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Asia contains 70 per cent of the world's irrigated area. Here, 34 per cent of cultivated land is irrigated, as compared to only 10 per cent in North America and 6 per cent in Africa. Irrigation was the key to the success of the Green Revolution and this helped alleviate poverty and boost rural growth. Boosting the performance of irrigated agriculture from now on, however, will be critical because an extra 1.5 billion people will live on the continent by 2015. Experts estimate that demand for food and animal feed crops will double during the next 50 years. Growing this extra food will require better management of existing irrigated lands, since opening up new frontiers is constrained by lack of land and water resources. Irrigated agriculture still offers huge opportunities but only innovative strategies will unlock the potential gains. Future irrigation systems will need to be efficient and flexible to meet the demands of many sectors including farming, fishing, domestic use and energy supply. The managers of irrigation systems will need to find ways to generate more value from ecosystem services and halt environmental degradation. They must also enable farmers to respond to challenges posed by volatile market conditions and climate change. All these require several strategies such as: 1) Modernize yesteryear's schemes for tomorrow's needs because the schemes have become underused, poorly maintained and inefficient; 2) Go with the flow by supporting farmers' initiatives; 3) Look beyond conventional Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM) and Irrigation Management Transfer (IMT) recipes; 4) Expand capacity and knowledge; and 5) Invest outside the irrigation sector.
Mukherji, A. and Facon, T., 2009. Revitalizing Asia's Irrigation: To Sustainably Meet Tomorrow's Food Needs. IWMI and FAO, http://www.iwmi.cgiar.org/ (2009). |
