Simple Myths and Basic Maths About Greening Irrigation

Abstract

Greening the economy is mostly about improving water governance and not only about putting the existing resource saving technical alternatives into practice. Focusing on the second and forgetting the first risks finishing with a highly efficient use of water services at the level of each individual user but with an unsustainable amount of water use for the entire economy. This might be happening already in many places with the modernization of irrigated agriculture, the world's largest water user and the one offering the most promising water saving opportunities. In spite of high expectations, modern irrigation techniques seem not to be contributing to reduce water scarcity and increase drought resiliency. In fact, according to the little evidence available, in some areas they are resulting in higher water use. Building on basic economic principles this study aims to show the conditions under which this apparently paradoxical outcome, known as the Jevons' Paradox, might appear. This basic model is expected to serve as guidance for assessing the actual outcomes of increasing irrigation efficiency and to discuss the changes in water governance that would be required for this to make a real contribution to sustainable water management.

Irrigation technology and water rebound in China's agricultural sector

“…In contrast to the above studies, other scholars believe that there exists the agricultural water rebound effect. For example, Gomez and Perez (2014) conclude that higher irrigation technology results in the more agricultural water use. Song, Guo, Wu, and Sun (2018) find that the average rebound effect of agricultural water in China was 61.49%.…”

Water Management Practices: Use Patterns, Related Factors, and Correlations With Irrigated Acres

“…In the last decade or so, researchers have argued that although increasing irrigation efficiency often reduces the nonconsumptive loss of water such as evaporation during irrigation, that water saving does not necessarily translate into a reduction of total water use (e.g., Gómez & Pérez-Blanco, 2014). Pfeiffer and Lin (2014) are among the few studies on rebound effects that have used actual farm-level or field-level data instead of programming models and simulations (e.g., Hendricks & Peterson, 2012;Ward & Pulido-Velazquez, 2008).…”

India's depleting groundwater: When science meets policy

“…If JGY increases rather than reduces groundwater depth, or in other words, it decreases groundwater storage, then an explanation for this effect is required. We hypothesize that increasing the reliability and quality of the electricity supplied to farms, notwithstanding the temporal rationing, supports a “rebound effect” that increases groundwater use (Gómez & Pérez‐Blanco, ). We contend this may have arisen because the cost per unit of electricity remained essentially unchanged, as there were no substantial increases in tariff, but the power supplied became more effective and reliable.…”