IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/iaae09/51687.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Assessing Water Policies and Farmers’ Vulnerability in Groundwater Irrigation Systems

Author

Listed:
  • Varela-Ortega, Consuelo
  • Esteve, Paloma
  • Downing, Thomas E.
  • Bharwani, Sukaina

Abstract

Spain is the most arid country in Europe and water use as well as water depletion and environmental degradation have slowly become a matter of social concern. Balancing the two objectives of “water for rural livelihoods” and “water for nature” constitutes a difficult challenge for the water Administration. The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of water conservation policies in the Upper Guadiana River basin (Spain), where intensive irrigated agriculture resulted in the overexploitation of the Western La Mancha aquifer and the subsequent degradation of the highly valuable wetlands. Focus is made on farmers’ vulnerability to these policies. The methodology combines qualitative and quantitative aspects by the integration of an economic model and a vulnerability analysis. The economic model simulates farmers’ behaviour facing different policy options, and the results are used as an input for the analysis of vulnerability based on farm income indicators, through the elaboration of a classification tree. The model integration presented in this work proves that, in the case of the Upper Guadiana, different farm types stand diverse policy impacts and that structural, behavioural and institutional aspects play a major role in those impacts, being small and legal farms the most vulnerable ones.

Suggested Citation

  • Varela-Ortega, Consuelo & Esteve, Paloma & Downing, Thomas E. & Bharwani, Sukaina, 2009. "Assessing Water Policies and Farmers’ Vulnerability in Groundwater Irrigation Systems," 2009 Conference, August 16-22, 2009, Beijing, China 51687, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:iaae09:51687
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.51687
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/51687/files/IAAE_434.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.51687?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alwang, Jeffrey & Siegel, Paul B. & Jorgensen, Steen L., 2001. "Vulnerability : a view from different disciplines," Social Protection Discussion Papers and Notes 23304, The World Bank.
    2. Molle, Francois & Berkoff, Jeremy (ed.), 2007. "Irrigation water pricing: the gap between theory and practice," IWMI Books, International Water Management Institute, number 137957.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Esteve, Paloma & Varela-Ortega, Consuelo, 2008. "Water Conservation and Agriculture Policies: Synergies in the Upper Guadiana (Spain)," 2008 International Congress, August 26-29, 2008, Ghent, Belgium 43853, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    2. Varela-Ortega, Consuelo & Blanco-Gutierrez, Irene & Swartz, Christopher H. & Downing, Thomas E., 2009. "Dealing with the tradeoff between water for nature and water for rural livelihoods in the presence of climate uncertainties: lessons for water management," 2009 Conference, August 16-22, 2009, Beijing, China 51420, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    3. Molle, Francois & Al Karablieh, E. & Al Naber, M. & Closas, Alvar & Salman, A., 2017. "Groundwater governance in Jordan: the case of Azraq Basin. A Policy White Paper," IWMI Reports 273350, International Water Management Institute.
    4. Ana Raquel Nunes, 2021. "Exploring the interactions between vulnerability, resilience and adaptation to extreme temperatures," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 109(3), pages 2261-2293, December.
    5. Freshwater, David, 2014. "Vulnerability and Resilience: Two Dimensions of Rurality," Staff Papers 174103, University of Kentucky, Department of Agricultural Economics.
    6. Maithili Ramachandran & K.S. Kavi Kumar & Brinda Viswanathan, 2006. "Vulnerability to Chronic Energy Deficiency: An Empirical Analysis of Women in Uttar Pradesh, India," Working Papers 2006-012, Madras School of Economics,Chennai,India.
    7. Aistė Dirzytė & Ona Gražina Rakauskienė & Vaida Servetkienė, 2017. "Evaluation of resilience impact on socio-economic inequality," Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues, VsI Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Center, vol. 4(4), pages 489-501, June.
    8. Prakashan Veettil & Stijn Speelman & Guido Huylenbroeck, 2013. "Estimating the Impact of Water Pricing on Water Use Efficiency in Semi-arid Cropping System: An Application of Probabilistically Constrained Nonparametric Efficiency Analysis," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 27(1), pages 55-73, January.
    9. Zhang, Hongliang & Antle, John, 2016. "Assessing Climate Vulnerability of Agricultural Systems Using High-order moments: A Case Study in the U.S. Pacific Northwest," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 236233, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    10. Esteve, Paloma & Varela-Ortega, Consuelo & Blanco-Gutiérrez, Irene & Downing, Thomas E., 2015. "A hydro-economic model for the assessment of climate change impacts and adaptation in irrigated agriculture," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 49-58.
    11. Lan Mu & Chunxia Luo & Zongjia Tan & Binglin Zhang & Xiaojuan Qu, 2023. "Assessing the Impact of Different Agricultural Irrigation Charging Methods on Sustainable Agricultural Production," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(18), pages 1-19, September.
    12. Jean-Philippe Venot & François Molle, 2008. "Groundwater Depletion in the Jordan Highlands: Can Pricing Policies Regulate Irrigation Water Use?," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 22(12), pages 1925-1941, December.
    13. Osawe, Osayanmon Wellington, 2013. "Livelihood Vulnerability and Migration Decision Making Nexus: The Case of Rural Farm Households in Nigeria," 2013 Fourth International Conference, September 22-25, 2013, Hammamet, Tunisia 161628, African Association of Agricultural Economists (AAAE).
    14. Zijun Qie & Lili Rong, 2017. "An integrated relative risk assessment model for urban disaster loss in view of disaster system theory," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 88(1), pages 165-190, August.
    15. Montalbano, Pierluigi, 2011. "Trade Openness and Developing Countries' Vulnerability: Concepts, Misconceptions, and Directions for Research," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(9), pages 1489-1502, September.
    16. Lisa Rygel & David O’sullivan & Brent Yarnal, 2006. "A Method for Constructing a Social Vulnerability Index: An Application to Hurricane Storm Surges in a Developed Country," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 11(3), pages 741-764, May.
    17. World Bank, 2010. "Deep Wells and Prudence : Towards Pragmatic Action for Addressing Groundwater Overexploitation in India," World Bank Publications - Reports 2835, The World Bank Group.
    18. Durba Biswas & L. Venkatachalam, 2015. "Farmers' Willingness to Pay for Improved Irrigation Water — A Case Study of Malaprabha Irrigation Project in Karnataka, India," Water Economics and Policy (WEP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 1(01), pages 1-24.
    19. Nicola Amendola & Mariacristina Rossi & Giovanni Vecchi, 2012. "Vulnerability to Poverty in Italy," Working papers 007, Department of Economics and Statistics (Dipartimento di Scienze Economico-Sociali e Matematico-Statistiche), University of Torino.
    20. Dilshad Ahmad & Muhammad Afzal & Abdur Rauf, 2021. "Flood hazards adaptation strategies: a gender-based disaggregated analysis of farm-dependent Bait community in Punjab, Pakistan," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 23(1), pages 865-886, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:iaae09:51687. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iaaeeea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.