Irrigation in a broader systems and development context Claudia Ringler & Sehrish Raja International Food Policy Research Institute IWMI Pakistan Office | May 5, 2023 www.cgiar.org Water/Energy/Food/Environment (WEFE) Nexus Challenges in a Climate Crisis 2007-08 food, fuel & fertilizer crisis 2011-12 food, fuel & fertilizer crisis 2021-22 food, fuel & fertilizer crisis -4% -2% 0% 2% 4% 6% 8% 10% 12% 14% 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 G D P g ro w th in L M IC s Fo o d , f u e l& f er ti liz e r p ri ce in d ic e s (2 0 0 0 =1 0 0 ) Source: Headey and Hirvonen (2022) using data from FAO, the World Bank and the IMF. https://ebrary.ifpri.org/utils/getfile/collection/p15738coll2/id/136356/filename/136566.pdf www.cgiar.org Water/Energy/Food/Environment (WEFE) Nexus Challenges in a Climate Crisis Source: NG baseline survey Pakistan. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 RYK Sadiqabad Khanpur Liaquatpur Sh ar e MDD-W Elec =>20hrs Water Sec (never worry) www.cgiar.org Nasdaq Veles California Water Index (US$/AF) 0451-Q23_NQH2O-Graph_II-1.jpg (959×278) (nasdaq.com) From a historic cost of US$0.16 per cubic meter to US$1.0 recently with several poor communities in California having to spend millions of US$ on the open market to keep their taps running https://www.nasdaq.com/sites/acquia.prod/files/2023/03/10/0451-Q23_NQH2O-Graph_II-1.jpg www.cgiar.org Domestic-irrigation competition in Arizona (using groundwater) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11395273/Water- drying-Arizona-foreign-owned-megafarms-sucking-crops.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/05/us/arizona- water-foreign-owned-farms-climate www.cgiar.org Water trades in the Western US 2015-2022: Water flows to urban areas: Source: https://www.nasdaq.com/solutions/nasdaq-veles-water-index https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/01/us/california-water-cost- profiteering-climate www.cgiar.org Irrigation-quo vadis? ✓ Irrigation does still produce to 40% of food on around 20% of land ✓ We would need about 32 mha of “new lands” by 2050 if we do not invest in new irrigation (considering CC) ✓ Irrigation is a climate resilience strategy--Many NDCs proposed irrigation expansion as an adaptation strategy, and some also suggested it for mitigation (f.ex. solar irrigation) ✓ Past: Focus on large, surface systems for food security crops (rice), and some cash crops (cotton/sugarcane), some medium- and smaller- scale surface systems, often managed by groups of farmers, most investment in Asia ✓ Last three decades (due to technological change): Considerable advances in farmer-financed individual, small-scale or farmer-led, mostly groundwater-irrigation →System size is a determining factor! www.cgiar.org Irrigated crops, global Source: IFPRI (2020) www.cgiar.org Irrigated crops, Pakistan 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 Wheat Rice Sugarcane Cotton Fruits Pulses Maize Oilseed crops Vegetables Roots and Tubers Millet Sorghum C ro p w a te r co n su m p ti o n ( B C M ) Precip on rainfed land Precip on Irrig land Irrigation Source: IFPRI (2020) www.cgiar.org Is irrigation fit-for-purpose? • What fits the situation and fits the purpose? Irrigation will need to expand in places where: • water resources are accessible • food insecurity levels are critical and • climate extremes render rainfed systems increasingly infeasible • To be fit-for-purpose, irrigation systems must use water more efficiently to optimize the roles of: • improve food security and nutrition • Improve equity • enhance income and reduce poverty, and • ensure climate resilience and environmental sustainability www.cgiar.org Threats to vulnerability of surface irrigation (systems in Africa) McCarthy et al. (2023) www.cgiar.org Findings: Larger surface systems (Asia/Africa) • Largely built for food-security crops, thus unrealistic to recover investment cost • Economies of scale through lower design cost, and typically better quality of design • Often less dependent on area rainfall than smaller systems, providing greater resilience to weather extremes • Difficult to adapt to changing conditions, thus limited ‘fit-for- purpose’ • Challenging to create collective action for management and maintenance www.cgiar.org Findings: Individual groundwater irrigation (Africa/Asia) • More naturally ‘fit-for-purpose’ if initial investment cost can be overcome • Limited economies of scale, apart from service provision • Non-motorized extraction [still very common in SSA] provides limited climate resilience, profitability