Menu
I&D sector plays a vital role in food supply and in the world economy. However, after almost 50 years of rapid growth, it is confronted with three deep-seated problems:
- Water use efficiency: Irrigation uses 70 to 80 per cent of the world’s fresh water, but efficiency is low. As water scarcity grows, the water available to irrigation will be constrained further. Competition between water uses is highest in the dry seasons, when plants usually need the most water and water is usually most scarce.
- Fiscal burden: Investments to develop I&D sector have been based on massive public funding, often justified on the basis of food security. However, new development paradigms place more emphasis on private responsibility and restrict the role of government. The public treasury has often also paid costs of operation and maintenance (O&M) for publicly managed schemes, and this has frequently led to a vicious circle of underfunding, poor service delivery, and declining productivity.
- Asset management and maintenance: Costly I&D investments are deteriorating all over the world. Some of them are in such bad shape that they are useless for production purposes. Poor maintenance is attributed to lack of funding and weak management all along the line.
Water use efficiency can be addressed by improvements in I&D management and practices. Switching from surface to localized irrigation can result in 20 to 30 per cent water saving, for example, and growing high-value-added crops can improve economic efficiency. But no easy solutions have been found for the fiscal burdens and asset management and maintenance. Even after decades of reflection and study, finding the investment and institutional models that can break the vicious circle driven by tight public funds and neglected asset management and maintenance is still a challenge.
Participatory irrigation management and Public Private Partnership are possible solutions for managing the abovementioned constraints.
Related items you may like
Irrigation
Sources of Irrigation
Application of Irrigation water
Purpose of Irrigation
Instruments and implements of Irrigation
Irrigation Management
Economics of Irrigation System +
I&D System Types +
I&D Investment Functions +
I&D Management Issues +
Participatory I&D Management +
Equity in Irrigation +
Irrigation Services +
Irrigation and environment
Capacity Development
Drainage
- River basin management, Watershed management, or River management
- Groundwater management
- Watershed management
- Integrated Water Resources Management
- Catchment management
- Leasing management
- Public service management
- Flood management
- Nonstructural measures of flood management
- Structural measures of flood management
- Economic effectiveness of a flood management system
- Management account of farm unit
- Efficiency of the resource management
- Soil management
- Watershed management
- Pond management
- Pasture management
- Resource management
- Hazardous waste management
- Water quality management
- Waste management
- Integrated pest control, Integrated pest management(IPM)
- Land management
- Disaster risk management
- Risk management capacity
- Emergency management
- Floodplain management
- Flood management
- Flood risk management
- Systems analysis, Operational analysis, System engineering, Mathematical modeling, Management science
- Management model
- Management space
- Demand management
- Integrated river basin management
- Water management
- Cost Management
- Acceptance Management
- Aid coordination and aid management
- Catchment management
- Change Management
- Communications Management
- Issue Management
- Quality Management
- Tender Management
- Farmer`s family labour income, Farmer`s labour return, or Management return
- Risk Management
