Notes Issue6 Web
Notes Issue6 Web
Notes Issue6 Web
CONJUNCTIVE USE WITH POOR-QUALITY WATER. Source: Olufemi Idowu and Simon Lorentz, University
Difficulties and costs involved in disposing of wastewater of Kwa Zulu Natal, with inputs from IWMI, Africa.
often present new opportunities for conjunctive use.
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CONJUNCTIVE MANAGEMENT OPPORTUNITIES IN Policy and Institutional Issues
TOWNS. Rapid urbanization in many parts of the world have
created new threats for periurban agriculture. However, con- CONJUNCTIVE MANAGEMENT REQUIRES A BASIN
junctive management of rainfall, surface water, and ground- PERSPECTIVE. Where practiced, conjunctive management is
water creates new opportunities to meet these threats. often confined to the irrigation-system level. Overall gains
from conjunctive use can be enhanced by managing
CONJUNCTIVE USE WITH SALINE GROUNDWATER. resources at the riverbasin level, but this cannot be done until
In regions with primary salinity, conjunctive use of surface the river basin becomes part of the water and land manage-
and groundwater presents unique challenges and opportuni- ment unit.
ties. In such places the objective of conjunctive management
is to maintain both water and salt balances. In this situation, REFORM OF WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT
system managers require great control and precision in canal INSTITUTIONS. A major obstacle to conjunctive manage-
water deliveries to different parts of the command to main- ment is the fragmented structure of governmental institu-
tain an optimal ratio of fresh and saline water for irrigation tions entrusted with various water management roles.
(Murray Rust and Vander Velde 1992). In many systems, it Typically, the main system is managed by irrigation depart-
makes sense to divide the command areas into surface water ments, groundwater by groundwater departments, and
irrigation zones and groundwater irrigation zones, depend- energy supply for groundwater pumping by an electricity util-
ing on the aquifer characteristics and water quality parame- ity. Seldom is there any coordination among these line
ters. In others, providing recharge structures within a surface departments. These roles must be coordinated if conjunctive
system is often a useful component of a rehabilitation and water management is to succeed.
modernization package. It is a risky business and requires a
sound conceptual model of the fate of the salts mobilized, if MONITORING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS. Improving
it is not to cause more problems than it solves. monitoring of groundwater behavior and use patterns in the
conjunctive management domain is a priority. Most develop-
ing countries have poor monitoring infrastructure. This pre-
Potential Benefits of Reform cludes spatially coordinated use of groundwater and surface
water that is critical in a saline environment. Geographic
Conjunctive water management strategies help reduce evap- databases with data on cropping patterns, evapotranspira-
oration losses from reservoirs, for their storage can be drawn tion, groundwater levels, and canal alignments would be a
down more quickly if groundwater can be relied on to meet valuable aid to understanding where canals contribute most
water needs later in the year. Conjunctive management can seepage to groundwater, where water-intensive perennial
also add to drought proofing. Surface water storage varies crops are grown, where soil salinity is inherent or due to
far more than groundwater storage in response to interyear waterlogging, where soil salinity could be controlled by leach-
variations in precipitation. As a result, groundwater can play ing with irrigation water, and where waterlogging is caused
a powerful drought-mitigating role when surface and by improper surface drainage.
groundwater are managed and used conjunctively. In the sit-
uations identified above, the key benefits of investing in con- PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP. In many surface irrigation
junctive use are the following: systems, public tubewells are used to stop waterlogging and
secondary salinization due to surface irrigation. Experiments
• Enhanced yield of past investments in surface water irriga- with the Salinity Control and Reclamation project tubewells
tion projects through increased irrigated area, improved in Pakistan and the Satjej-Yamuna Canal in northwest India
water productivity, and expanded production, employ- have shown, however, that private tubewells often do the
ment, and incomes same job as well or better. The problem is lack of coordina-
• Improved sustainability of groundwater irrigation in tion in private tubewell development. Since surface systems
regions of intensive groundwater use with inadequate are managed by government departments and tubewells are
availability of runoff for recharge operated by independent farmers, opportunities arise for
• Use of poor-quality water to increase agricultural produc- mutually gainful public-private partnerships with better coor-
tion, employment, and incomes dination and an appropriate policy framework.
• Enhanced long-term environmental sustainability of irrigat-
ed agriculture in salinity dominated environments by REHABILITATION AND HARDWARE IMPROVEMENT.
improving salt balances and sustaining the productivity of Reshaping the hydraulic infrastructure is critical where ground-
irrigated agriculture water levels are shallow, soils are saline but still favorable, soils
are coarse rather than fine, and canal seepage is abundant.
