International Conference of Agricultural Economists (ICAE)

In many parts of the world, one of the central challenges is rationalizing the use of water in agriculture, and better managing the environmental consequences of irrigation. When the value-added of irrigated agriculture has increased, an expansion in the water use has also been observed, which has subsequently led to challenges such as groundwater overdraft, lower base-flows in surface water and depleting water quality.  And while water is regarded as a ‘planetary boundary’, policy efforts to address this problem are sadly lagging.  How would countries need to do better?  What would a transition to better policies entail? How is climate change likely to affect these transitions?

This 90-minute plenary will explore these issues in the context of found countries—the United States, China, India and Israel—where many public and private investments were historically made to develop irrigated agriculture.  A panel of four invited speakers will discuss the dynamic nature of the challenges and potential solutions that would have to be considered in these four countries, and discuss gaps in research that would be important to address.

Organizer: Soumya Balasubramanya, International Water Management Institute

Confirmed Speakers (country of focus)
Nick Brozovic—University of Nebraska, Lincoln (United States)
Jikun Huang—Peking University (China)
Ram Fishman—Tel Aviv University (Israel)
Sharatchandra Lele—ATREE (India)

Opening remarks will be made by Claudia Sadoff, Managing Director of the One CGIAR (5 minutes). Each panelist will have 10 minutes to present their ideas. Mark Smith, Director General of the International Water Management Institute, will moderate the discussion between the panelists and with the audience (45 minutes).

All plenary panels will generate a paper, for publication in Agricultural Economics. Panelists have 6-months from the end of the conference to generate a paper.  This plenary will generate a paper that shares insights on addressing environmental consequences of irrigation for designing better policies.