic membership were highly suspect in the eyes of Protestant loyalists. This concern was particularly acute [End Page 64] in the politically and religiously charged south Leinster region where the United Irishmen had made serious inroads by 1797. Moreover, the majority of Catholic yeomen served in units commanded by liberal Protestants, making them doubly suspect.2 As tensions mounted through the closing months of 1797, local authorities disbanded a number of such units. On the eve of the rebellion in May 1798 panicked loyalist yeomanry officers and magistrates arrested dozens of Catholic yeomen in Kildare and Wicklow on suspicion of being United Irishmen. When open hostilities commenced on 24 May, militia and loyalist yeomen responded by carrying out mass executions of these prisoners at Carnew and Dunlavin.3 In the rebellion’s aftermath Catholics were systematically driven from the yeomanry, and a second purge of surviving Catholics took place following Robert Emmet’s failed rebellion of July 1803.4 A startlingly frank account of this latter process came in August 1803 when Arthur Browne, the prime sergeant, traveled from the capital to County Clare in order to assess the political environment of the country in the wake of the rising: “The yeomanry corps appear strong and alert. I found that most, if not all, of them from Dublin to [End Page 65] Limerick positively refused to admit any papists.”5 Indeed, by 1804 Catholic membership in the force was a rare phenomenon in south Leinster, and the men of the Borris corps were an imperiled anomaly. The Carlow plot of 1804 may ultimately have proved a chimera. Yet the aggressiveness with which ultraloyalist magistrates drove the investigation, coupled with the willingness of ranking members of the government to act on the words of questionable informers, reveals much about the social, religious, and political environment that existed in south Leinster in the aftermath of Emmet’s rebellion of 1803. The catalyst for the events that transpired that summer and fall was the discovery on 5 September of 180 pike heads in a rabbit warren on Orchard Island, which sits in the Barrow about a mile south of Leighlin Bridge in west-central Carlow. The “gentleman” who recovered the weapons was Robert Lea, Esq., of Mulberry Place near Camac Bridge on the Grand Canal, south of Dolphin’s Barn.6 Lea, a County Dublin magistrate, immediately contacted the chief secretary Sir Evan Nepean with news of the discovery. In turn, Nepean believed that the information provided warranted his meeting with Lea, and the pair spoke on the night of 8 September. As they talked, Lea revealed the source of his intelligence as an unnamed “Barrow boat builder.” This man had written to the Grand Canal Company in the previous February offering to provide information, for a price, which he claimed would save the company a great deal of revenue. The boat builder...

Saad Zaghloul Pro- or Anti-Concession Extension of the Suez Canal 1909-1910

The years 1909-1910 witnessed one of the most critical chapters in the history of the Suez Canal. The attempt of the British occupation to obtain ratification from the Egyptian General Assembly for extending the concession of the Suez Canal Company to 2008 made a great stir among the Egyptians and provoked new furies of national agitation against the British. Although there was a unanimous condemnation for the proposal, Saad Zaghloul played a different role in dealing with the problem. He staunchly defended the project in the Assembly that he had originally rejected, an act that caused many to accuse him of being complicit with the British. Despite the fact that the vehement opposition to the project led the Assembly to turn it down, Zaghloul’s assessment of the situation raised a lot of questions concerning his involvement with the occupation and his relations with the Nationalists during this period. In light of the General Assembly Meetings, this paper is an endeavor to reveal the ambivalent role played by Zaghloul in this issue.

The Birth of Steam Railroads: The Charleston-Hamburg Railroad

The line operated by the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company linking Charleston with the town of Hamburg was the first in the United States to use steam-powered locomotives.

Publications of the Saint Mary's Falls Ship Canal Company and its Immediate Offspring

Publications of the Saint Mary's Falls Ship Canal Company and its Immediate Offspring

Publications of the Saint Mary's Falls Ship Canal Company and its Immediate Offspring

Publications of the Saint Mary's Falls Ship Canal Company and its Immediate Offspring

The First Investor-State Arbitration: The Suez Canal Company v Egypt (1864)

This article provides an in-depth examination of the earliest investor-state arbitration appearing in the historical record—the 1864 arbitration between the Suez Canal Company and Egypt. The arbitration is fascinating because the Company’s claim of mistreatment has a strikingly modern character: under what circumstances, and with what consequences, can the government of the day change its laws in order to promote its conception of the public good, where the change negatively impacts the value of the foreigner’s investments? Egypt demanded the right to eliminate the forced labor regime upon which the canal project’s finances depended; the Company demanded compensation. The arbitral commission’s solution, based essentially on a principle of sanctity of contract, is one that finds significant support in modern jurisprudence. Citing ‘the contract’ is, and long has been, a powerful rhetorical and legal weapon for the aggrieved investor.