and production growth • Often located in closer proximity to input and output markets that increase incentives for farmers to make a profit • Informal groundwater markets increase farmer access • Lack of groundwater institutions is a major challenge and can eliminate ‘fit-for-purpose’ in the medium to longer term www.cgiar.org Recommendations: Large-scale systems • Abandon overly optimistic expectations of irrigator profitability as this sets up systems for failure as costs of expensive investments cannot be recovered • More flexibility for farmers to adjust cropping patterns to today’s more rapidly changing food prices, and agricultural input costs • Include decentralized management at canal level • In water-scarce systems: include low-cost, precision water application systems to address increased competition for limited water resources • Actively support multiple uses of irrigation water (such as livestock watering, fisheries, domestic uses and energy generation) • Ensure more timely delivery of water supplies www.cgiar.org Recommendations-GW-fed small-scale systems • Initial investment costs and growing costs of digging deeper can price smaller farmers out of irrigation development opportunities • Need to locate “weather-independent” groundwater resources (i.e. with renewable recharge, supporting the entire production season) • Need regulatory and management frameworks that enable smallholders to benefit from irrigation beyond the near term • Continued need to invest in technological change to further lower cost and improves access • Support to accessing technologies needs to improve; requiring scale economies in equipment and other services www.cgiar.org Irrigation – nutrition linkages (SSA) Bryan et al. 2019 www.cgiar.org Irrigation – nutrition linkages (Ethiopia) Seasons covered: Feb-Apr: Irrigation and fasting season Jul-Aug: Lean season Oct-Nov: Harvest seas Women in irrigating households also have higher consumption of Vit-C and Calcium between Feb-April and higher consumption of iron during the main harvest season (Oct-Nov). Also, children in irrigating households in Ethiopia higher weight for height scores than that of children in non-irrigating households (WHZ +0.87 SD) Baye et al. (2021); Mekonnen et al. (2022) www.cgiar.org Does irrigation improve nutrition through the WASH pathway? • The irrigation-WASH pathway has potential to improve nutrition (less evidence) • Emerging results show that households with irrigation are also more likely to have sufficient domestic water and improved sanitation facilities • Multiple use systems are more feasible when groundwater is the irrigation source • Hygiene practices are not associated with irrigation but rather the source of domestic water (van Biljon et al. under review) www.cgiar.org HWISE: Frequency of not washing hands when necessary (women) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Liaqatpur Sadiq Abad RYK Khanpur P e rc e n t Never Rarely Sometimes Often Always www.cgiar.org HWISE: Frequency of not washing hands when necessary (men) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Liaqatpur Sadiq Abad RYK Khanpur Pe rc e n t Never Rarely Sometimes Often Always www.cgiar.org Why is small-scale irrigation not working for women?  There is a gender gap in the adoption and use of irrigation technologies  Women do not have equal opportunity to adopt and benefit from irrigation technology as men do www.cgiar.org Technology design, dissemination, adoption, and use www.cgiar.org Risks linked to a focus on women 1. Women do not necessarily have access to and control over the profits of irrigated production 2. Transferring technologies to women does not guarantee their control 3. Small-scale irrigation technologies can increase women’s time burden 4. More powerful actors can appropriate land, income streams, or water from women after making irrigation investments www.cgiar.org SSI – gender linkages (SSA)  Outcomes for women depend on the technology, intervention design, social-environmental context, etc. (Bryan and Lefore 2021)  In order for irrigation to directly benefit women, constraints related to women’s access to resources and lack of agency need to be overcome (Theis et al. 2018)  When women are empowered to participate in SSI this may lead to other well-being outcomes, e.g. nutrition https://ebrary.ifpri.org/utils/getfile/collection/p15738coll2/id/134425/filename/134635.pdf https://ebrary.ifpri.org/utils/getfile/collection/p15738coll2/id/134425/filename/134635.pdf https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10460-018-9862-8 