Pricing irrigation water according to the Water Framework Directive under Climate Change: impacts in a Mediterranean agricultural area
Author(s)
Dell'Unto, Davide
Date Issued
July 4, 2018
Type
Doctoral Thesis
Abstract
A key guideline of the European Water Framework Directive (WFD, 2000/60/EC) asks to cover water costs in a way to encourage the efficient use of the resource, and therefore its protection. Specifically, it requires to adopt effective pricing instruments that establish a direct linkage between water use and payments, in order to charge the full cost for water services (FCR) to end-users (also agricultural). However, it recommends to do this while minimizing possible adverse environmental, social and economic impacts. Currently, this is a challenging goal that arises perplexities, or even warnings, among policy-makers, local administrators, researchers and, not last, farmers. Climate Change (CC) exacerbates these concerns, as it is projected to exert growing pressures on water resources in the Mediterranean area, due to the increase of crop irrigation needs, and to the parallel decrease of water availability, both going subject to higher inter-annual variability. In particular, the negative impacts of CC could strengthen those expected from the implementation of the WFD on economics and employment in the territories involved, hampering anyway the achievement of its environmental objectives. This analysis estimates how alternative pricing systems and increasing levels of cost recovery for water supply, up to FCR, could affect the agricultural use of water and of other resources, as well as farm incomes, comparatively in the current (2000-2010) and in a near future (2020-2030) climate scenario. In this way the impacts of CC and of the implementation of the WFD are jointly assessed. The simulations are based on a territorial economic model of Discrete Stochastic Programming that represents the use of irrigation water in an Italian Mediterranean area, where a Reclamation and Irrigation Board (RIB) supplies irrigation water to associated farms and applies an area-based pricing system. As in the case of many Italian RIBs, current tariffs cover only a part of the total water cost, while the remainder is supplemented by regional authorities as a form of compensation for local and climatic disadvantages. The results should provide to stakeholders and policy makers a useful guidance for implementing WFD in a context in which the CC may severely alter the conditions for using water resources, and there may be some adaptation issues relevant to such changes.
Additional information
Dottorato di ricerca in Ecosistemi e sistemi produttivi
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