Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
finding the effective irrigation demand if water is not subsidised, because farmers will
have to face high desalination costs. Farmers are extracting water from aquifers at
pumping costs considerably below those of desalination, and they will avoid buying
desalinated water. Only strict enforcement of an aquifer overdraft ban by the water
authority would force farmers to buy desalinated water. This is a daunting challenge for
the water authority, and the risk of the AGUA project is that public funds are invested in
desalination plants, but then the irrigation demand does not materialise.
The second case examined, compares several measures to abate agricultural nonpoint
pollution. Selecting the right policy measures requires knowledge on the underlying
biophysical processes involved in pollution, and the associated damage costs to fluvial
ecosystems. Ranking nitrogen control instruments by their cost efficiency shows that a
fertiliser standard is a good abatement measure, in accordance with previous literature. In
contrast, raising water prices is very inefficient and this finding questions the reliance of
the Water Framework Directive on water pricing as a pollution control instrument. 11
One issue deserving special attention is the acute lack of knowledge that exists in
Mediterranean (and non-Mediterranean) European countries regarding aquifer dynamics,
pollution loads in surface and subsurface waters, soils, pollutants transport and fate
processes, ambient pollution, and economic valuation of damage costs to aquatic
ecosystems. This lack of knowledge precludes the design of reasonable policy measures
to solve water quantity and quality problems in Mediterranean countries. The
consequence is that the popular water pricing measures suited to reduce industrial and
urban demand in northern and central European countries, would be implemented for
irrigation in Mediterranean countries instead of the measures that are really needed.
The empirical findings presented here indicate that water pricing does not appear to
be a good measure for solving water quantity and quality problems. Nevertheless, some
minimum price of water is required to make farmers understand that water is not a free
good. The Spanish example shows water pricing to be ineffective not only as a means to
reduce water demand in coastal areas with high-profit crops and severe pollution
problems, but also as a pollution abatement instrument in inland areas with low profit
crops. The introduction of water rights and markets appears more reasonable than trying
to allocate water through water pricing. However, the development of water markets is
not easy, since institutional reforms require enormous and persistent efforts.
Further measures to curb demand and abate pollution need to be implemented, such
as re-allocating water from off-stream use by agricultural, urban and industrial users to
environmental uses both in aquifers and streams, and also in the coastal wetlands.
Pollution control instruments such as ambient quality standards and pollution emission
limits at the source are also needed. Water pricing in irrigation can not fulfil these water
conservation targets, and therefore water pricing advocated by some government advisors
and environmentalists starts to look like “armchair economics”.
11.
Mema (2006) has studied several abatement measures to control salinity pollution from the
400 000 ha of irrigation in the mid Ebro Valley in Spain, which amounts to 1 million metric tons
(not including gypsum). Because salinity pollution is driven by percolation, the efficiency of
measures is linked to reductions in water use. Standards or taxes on water use are good measures
to abate salinity, and water pricing is more cost efficient than in the case of nutrient pollution
abatement.
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