Assessing the Impacts of Agricultural Water-Management on Ecosystem Services in the Nile Delta

Egypt suffers from physical water scarcity and farmers are often forced to use alternative water resources including recycled and untreated wastewater with elevated levels of non-point source pollutants. However, continued use of poor quality water reduces land and water productivity and threatens the health of the overall ecosystem. The rising demand for water is also reflected through increased competition among different water users including agriculture, aquaculture, livestock, recreation, tourism, horticulture, etc. Agriculture is by far the largest consumer of water in Egypt. Hence any improvement in agricultural water management will result in reduced demand in the sector and free up a highly demanded and scarce resource for use by other sectors. The objective of this study is thus to test and identify appropriate water and land management strategies as packages that will increase water and land productivity, reduce the demand for chemical fertilizers, increase farmers’ income, and minimize the negative impacts of agriculture on the ecosystem. This will be done through targeted studies that: a) Quantify the impact of improved technologies (Mechanized raised bed planting, deficit irrigation, saline soil management etc.) on water saving and their potential contribution to increasing available water supply along the canal (head, middle and tail end) b) Analyze alternative water allocation scenarios using the river system model which will be used to assess tradeoffs and estimate water that can be saved from the agricultural sector for utilization by other economic sectors, or for horizontal agriculture expansion c) Analyze the effect of outflow of water from agriculture for downstream users, and on dependent ecosystem services Linkage to other initiatives: The ACIAR-funded ICARDA-IWMI project on “Management of water and salinity in the Nile Delta” has made significant contributions towards understanding water quantity-quality interactions across various scales. The project has generated a wealth of knowledge and data on water quantity and quantity at the farm, meso- and systems-levels. It has also tested various interventions to combat salinity at the farm level. The project dealt with agriculture and aquaculture ecosystems and investigated the impact of agricultural water management on aquaculture water availability and quality. The proposed activity builds on the current water and salinity project, aiming to model and analyze water allocation strategies to satisfy the demands of various ecosystem services. Water quality is a major criterion for allocating water to a particular ecosystem service. Therefore, the knowledge on water quality and quantity generated in the Project will directly be used in the proposed activity. The current activity will also build on ICARDA’s Food Security Project in the Nile Delta which focuses on scaling out new technologies (raised bed and high yielding varieties). This linkage will be used to connect improved water management at farm level to the supply system which helps to reallocate water across different ecosystems