The First Investor-State Arbitration

In recent years investor-state arbitration has become ubiquitous. Foreign investors who believe the states hosting their investments have violated their rights under international law routinely sue those states before international tribunals. Most investment law experts would probably identify the origins of the field in a famous “first”, the signing of the first bilateral investment treaty (between Germany and Pakistan) in 1959. But in fact, we can trace investor-state arbitration back much further — nearly a century further — to a long forgotten but nonetheless fascinating dispute between the Suez Canal Company and Egypt, arbitrated by a commission of legal and diplomatic luminaries appointed by Napoleon III, the Emperor of France. The arbitration is fascinating, in part, because the Company’s claim of mistreatment has a strikingly modern (and perhaps even timeless) character: under what circumstances, and with what consequences, can the government of the day change its laws in order to promote its conception of the public good, where the change negatively impacts, and perhaps even destroys, the value of the foreigner’s investments? The Suez Commission’s solution, based essentially on a principle of sanctity of contract, is one that finds significant support in modern jurisprudence. Citing “the contract” is, and long has been, a powerful rhetorical and legal weapon for the aggrieved investor.

ウォーザン、マンチェスターの都市空間に関する分析と考察

The three mill towns in the Northeastern U.S. emerged during the early stage of the industrial revolution are analyzed in terms of development of power canals and spatial structures in this series of papers. Following the former paper which introduced Lowell, MA, this is to analyze two more cases and then to discuss on innovation observed in each case and evolution process of mill towns as a whole. In 1814, the Boston Manufacturing Company (BMC) integrated all steps in the textile manufacturing process in one mill located in Waltham. The innovation known as the “Waltham system” brought them remarkable success in business, but after a series of expansion the mill used all the available water power emerged from the dam of ten feet high constructed across the Charles River. In its early days, the BMC owned only some two dozens of living units exclusive for mechanics and skilled workmen living with their families, and the majority of female workers lived in family groups not necessarily associated with the company. Later the BMC constructed corporate residences and so-called boarding houses but never took part in urban development of Waltham. During 1830's, the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company (AMC) acquired 24000 acres land on both side of the Merrimac River and prepared a plan for a utopian-like new town, the later city of Manchester. The plan allocated the mill yard with two parallel power canals stretching almost a mile long along the east river bank, mill workers' community consisting of hundreds of housing units right next to the mill yard and the down town with grid-pattern streets and six parks on the rest of the river terrace. During 70 years of its growing period, AMC developed their factory on the mill yard incrementally from south to north, then to the west side of the river bank. AMC also took an active role in development of the down town by selling their own lots to various public and private sectors so that organized utility of land could be carried out. BMC and AMC as well as the canal company of Lowell were established by Boston associates, a group of Boston merchants led by Francis C. Lowell. In Waltham where they started their cotton industry they devised the first fully integrated textile mill in the world, but they depended on urban infrastructure of existing town. On the other hand, in Lowell, the next stage of their enterprise, they purchased a failing navigation canal and surrounding farmland to develop some ten planned industrial units consisting of a mill and housing for its workers, but urban infrastructure for civil services were poorly organized. In Manchester, their third stage, they planned and developed its down town as well as their industrial community. For this reason, it could be said that Manchester was an ultimate form of so-called Waltham system mill towns.

William Smith: The natural order of strata and the search for underground water supplies

Following dismissal from the Somersetshire Coal Canal Company in 1799, William Smith (1769–1839) earned his living as a consultant, where much of his work involved water. At the time there were conflicting ideas on the origin of deep groundwaters and many considered rainfall alone inadequate to explain their presence. Smith's developing knowledge of stratigraphy enabled him to predict the position of water-bearing formations and provided a scientific basis for their discovery and exploitation. In 1807 his ideas were used by John Farey to explain the source of deep groundwaters beneath London. By 1815, when Smith's map was published, his ideas were known widely enough for the scientifically literate to be aware of their application to the search for groundwater supplies, however, there was still a lack of understanding amongst the general public, partly the result of reticence amongst Smith and his pupils. Examples of Smith's consultancy work show that he was able to accurately predict the depth at which water would be found. His estimates of yield were less successful, resulting from a lack of understanding of how water was stored and released from aquifers under confined conditions. His well-known geological reservoir, near Scarborough was an innovative idea but probably did little to alleviate local water problems.

