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Exploring Synergies Between Hardware and Software Interventions on Water Savings in China: Farmers’ Response to Water Usage and Crop Production

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Abstract

Evidence is presented on synergies due to the sequencing and packaging of water reforms based on a review of case studies from the Zhanghe Irrigation System (ZIS) in the Yangtze River basin in China. Faced with strategic challenges of economic growth, food security, population growth, and climate change, China has implemented numerous hardware and software interventions in the water sector to increase the availability of water. These interventions—ranging from the provincial and system level to farm and field level—allow reallocation of water from agriculture to higher value uses, without significant reduction in crop production. This review of selected hardware and software interventions suggests that water sector reforms generate significant benefits for peasant farming communities and local governments. The review indicates that all agents respond to the same set of incentives simultaneously, by changing production and resource use decisions such that cumulative benefits from hardware and software interventions reinforce synergies. Synergies from reforms are evident, yet scaling up local collective actions for optimal impact is problematic. Heterogeneity in socioeconomic factors, as well as spatial differences, are the main stumbling blocks. Rewarding reformers seems to work, yet the benefits are neither immediate nor straight forward. Local implementation of national policies requires a systematic and coherent framework suited to the level of economic development of each region in order to achieve synergies from water reforms.

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Notes

  1. The FGS (农村税费改革) is part of the general central government restructuring and centralizing program that can be tracked back to 1998 (Kennedy 2007). The FGS was introduced at the provincial level as a form of tax relief for the farmers. It was first introduced in Anhui province in 2002, and then broadly introduced to 20 other provinces in 2002. In order to further reduce the villagers’ burden, the central government announced complete elimination of the agricultural tax by 2006. Yan’an in Shaanxi province was one of the first districts to eliminate all local fees and agricultural tax in 2004.

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Acknowledgements

The author greatly thank Dr. Bas Bauman, International Rice Research Institute, Philippines and Dr Luo Yufeng, Hohai University, China, and Dr Munir Hanjra, Charles Sturt University, Australia, for their feedback and comments in preparation of this manuscript.

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  1. Australian Centre for Sustainable Catchments, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, 4350, Australia

    Shahbaz Mushtaq

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  1. Shahbaz Mushtaq
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Mushtaq, S. Exploring Synergies Between Hardware and Software Interventions on Water Savings in China: Farmers’ Response to Water Usage and Crop Production. Water Resour Manage 26, 3285–3300 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-012-0072-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-012-0072-7

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