Can the informal groundwater markets improve water use efficiency and equity? Evidence from a semi-arid region of Pakistan.

Clicks: 272
ID: 38453
2019
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score — reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal
Steady

Ranked #389 of 637 articles by views in The Science of the total environment

Most read Least read

Bar heights use a square-root scale. Only the 120 most-read articles are drawn; the journal has 637 in total.

Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet minted

Create a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.

5 SUSD one-off · no wallet required
Sign in to mint
Abstract
Pakistani farmers are using groundwater at an increasing rate to supplement their irrigation needs. This practice has led to overexploitation of groundwater in the country, resulting in many negative externalities and increased resource costs. In response to the growing water shortage, the informal groundwater markets in the arid and semi-arid regions of Punjab have gradually emerged. These markets are believed to improve the fair distribution of groundwater and encourage more efficient use of agricultural water. This study aims to investigate these claims through conducting a field survey of 120 farmers that are further divided into three groups i.e. buyers, self-users cum sellers, and self-users (control group). Further, the study employed a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach to estimate the water use efficiency of all three type of groundwater actors. The study findings show that water buyers are mostly small farmers who do not own tube wells, hence buy water from tube well owners (large farmers). The study also found that groundwater markets improve the equity of water access to some extent, as water is transferred from large farmers to small farmers. The results of DEA analysis show water buyers and water sellers are more efficient in using water than the control group, making buyers the most efficient of all groups. Therefore, participation in water markets appears to be improving the WUE of farmers. The results of single bootstrapped truncated regression show that participation in water markets and access to extension services can improve WUE, while off-farm income and the diesel tube wells can reduce WUE in the study area. However, government could play an important role here through introducing groundwater regulations and improving water use efficiency for sustainable and equitable distribution of water among water users.
Reference Key
razzaq2019canthe Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors Razzaq, Amar;Qing, Ping;Naseer, Muhammad Asad Ur Rehman;Abid, Muhammad;Anwar, Mumtaz;Javed, Iqbal;
Journal The Science of the total environment
Year 2019
DOI
S0048-9697(19)30764-8
URL
Keywords Keywords not found

Citations

No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org

Comments

No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.