William Smith (1769–1839): His struggles as a consultant, in both geology and engineering, to simultaneously earn a living and finance his scientific projects, to 1820.

This paper deals with Smith's, highly complex, early ‘career paths’ to 1820. His first employment was as (1) a land surveyor. Then in 1793 he became both (2) canal surveyor, and (3) engineer, to the Somerset Coal Canal Company (SCCC). These now guaranteed him a regular income. But all suddenly changed, when he was successively dismissed, first as surveyor, then as engineer, in 1799. He had now to find other means of supporting himself, and publicising the important geological discoveries, he had made in Somerset. From the mid 1790s, Smith had there done (4) land drainage and irrigation work, for the chairman of the SCCC, and immediately after these dismissals. Smith was able to generate an adequate living from such West Country work, during a period of very high rainfall. This took him to Tytherton in Wiltshire. Here he first encountered a new rock unit (the Kellaways Rock) and here the Norfolk agriculturalist Thomas Coke was able to study Smith's new skills with water. News of his competence quickly passed throughout an agricultural community, then desperate to increase food production, during a long wartime period of crisis. Smith's methods of water drainage and irrigation work were now widely taken up, first by the Dukes of Manchester and Bedford, in Bedfordshire, and then by Coke and his relatives, both in Staffordshire and Norfolk, and then by Coke's many tenants in Norfolk. On top of this, Smith's skills as an engineer meant he was soon in high demand also as (5) a Sea Breach Engineer, in attempts to keep the German Ocean (now North Sea) out of The Broads. But Napoleonic war time conditions were harsh, and bills often not swiftly paid (or paid at all). So Smith tried new careers either as (6) a failed author, whether on Irrigation, or Norfolk or as (7) a consultant mineral surveyor—the field he had pioneered. Throughout much of this period, Smith's obsessive attempts to publish his geological discoveries, which needed considerable support for such a novel publication, were thwarted, by the bankruptcies of others, and proved futile, until 1815. This paper tries to survey, for a first time, Smith's complex, and fluctuating, financial situations, over the period 1793 to 1819 (when he entered a debtors' prison). His ‘knight in shining armour’ was undoubtedly the cartographer John Cary (1755–1835) who, in 1812, agreed to publish Smith's great ‘geological’ map. Thus only by “the enterprise of [this] private tradesman…, [what] had been in vain expected from princely patronage, and the sanction of national boards” was accomplished.

THE DELAWARE AND HUDSON CANAL COMPANY: FORMING, FINANCING, AND REPORTING ON AN EARLY 19TH CENTURY CORPORATION

This paper examines the case of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, chartered in 1823, to gain perspective on how a 19th century corporation obtained financing, communicated with shareholders, and sparked technological innovations in the years before the ascendance of railroads in America. Helping to expand the accounting history literature on canals, we examine the annual reports issued during the firm's first decade of existence. Despite early problems, management continually cast an optimistic view of the company's future in these reports. And, after initially increasing the amount of financial and other information disclosed, the annual reports subsequently became less forthcoming and transparent.

DAMES EMPLOYÉESAT THE SUEZ CANAL COMPANY: THE “EGYPTIANIZATION” OF FEMALE OFFICE WORKERS, 1941–56

AbstractThe article is a case study of work organization at the Services d'Egypte of the Suez Canal Company from the outbreak of World War II to the company's nationalization in 1956. In this multinational and multicultural workplace, organizational hierarchies and division of labor were traditionally defined according to “national” identities, while maintaining a strict segregation betweeneuropéensandindigènes, to use the company's terminology. Starting in the 1930s, the company faced new measures of economic nationalism imposed by the Egyptian government, including required quotas of Egyptian personnel. These measures progressively redefined the political boundaries of the company's action in the management of its workforce. Using unpublished archival documents from the company's personnel files, this article analyzes the processes of feminization and Egyptianization of the company's office workers during World War II and the 1950s. The process was driven by a precise organizational strategy, based on both “racial” and “gender” criteria, which aimed to redefine the company's internal hierarchies and to keep management and decision making in the hands of the “Europeans,” while complying with the terms of the conventions of 1937 and 1949 that regulated the relationship between the company and the Egyptian government.

