Browsing by Author "Scott, Christopher"

Now showing 1 - 11 of 11

Biophysical and Institutional Factors in Watershed Management
(2004) Sakthivadivel, R.; Bhattacharya, Kamal; Scott, Christopher
"Watershed development and management are actively promoted by governments and non-governmental organizations alike in India and other water-scarce developing countries as a means of providing rural livelihoods and as a response to natural resource degradation. Finding the right balance between technical, managerial, and institutional thrusts of watershed projects in order to 'deliver the goods' in a sustainable manner, remains a major challenge. This paper reports on four such pilot projects, implemented in watersheds in India's tribal (adivasi) belt by Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and associated partners, with analytical support for data collection and interpretation, together with recommendations by IWMI."
Closing of the Krishna Basin: Irrigation, Streamflow Depletion and Macroscale Hydrology
(2007) Biggs, Trent W.; Gaur, Anju; Scott, Christopher; Thenkabail, Prasad; Gangadhara Rao, Parthasaradhi; Gumma, Murali Krishna; Acharya, Sreedhar; Turral, Hugh
"Discharge from the Krishna River into the ocean decreased by 75 percent from 1960-2005, and was zero during a recent multi-year drought. This paper describes the physical geography and hydrology of the Krishna Basin, including runoff production and a basic water account based on hydronomic zones. More than 50 percent of the basin's irrigated area is groundwater irrigation, which is not currently included in inter-state allocation rules. Future water allocation will require inclusion of the interactions among all irrigated areas, including those irrigated by groundwater and surface water."
Collective Action for Water Harvesting Irrigation in the Lerma-Chapala Basin, Mexico
(2001) Scott, Christopher; Silva-Ochoa, Paula
"Water and watersheds are difficult to separate for management purposes. Providing irrigation as a supplement to rainfall for crop production requires considerable collective action at the watershed level to mobilize labor and other resources, as well as to make decisions and implement the distribution of benefits. Small- scale water harvesting irrigation systems in Mexico have endured for centuries. They now face considerable challenges with changes in the ejido property rights over land and water, the growing importance of alternative sources of livelihoods, and increasing scarcity and competition for water within the river basins. Two case studies of water harvesting irrigation systems in the Lerma-Chapala Basin illustrate the response of communities to these challenges. In the first community, earlier collective action to build the irrigation reservoir provided a platform to address catchment resource use. Water here was less scarce than in the second community, allowing for good crop productivity through sufficient irrigation. Water scarcity in the second community increases crop risk; expected sorghum yields during the period of field study did not justify harvesting costs and the crop was used as stover. Members of the second community increased their dependence on off- farm income sources, but still responded collectively to external forces claiming the water."
The Command Area Development Programme in India: A Policy Perspective
(1992) Sivamohan, M. V. K.; Scott, Christopher
"This paper traces the evolution of the Command Area Development Programme in India in the context of planned development. It examines processes both in the evolution of new policies, and their revision over time. The paper first summarises the development context in India, and the way in which early emphasis on on-farm development (OFD) resulted from the growing gap between the irrigation potential created in the postindependence boom in irrigation infrastructure, and the irrigation potential actually utilised. The unreliability of main system management, however, was seen to obviate initiatives below the outlet, and subsequent efforts were made to integrate the agriculture and irrigation departments in the CAD programme. The paper also examines how the CAD programmes themselves underwent policy revision on priorities and responsible agencies that reflected difficulties in their implementation and improved utilisation of irrigation potential. However, this paper suggests that the gap between potential and utilisation results as much from inherent water scarcity as from inefficient water use and inadequate management. It is argued that the continuing impasse can only be remedied through articulation of a comprehensive strategy of development which includes disparate fields previously thought to be unrelated to irrigated agriculture."
Energy-Irrigation Nexus in South Asia: Improving Groundwater Conservation and Power Sector Viability
(2003) Shah, Tushaar; Scott, Christopher; Kishore, Avinash; Sharma, Abhishek
"The report suggests that the inability to manage groundwater and energy economies as a nexus is a great opportunity missed in moving towards sustainable groundwater management. In South Asia, there seems to be no practical means for the direct management of groundwater. Laws are unlikely to check the chaotic race to extract groundwater because of the logistical problems of regulating a large number of small, dispersed users. Water pricing and property-right reforms also will not work for the same reasons. Appropriate policies for the supply and pricing of power offer a powerful toolkit for the indirect management of both groundwater and energy use."
Modeling Water Resources Management at the Basin Level: Review and Future Directions
(1999) McKinney, Daene C.; Cai, Ximing; Rosegrant, Mark; Ringler, Claudia; Scott, Christopher
"The world is facing severe and growing challenges in maintaining water quality and meeting the rapidly growing demand for water resources. New sources of water are increasingly expensive to exploit, limiting the potential for expansion of new water supplies. Water used for irrigation, the largest use of water in most developing countries, will likely have to be diverted to meet the needs of urban areas and industry whilst remaining a prime engine of agricultural growth."
