Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
agricultural pollution control instruments by their cost efficiency. The implications and
findings are summarised in the concluding section.
2. The Water Framework Directive and Mediterranean irrigated agriculture
The European Union's Water Framework Directive is intended to protect all
continental, subsurface and coastal waters. Its objectives are to improve water quality and
the status of ecosystems, promote a sustainable use of water, and reduce emissions and
discharges to water media. In order to increase water use efficiency, water pricing should
approximate full recovery costs, including extraction, distribution and treatment costs,
environmental costs, and resource value costs. There are also a combination of emission
limits and water quality standards, with deadlines to achieve good status for all waters.
The European Water Directive has a great potential to solve water scarcity and
nonpoint pollution in Mediterranean countries, and this initiative is supported by the
findings of the European Environmental Agency, which point to agricultural nonpoint
pollution as the primary cause of water quality deterioration in many European
watersheds (EEA, 1999 and 2003). However, the reliance of the Directive on water
pricing to curb demand may fail in Mediterranean countries such as Spain and Italy,
which are characterised by high irrigation demand and quality problems compounded by
water scarcity.
Water pricing will not solve scarcity or improve quality in the more degraded areas.
Price increases would no doubt reduce consumption in large irrigation districts of inland
Spain or southern Italy, which are based on collective systems and low-profit crops, and
where degradation problems are moderate. However, water demand will not respond to
higher prices in areas based on individual aquifer extractions with Mediterranean high-
profit crops, where pressure on water resources is pervasive and degradation is severe
(Massarutto, 2003).
Water pricing fails as a workable policy for curbing demand for several reasons. The
first is the lack of control by the water administration on private wells and on volume
pumped, which makes taxing water extraction from aquifers unfeasible. A second reason
is the water price level needed to curb demand. In Spain, shadow prices of water in
coastal areas under greenhouse production can be as high as 3 to 5
3 , against
3 in inland Spain, while current water prices in coastal areas are between
6 and 21 cents
10-20 cents
3 in inland collective irrigation systems
(Albiac et al., 2003 and 2006). With urban prices in Spain close to or below 1
3 compared to 2-5 cents
3 , and
3 , it would seem unacceptable to set
agricultural prices in water scarcity areas above urban and desalination prices. Though a
policy designed to control aquifer overdraft would be quite difficult to implement, a water
pricing policy that were to drive prices above the 3 to 5
seawater desalination at around 50 cents
3 shadow price for private
extractions would be impossible to implement, both because of its technical and
administrative unfeasibility and the daunting prospect of social opposition from farmers.
These more degraded areas therefore require other Directive instruments, such as
controlling aquifer overdraft by reducing concessions, and enforcing ambient quality
standards and pollution emissions limits.
All this appears to suggest that the Water Framework Directive would be difficult to
implement in Mediterranean countries. The situation can be summed up as follows: a
water pricing policy could be technically (but not politically ) feasible at least in collective
irrigation systems managed by the basin water authorities, but measures to control
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