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10460-018-9862-8 www.cgiar.org RYK district-Irrigation pumps & women’s participation For Women: Did you participate in irrigation in the last 12 months? Irrigation pumps in use (70% of HHs reported ownership): Large number of solar pumps 67.4 15.7 10.7 5.1 0.6 0.4 0.1 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 Diesel Electric Solar No answer Manual Other Wind 14% of 4% have substantial inputs into irrigation decisions 12 (out of ~1000 women) own an irrigation pump www.cgiar.org How to tame GW extraction: bundle interventions ➢ Upper Republican Natural Resources District (URNRD) in Nebraska: moratorium on drilling new wells, a well permitting system, land occupation taxes, a cap on groundwater pumping, formal and informal water markets, stream augmentation projects, and subsidized soil moisture probes to provide incentives ➢ Kansas water bill: Districts need to identify areas where the aquifer has fewer than 50 years of usable lifetime remaining by 2024. Plans on how water use will be cut finalized by 2026. Otherwise, state steps in to manage. Huge investment in MAR and advanced irrigation to sweeten the pie. ➢ LMICs examples: banning new wells, metering wells, capping withdrawals, and incentives for growing less water-intensive crops, compensation for land fallowing, buyback of wells or water marketing mechanisms Kansas survey References Baye, K., D. Mekonnen, J. Choufani, S. Yimam, E. Bryan, J.K. Griffith and C. Ringler. 2022. Seasonal variation in maternal dietary diversity is reduced by small-scale irrigation practices: a longitudinal study. Maternal and Child Nutrition. 18:e13297 Bryan, E., C. Chase, and M. Schulte. 2019. Nutrition-sensitive irrigation and water management. Washington, DC: World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/32309 Mekonnen, D., J. Choufani, E. Bryan, B. Haile and C. Ringler. 2022. Irrigation improves weight-for- height z-scores of children under five, and women’s and household dietary diversity scores in Ethiopia and Tanzania. Maternal and Child Nutrition. McCarthy, N., C. Ringler, M.U. Agbonlahor, A.B. Pandya, B. Iyob and N. Perez. 2023. Is irrigation fit for purpose? A review of the relationships between scheme size and performance of irrigation systems. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2178. Washington, DC: IFPRI. https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.13665 SRL144 Understanding the Perceptions of Producers Regarding the Ogallala Aquifer Use: A Survey Report (ksu.edu) As Ogallala Aquifer empties, Kansas weighs irrigation limits | The Wichita Eagle https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mcn.13297 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mcn.13395 https://www.ifpri.org/publication/irrigation-fit-purpose-review-relationships-between-scheme-size-and-performance https://www.ifpri.org/publication/irrigation-fit-purpose-review-relationships-between-scheme-size-and-performance https://www.ifpri.org/publication/irrigation-fit-purpose-review-relationships-between-scheme-size-and-performance https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.13665 https://bookstore.ksre.ksu.edu/pubs/SRL144.pdf https://bookstore.ksre.ksu.edu/pubs/SRL144.pdf https://www.kansas.com/news/state/article274099780.html Slide 1: Irrigation in a broader systems and development context Claudia Ringler & Sehrish Raja International Food Policy Research Institute Slide 2: Water/Energy/Food/Environment (WEFE) Nexus Challenges in a Climate Crisis Slide 3: Water/Energy/Food/Environment (WEFE) Nexus Challenges in a Climate Crisis Slide 4: Nasdaq Veles California Water Index (US$/AF) Slide 5: Domestic-irrigation competition in Arizona (using groundwater) Slide 6: Water trades in the Western US 2015-2022: Water flows to urban areas: Slide 7: Irrigation-quo vadis? Slide 8: Irrigated crops, global Slide 9: Irrigated crops, Pakistan Slide 10: Is irrigation fit-for-purpose? Slide 11: Threats to vulnerability of surface irrigation (systems in Africa) Slide 12: Findings: Larger surface systems (Asia/Africa) Slide 13: Findings: Individual groundwater irrigation (Africa/Asia) Slide 14: Recommendations: Large-scale systems Slide 15: Recommendations-GW-fed small-scale systems Slide 16: Irrigation – nutrition linkages (SSA) Slide 17: Irrigation – nutrition linkages (Ethiopia) Slide 18 Slide 19 Slide 20 Slide 21: Why is small-scale irrigation not working for women? Slide 22 Slide 23 Slide 24: SSI – gender linkages (SSA) Slide 25 Slide 26 Slide 27: References