Water Quantity and Quality Issues in Mediterranean Agriculture - Water and Agriculture: Sustainability, Markets and Policies - page 63

aquifers are much more difficult to implement. Policy-makers in countries with
significant irrigated agriculture such as Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece do not have the
necessary information on aquifer recharge and pumping by farmers, pollution emissions
from activities using both surface or subsurface water, pollution transport and fate
processes, ambient pollution, or damage costs to ecosystems. 4 Without such an
information base, it is impossible to design reasonable control mechanisms to prevent
water resources overdraft and to abate nonpoint pollution. As a consequence, water
pricing measures suited to reduce industrial and urban demand, which are paramount in
northern and central European countries, would also be implemented for irrigation in
Mediterranean countries instead of the measures that are really needed. 5
Water pricing is questioned as an instrument to curb irrigation demand by Cornish
and Perry (2003) and Bosworth et al. (2002), who use impelling evidence from the
literature and from case studies. In developing countries, water charges do not usually
cover operation and maintenance costs, and capital costs are recovered only in private
schemes based on aquifer pumping. In developed countries, charges for irrigation water
also fall short of capital costs, because farmers would be unable to afford them. 6 Cornish
and Perry (2003) indicate that introducing water rights and markets is more reasonable
than trying to allocate demand through water pricing. They also recognise that
introducing water markets is not an easy task, because the necessary institutional reforms
require enormous and persistent efforts. 7

4.

Northern and central European countries confront the same information problems. In the UK, for
example, the DEFRA is hampered in its attempt to estimate the cost efficiency of measures to
abate nonpoint pollution, by a lack of information on pollution loads, transport and fate
processes leading to ambient pollution, and economic valuation of damages to ecosystems.

5. In Spain, the Ministry of Environment is trying to introduce a water tax on irrigation, but at the

same time there is no work being done to generate the information base needed for subsurface
and surface water conservation, involving extractions, emission and ambient loads, and damages
to ecosystems. The information problem is severe, and it could not be solved before the 2009
deadline of the WFD Program of Measures, to be implemented by 2012. In Italy, information on
water resources is also far from satisfactory. The likely outcome could be a less than poor
implementation of the Water Framework Directive, mirroring the outcome of the Nitrates
Directive in most European countries.

6. As indicated by the fact that last century the federal US government spent 21.8 billion dollars on

133 water projects in western states, assigning 7.1 billion dollars to be paid by irrigation users,
who have in fact repaid less than 1 billion dollars (Wahl, 1989; Wilson, 1997). Cost recovery in
large collective systems in Spain, Italy, France, Greece and Portugal barely covers operation and
maintenance costs, and capital costs are only recovered in private aquifer schemes (Massarutto,
2003).

7. An example of successful implementation of water markets is the Murray-Darling basin in

Australia, accounting for 90 per cent of irrigation demand in the country. Before the Water
Reform and the National Water Initiative policies of the mid nineties, there was practically no
control on water extractions by water authorities in Australia. Irrigation demand climbed from
11.000 to 18.000 hm 3 between 1984 and 1994, and forced the water policy measures. The
Australian case is quite interesting, because they have chosen to implement control through
water rights and water markets, and also because they are now in the process of implementing
tradable pollution permits to abate salinity.