1. Irrigation in a broader
systems and development
context
Claudia Ringler & Sehrish Raja
International Food Policy Research Institute
IWMI Pakistan Office | May 5, 2023

2. 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
GDP
growth
in
LMICs
Food,
fuel
&
fertilizer
price
indices
(2000=100)
Source: Headey and Hirvonen (2022) using data from FAO, the World Bank and the IMF.

3. 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
Share
MDD-W Elec =>20hrs Water Sec (never worry)

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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!

8. www.cgiar.org
Irrigated crops, global
Source: IFPRI (2020)

9. 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
Crop
water
consumption
(BCM)
Precip on rainfed land
Precip on Irrig land
Irrigation
Source: IFPRI (2020)

10. 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

11. www.cgiar.org
Threats to vulnerability of surface
irrigation (systems in Africa)
McCarthy et al. (2023)

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. www.cgiar.org
Irrigation – nutrition linkages (SSA)
Bryan et al. 2019

17. 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)

18. 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)

19. 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
Percent
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Always

20. 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
Percent
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Always

21. 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

22. www.cgiar.org
Technology design, dissemination,
adoption, and use

23. 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

24. 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

25. 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

26. 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

27. 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