Managing Scarce Water Resources in Agriculture in West Asia and North Africa - Restorative Redevelopment of Devastated Ecocultural Landscapes - page 446

considerations. The dilemma is when the country suffers acute water scarcity and
cannot afford virtual water.
d emand m anagement , W ater P riCing
Water demand management in agriculture is the management of water through influ-
encing consumer behavior by introducing incentives to use water more efficiently.
This will involve many elements such as legislative measures, including pricing
mechanism and financial incentive as well as penalties. It also involves direct techni-
cal measures to control and ration water by flow regulating devices. However, effec-
tive public awareness programs should come at the top of the action list to arrive
at fruitful management for water demand. It requires that all users recognize and
accept that water supplied to them has a value that varies depending on the purpose
of its use. Farmers should understand that the opportunity cost of this water is very
high and what they are paying for it is a small fraction of its real value. Media and
extension services can play a role in achieving this awareness. Water pricing is dif-
ficult to implement in most WANA countries. Reasons include economic but also
cultural and sociopolitical one. Water is seen as a gift from God to humankind and
should be accessible to all. If a pricing mechanism is to be implemented, care must
be taken in considering the limited capacity of the resource-poor farmers in addition
to other constraints. Effective alternatives to water pricing as a means of demand
management is yet to be developed in WANA.
INCREASING AGRICULTURAL WATER PRODUCTIVITY
As agricultural water is declining in most of WANA countries and the need for
food in increasing, the region is facing the challenge of producing “more food
with less water.” The only way to achieve this is by increasing the production and/
or return per unit of available water, usually termed as “water use efficiency” or
“water productivity.” The understanding of how water is acquired, used, and man-
aged is the key to the solution. This is a cross-discipline solution, which certainly
requires the concerted action of all players: farmers, water managers, hydrolo-
gists, agronomists, water resources specialists, engineers, socioeconomists, and
policy makers.
Until recently, the focus of water management in agriculture was to maximize
marketable yield per unit area of land. With the growing crises of water scarcity,
malnutrition, and water-driven ecosystem degradation, the focus had to be shifted
towards maximizing return per unit of water used. The drive behind this shift is
more obvious in the dry regions of the world, because water, not land, is the most
limiting constraint to increased food production and sustainability of the system. In
the humid regions, this shift is somewhat controversial, because water is not nec-
essarily the most limiting constraint. In the humid industrialized countries, other
water-related issues, such as pollution, sanitation, and ecosystem degradation, have
higher priority.