One Swallow Does Not Make a Summer: Siloes, Trade-Offs and Synergies in the Water-Energy-Food Nexus
(2019) Kurian, Mathew; Scott, Christopher; Reddy, V. Ratna; Alabaster, Graham; Nardocci, Adelaide; Portney, Kent; Boer, Rizaldi; Hannibal, Bryce
"Synergies are required to ensure coordination between UN agencies (on norms and indicators), Member States (on coherence of policy instruments) and consumers (on perceptions of safety and affordability of services) to advance the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 6.3 which focusses on reuse of wastewater. In this paper we employ theoretical insights derived from an agent-based modeling approach to undertake a critical examination of the recent UN-WATER directive on SDG target 6.3 and advocate for an improved understanding of factors that determine whether and how effective wastewater reuse will be possible while accommodating for regional variation and institutional change. We demonstrate that by applying the Nexus approach it is feasible to overcome siloes by forging concepts of trade-offs and synergies to draw out coupled perspectives of bio-physical and institutional dimensions of water-energy-food interactions. By employing this proposition, the paper advocates for place-based observatories as a mechanism that can support valorization of data and methodological assumptions as a precursor to robust monitoring of the SDG's. The systematic use of literature reviews and expert opinion to develop and pilot-test composite indices via place-based observatories raises the prospect of a data light approach to monitoring SDGs; specifically, what are the merits of relying on extensive survey data compared to composite indices that while being amenable to supporting benchmarking and scenario analysis can provide the insight needed to inform decision-making and robust monitoring of global goals?"
The Possibilities for Dryland Crop Yield Improvement in India's Semi-arid Regions-Observations from the Field
(2006) Bouma, Jetske A.; Scott, Christopher
"This paper attempts to assess the impact of large-scale investments in soil and water conservation on dryland crop yields in three semi-arid watersheds in India. Investments in soil and water conservation are supposed to contribute to dryland crop yield improvement by rehabilitating the productive capacity of the land. On the basis of farmers’ interviews, group meetings and field visits, we explore the main constraints for dryland crop yield improvement. We find that investments in soil and water conservation do not have a significant impact on dryland yields, at least not under prolonged conditions of drought. Besides, access to irrigation as a result of investments in water storage and conservation tends to lead towards more water-intensive crops instead of to supplemental irrigation to improve dryland yields. Also, we find that low production potential might not be the biggest constraint: Low economic returns, changing household diets, failing markets and poverty seem to constrain dryland crop yields even more."
Spatial Variation in Water Supply and Demand across River Basins of India
(2005) Amarasinghe, Upali A.; Sharma, Bharat R.; Aloysius, Noel; Scott, Christopher; Christopher, Vladimir; de Fraiture, Charlotte
"India shows large regional differences in per-capita water supply and demand. However, a comprehensive assessment of water accounting across river basins has not been available previously. Attempts to describe the water situation in India at a national level are often misleading due to large spatial diversity in the water situation. This report uses data disaggregated at the river basin level, to assess the water supply and demand across the river basins of India, classify river basins according to water scarcities and crop production surpluses or deficits, and discuss issues that are important for future water supply and demand projections. Several factors influence Indiaâ??s future water supply and demand. These include spatial variation and future growth of the population, urbanization and income, and associated changes in dietary preferences, on the crop-consumption side; growth in crop yield, cropping intensity and groundwater use, and contribution to production from rain-fed agriculture, on the crop-production side; and future growth in other factors such as domestic, industrial and environmental water demand, and internal and international trade. These factors need to be carefully assessed in future water supply and demand projections. India's land area can be divided into 19 major river basins. The per-capita water resource availability as well as per-capita water withdrawals of these basins varies largely. Irrigation is by far the largest user of water in all the basins. The basins of the westerly flowing rivers are classified as physically water-scarce and food-dependent. The second group of basins, the Indus and Pennar river basins are classified as physically water-scarce, but these basins have significant food surpluses. The water-scarcity problems of the third group of 11 river basins are mixed, but almost all have significant deficits in crop production. The fourth and fifth groups of river basins are classified as 'non-water-scarce and food-sufficient' and 'non-water-scarce and food-surplus,' respectively."
Urban Wastewater and Agricultural Reuse Challenges in India
(2013) Amerasinghe, Priyanie H.; Bhardwaj, Rajendra Mohan; Scott, Christopher; Jella, Kiran; Marshall, Fiona
"Urban wastewater management has become a challenge in India as infrastructural development and regulations have not kept pace with population growth and urbanization. Annually, more and more people are moving into cities, and the figures are expected to reach about 600 million by 2030 making India more peri-urban than rural. Already, there is enormous pressure on planners to provide utility services, and water supply is a priority, especially where peri-urban water is exported formally or informally to fulfill city requirements. At the same time, the urban return flow (wastewater) also increases, which is usually about 70-80% of the water supply. This study attempted to analyze the current status of wastewater generation, its uses and livelihood benefits especially in agriculture, based on national data and case studies from Ahmedabad, New Delhi, Hyderabad, Kanpur and Kolkata."
Urban-Wastewater Reuse for Crop Production in the Water-Short Guanajuato River Basin, Mexico
(2000) Scott, Christopher; Zaraza, Antonio; Levine, Gilbert
"From a river-basin perspective, wastewater irrigation is an important form of water and nutrient reuse; however, there are important water quality, environmental, and public health considerations. This report explores the advantages and risks of urban wastewater reuse for crop production in the water-short Guanajuato river-basin in west-central Mexico, and then by a selective literature review demonstrates how common this practice is worldwide. It also evaluates several alternative water-management scenarios through application of the Interactive River Aquifer Simulation (IRAS) model, developed by Cornell University and Resource Planning Associates."