Estimation of Spatially Distributed Evapotranspiration Using Remote Sensing and a Relevance Vector Machine

With the development of surface energy balance analyses, remote sensing has become a spatially explicit and quantitative methodology for understanding evapotranspiration (ET), a critical requirement for water resources planning and management. Limited temporal resolution of satellite images and cloudy skies present major limitations that impede continuous estimates of ET. This study introduces a practical approach that overcomes (in part) the previous limitations by implementing machine learning techniques that are accurate and robust. The analysis was applied to the Canal B service area of the Delta Canal Company in central Utah using data from the 2009–2011 growing seasons. Actual ET was calculated by an algorithm using data from satellite images. A relevance vector machine (RVM), which is a sparse Bayesian regression, was used to build a spatial model for ET. The RVM was trained with a set of inputs consisting of vegetation indexes, crops, and weather data. ET estimated via the algorithm was used as an output. The developed RVM model provided an accurate estimation of spatial ET based on a Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient (E) of 0.84 and a root-mean-squared error (RMSE) of 0.5 mm day−1. This methodology lays the groundwork for estimating ET at a spatial scale for the days when a satellite image is not available. It could also be used to forecast daily spatial ET if the vegetation indexes model inputs are extrapolated in time and the reference ET is forecasted accurately.

Leveson Francis Vernon-Harcourt, Civil Engineer (1839–1907)

Leveson Francis Vernon-Harcourt was a distinguished civil engineer, who specialized in harbour, dock, river and canal engineering. After gaining a first in Mathematics in 1861 and a first in Natural Sciences in 1862 at Balliol College Oxford, he served his pupilage with Sir John Hawkshaw, who appointed him resident engineer for the new South Dock in East & West India Docks in London in 1866. He was subsequently Superintendent of Works at Braye Harbour and constructed the first pier at Rosslare in Ireland. He moved to a consulting engineering role from 1874 working initially on projects for Sir John Hawkshaw. He developed an extensive independent client list, including the Newport Harbour Commissioners and the Manchester Ship Canal company. He was appointed Professor of Civil Engineering at University College London in 1882, a part-time role he held till 1905. He wrote numerous papers for the Institution of Civil Engineers and five books on his specialist subjects. He played a leading role in organizing and speaking at national and international conferences. He was a pioneer in the use of scale models to assess the impact of training walls in tidal estuaries. He was a British representative on the Suez Canal Works International Consultative Commission.

Irrigation evaluation based on performance analysis and water accounting at the Bear River Irrigation Project (U.S.A.)

Abstract The purpose of this work is to contribute to the development of a combined approach to evaluate irrigated areas based on: (1) irrigation performance analysis intended to assess the productive impacts of irrigation practices and infrastructures, and (2) water accounting focused on the hydrological impacts of water use. Ador-Simulation, a combined model that simulates irrigation, water delivery, and crop growth and production was applied in a surface irrigated area (1213 ha) located in the Bear River Irrigation Project, Utah, U.S.A.. A soil survey, a campaign of on-farm irrigation evaluations and an analysis of the database from the Bear River Canal Company and other resources were performed in order to obtain the data required to simulate the water flows of the study area in 2008. Net land productivity (581 US$ ha −1 ) was 20% lower than the potential value, whereas on-farm irrigation efficiency (IE) averaged only 60%. According to the water accounting, water use amounted to 14.24 Mm 3 , 86% of which was consumed through evapotranspiration or otherwise non-recoverable. Gross water productivity over depleted water reached 0.132 US$ m −3 . In addition, two strategies for increasing farm productivity were analyzed. These strategies intended to improve water management and infrastructures raised on-farm IE to 90% reducing the gap between current and potential productivities by about 50%. Water diverted to the project was reduced by 2.64 Mm 3 . An analysis based on IE could lead to think that this volume would be saved. However, the water accounting showed that actually only 0.91 Mm 3 would be available for alternative uses. These results provide insights to support the decision-making processes of farmers, water user associations, river basin authorities and policy makers. Water accounting overcomes the limitations and hydrological misunderstandings of traditional analysis based on irrigation efficiency to assess irrigated areas in the context of water scarcity and competitive agricultural markets.