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Remote sensing can be used to identify such areas. Hardware conjunctive management capacities—through improved
improvement should improve control of water levels in main monitoring systems, institutional reform, improved man-
and branch canals; automate flow measurement and control agement practices, and greater incentive compatibility.
Conclusion
in distributaries, minors, and water courses; and upgrade the
distribution network and field channels.
Lessons Learned To optimize conjunctive use of water, the best way forward is
to concentrate on capacity building of irrigation system man-
• Conjunctive use of groundwater and surface water often agers to improve system management and reshape hydraulic
occurs by default. Big opportunities to enhance its gains lie infrastructure of large and small-surface systems. To sustain
in introducing planned conjunctive management through groundwater use in tubewell-irrigated areas, enhancing
coordinated strategies at various levels from the river basin recharge from precipitation and surface water imports is nec-
down. essary. None of these improvements can be made without
• To achieve effective conjunctive management, planned the proper institutional and organizational development,
investments are required in hardware (system moderniza- including investment in the capacities of local governments
tion and improved infrastructure), software (improved to lead on participatory groundwater management and inte-
database), planning and management capacities, and insti- grated water resources management.
tutional reform.
REFERENCES
• Improving main system management is central to better con-
junctive management and water level control is critical for
better main system management. New technologies offer Blomquist, W., T. Heikkila, and E. Schlager. 2001. “Institutions and
big opportunities. For instance, expensive communication Conjunctive Water Management among Three Western States.”
infrastructure can be replaced by low-cost cell phones. Natural Resources Journal 41(3): 653-84.
• Conjunctive management in a poor water quality environ-
Buechler, S., and G. M. Devi. 2003. “The Impact of Water
ment presents more difficult, and often unique, technical Conservation and Reuse on the Household Economy” Proceedings
and management challenges requiring higher investment. of the Eighth International Conference on Water Conservation and
Reuse of Wastewater, Mumbai, September 13-14.
A key challenge is to create strong incentives for conjunctive
Foster, Stephen, Albert Tuinhof, Karin Kemper, Hector Garduno,
management among different stakeholder groups. Typically, and Marcella Nanni. 2002. “Groundwater Management Strategies.”
perverse incentives through faulty pricing of surface irrigation, GWMATE Briefing Note 3. Sustainable Groundwater Management:
electricity for pumping, and investment in groundwater struc- Concepts and Tools series. Online at http://www.worldbank.org/
tures undermine gains from conjunctive water management. gwmate.
Recommendations
IWMI (International Water Management Institute). 2002. “Innovations in
Groundwater Recharge.” IWMI-Tata Water Policy Briefing, No. 1.
Available online at http://www.iwmi.cgiar.org/
• Even where river basin institutions are absent or underde- waterpolicybriefing/files/wpb01.pdf.
veloped, planning of conjunctive management seems best
done within a river basin framework. Murray Rust, H., and E. Vander Velde. 1992. “Conjunctive Use of
Canal and Groundwater in Punjab, Pakistan: Management and
• The biggest new opportunities for improving food security Policy Options.” Advancements in IIMI’s Research 1992. A Selection
and livelihoods arise in densely populated agricultural of papers presentedat the Internal Program Review. Colombo, Sri
regions that rely on intensive use of groundwater in agricul- Lanka: International Irrigation Management Institute.
ture. In such cases, conjunctive management requires a par-
Shah, T. 2003. “Decentralized Water Harvesting and Groundwater
adigm shift. The need and pressures are for augmenting and Recharge: Can These Save Saurashtra and Kutch from Desiccation?”
concentrating groundwater recharge—through recharge IWMI-Tata Water Policy Program, Colombo, Sri Lanka.
structures to increase percolation from rainfall and runoff, as
well as from imported water-in pockets of groundwater- Shah, T, O. P Singh, and A. Mukherjee. 2004. “Groundwater
Irrigation and South Asian Agriculture: Empirical Analyses from a
intensive use.
Large-Scale Survey of India, Pakistan, Nepal Terai, and Bangladesh.”
• Conjunctive management investments should strike a Paper presented at IWMITata Annual Partners’ Meeting, Anand, India,
balance between improving infrastructure and building February 17-19.
This Note was prepared by Tushar Shah, Principal Researcher at the International Water Management Institute and updated by Salah Darghouth and Ariel
Dinar from the Water For Food Team of the World Bank. It is based on Investment Note 4.3 in the larger volume Shaping the Future of Water for
Agriculture: A Sourcebook for Investment in Agricultural Water Management. The Sourcebook documents a range of solutions and good practices from
World Bank and worldwide experience, concentrating on investments in policy and institutional reforms in technology and management to improve water
productivity and farming profitability. You can download a copy of the full report at www.worldbank.org/rural or email ard@worldbank.org.