Development Aspects Impressum Editors

Water demand management in agriculture

Water demand management (WDM) can be defined as “a set of technical, politi- cal, institutional, economic, training, awareness-raising and communication tools intended to encourage better use of existing supply before considering increasing supply” (Plan Bleu, 2010, p. 4, emphasis added). In its broad definition, WDM policies encompass any intervention aimed at increasing the efficiency of available supplies, while considering the mobilization of additional water resources as the ul- tima ratio. This study suggests that WDM is the most appropriate strategy to cope with supply–demand induced imbalances, and that the progressive and consistent implementation of such measures can provide solid ground for the transition to green water economies. A Green Economy is an economy that results in enhanced human well-being by respecting the carrying capacity of the environment. This goal can be reached by decoupling economic growth from natural resource overex- ploitation. Applied to water, this translates into the “sustainable intensification” of agricultural production. Consistently with this conceptualization of green econo- mies, we argue that there is a large unexploited potential lying in the development of WDM policies aimed at achieving more efficiency in water use – through both market-based mechanisms and enhanced agricultural practices. Water demand management has also been recognized, by the Mediterranean Commission on Sustainable Development in 1997, as “the route for achieving the most significant progress in Mediterranean water policies” (Plan Bleu, 2009, p. 4), “given its po- tential for improving efficiency” (Plan Bleu, 2008, p. 2). The integration of water management and demand policies has also been recognized as a priority of the 2005 Mediterranean Strategy for Sustainable Development’s framework, aiming at i) achieving “more value per drop” and ii) stabilizing demand by limiting water losses and overexploitation (Plan Bleu, 2008).

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