Climate change and agricultural water demand: Impacts and adaptations

Abstract

Global climate change related to natural and anthropogenic processes has been the topic of concern and interest world - wide. One of the most significant impacts of the ‘greenhouse effect’ is anticipated to be on water resources. Thus, the impact of climate change appears to be an additional component on top of the large number of existing water-related problems. The objective of the present paper is to analyze the climate change impacts on crop and irrigation water requirements, applying the CROPWAT model to several incremental climatic change scenarios for the West Bank governorate of Jericho and Al-Aghwar as a case study. The results clearly show that the greatest threat occurs if a temperature rise of 3°C is accompanied by 20% decrease in precipitation levels. For that scenario, there is a need to increase the amount of water for irrigation by 2.9 MCM/Y. A number of possible adaptation measures (at both sector/policy level and farm level) were evaluated. The evaluation was based on analysis of the relevant literature and stakeholder participation with respect to the following issues: adaptive capacity, technical feasibility and potential costs of implementation.