Sustainable water management in irrigation systems

Abstract

The increasing demand for water, coupled with its scarcity, has become an unceasing issue worldwide. Therefore, Sustainable Water Management (SWM) has become a major challenge in the 21st century. Irrigation systems are consuming around 60-70% of water around the globe, and thus play a critical role in water sustainability. This paper therefore aimed to investigate the issues due to poor Irrigation Water Management (IWM) practices, and the concept of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) as a tool for SWM in irrigation systems. Research have identified issues in IWM under four main categories, namely, issues in: efficiency of the system; equity of water distribution; economic acceptability; and environmental integrity. The major issues, which affect to the efficiency of the irrigation systems, were water losses in conveyance channels and field applications. Issues in water allocation lead to inequity of water distribution among the water users. Waterlogging, salinization and ground water depletion are the major issues caused by poor IWM practices. Further, failure to achieve the expected performance over the investment is a threat to the economic acceptability of irrigation systems. SWM evaluation models are useful in decision making regarding the issues associated with three dimensions of sustainability from local to global level, both in short-term and long term perspectives. IWRM can be identified as an enabling tool in SWM, which can be used in managing water resources as a whole. This paper proposes a conceptual model to address issues in SWM in irrigation sector using IWRM, which can be applied to Sri Lankan irrigation sector to ensure sustainable and economical water management strategies.