Demand Side Water Management for agriculture: Post # 32

Demand Side Water Management

Parallel to, and an alternative to supply side water management is demand side water management, which along with water conservation, provides solutions to water scarcity scenarios that can help make additional water available for the immediate needs of society. As measures under demand side water management in agriculture sector are relatively inexpensive and quicker to take, essentially focusing on reducing the amount of water use for irrigating crops, such a strategy would require political courage to face off the serious emerging crisis of water scarcity.

Having a high level of experience and access to technology and knowledge, Israel, with a high water scarcity environment of 300 m³/ person per annum, presents a well tested practical model of water demand management for others by keeping water availability constant since 1948. In contrast, for Pakistan, we see a sharp drop of available water from 6000 m³ per person per annum to less than 1000 m³ over the same period. Therefore, with a spirit to learn from the successful experience of others, it makes sense to review the measures Israel took as outlined below:

1. Legal basis, Prices and Economic Policies: In 1959, a public water commission was established to regulate, monitor and manage water resources. The total system is equipped with water meters and progressive water charging rates for every farmer, apartment, house and industry are automatically updated with a cost of living formula.
2. Re-use of Sewage Effluents:  Laws have been passed to further improve the quality of water produced by the sewage water treatment plants so as to increase its use potential in exchange of fresh water to meet mostly irrigation needs. In 2003, a 65% reuse target was achieved.
3. Water Conservation / Improved Efficiency of Water Use: In addition to Point 1 and 2, efforts were focused on developing new efficient agronomic techniques like drip irrigation and changing cropping patterns based on product value per unit of water.
4. Agriculture and Industrial Production Sectors – Water Allocation System: In agriculture, water allocation was determined based on potential economic gains by the introduction of new technologies, changes in cropping patterns and moving away from crops where the product value per unit water is low. A similar policy for the industrial sector was followed to reduce the water usage per unit of product as well as pollution caused by industrial waste.
5. Urban Sector Water Use: In this case, the urban water supply system was equipped with water metering, older pipes were replaced with new ones to reduce leakage, and electronic monitoring was conducted and retrofitted to make the system more and more efficient.
6. Virtual Water Policy: In 1960, after realizing that available water resources were not enough to meet water needs, the Israeli Government decided to import most of its grains rather than grow them in the country. Such a policy decision in effect translates into Israel importing 3 BCM of water, which is almost twice the total amount of fresh water available in the country.
7. Water Markets: The Water Commissioner was already facilitating the trading of treated sewage water with fresh water in the country. Recently, the Government has allowed the holders of temporary or permanent allocations to be traded and provided water transactions through the national water carrier.

As Pakistan has its own peculiar ground conditions, our potential strategy for water demand management should be home-grown based on the following three devices: (1) Economic, (2) structural /operational and (3) social.  Learning from the referred practices in Israel and similar techniques applied for some water utilities in developed countries, we can also propose an integrated water demand management strategy for further refinements that includes:

1. Economic Devices:  Economic devices are mainly comprised of financial incentives or disincentives to encourage water users to reduce water use. In Pakistan’s case, agriculture is the most dominating sector for water consumption, making up almost 97% of total water consumed.

Few examples for financial incentives could include subsidies in providing technical assistance, in providing laser land leveling services, improving layouts and proper designing for reducing excessive surface water applications, installing pressurized / drip irrigation systems or delivering water in pipes within command areas of small dams, etc. These incentives can also be extended to construct on and off-farm water storages to encourage and conserve water savings.

An example of financial disincentives could include bringing canal water charges comparable to groundwater selling rates to discourage excessive water usage in the agriculture sector. These measures can be achieved either with restructuring water charging rates or by putting penalties for over use of water. 

2. Structural and Operational Devices: In the irrigated agriculture sector, one example of a structural and operational device is making use of existing canal outlets as flow measuring structures as operational tools for supplying and charging water on a volumetric basis. These kinds of measures are essentially built-in mechanisms to discourage over use of water and encourage higher productivity per unit of water.
3. Social Devices:  Social devices are more tailored to influence the behavior of water users to reduce their water consumption. This approach is essentially based upon undertaking educational or awareness campaigns and providing enough data / information about efficient water usage that they realize that the same production goals can be achieved with less water used, and consequently less cost. In this context, following are a few options that can be considered:

3.1  Sensitization Campaign: This campaign is focused on creating awareness among all stakeholders to motivate them to work for the same shared goal of water demand management. By providing a water audit of current water use patterns across Pakistan, water users can be convinced that by improving water use efficiency, they can avoid negative externalities of over use of water, while additionally benefiting from having to pay less for less water used.

3.2  Capacity Building: For marketing the package of water demand management to beneficiaries, the roles of all institutions responsible for water distribution within their respective sub-sectors should be understood in an integrated manner and short-falls in their capacities to promote integrated water demand management must be identified by assessing training needs in each case. All gaps regarding technical and management skills of all institutions of different water use sub-sectors have to be identified and training programs tailored accordingly to impart capacities to meet challenges of marketing water demand management. 

3.3  Development of Institutions and Enforcement of Legal Framework:  Our water institutions are mostly built around the imperial mind-set. There is a critical need to have new institutional frameworks in each water use sector so as to let the beneficiaries have an effective say in policy making, planning and implementation. Without ensuring an effective participation of water users, it would be clearly difficult to expect any water demand management.

3.4  Monitoring and Evaluation:  Water entities should have in-built mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation both in real time as well as on a continuous basis. These can be used to fix problems as they happen. In this context, making use of the Geographic Information System (GIS) and telemetry system will be handy tools to deliver desired information.

3.5 Political Will: Most of our water problems either keep on festering or become a serious source of conflict because of lack of political will to take issues head-on as they emerge. Lack of political will is evident for allowing two tiers of water pricing systems intact: one public flat and cheap water rates and the other private groundwater extraction system that delivers many times more expensive irrigation water to users. A similar lack of political will can be seen in making mess of the ongoing institutional reforms in the irrigated sector.

                                                                                   

For the people of Pakistan, there are useful lessons to be drawn from the ongoing demand management to curb or minimize the power crisis. While we were work hard on different options on power supply side management, as per nature of the “beast”, our government could not deliver on this front in time in spite of intense public pressure. As a consequence, power demand management was tried to provide required relief and space to deal with the power crisis.

As both power and water demand managements mainly revolve around the end-users, positive changes in users’ behavior cannot be ignored. Like what was done while managing power demand, we need all devices we tried in the power sector—economic, structural, operational and social—to accomplish significant reduction of demand for water. Obviously, water demand is an essential part of the solution to address water shortages cheaply and in a very short time span, but for a complete solution we must also include developing new sources of water supply that require more time and more financial resources. In other words, we are bound to work on both fronts in tandem.