Enhancing climate resilience of irrigated agriculture: A review

• Published in: Journal of environmental management Vol. 302; no. Pt A; p. 114032
• Main Author: Ward, Frank A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Ltd 15-01-2022
• Subjects: Acclimatization; Agriculture; Climate Change; Climate resilience; Hydroeconomic analysis; Irrigated agriculture; Portfolio selection; Reproducibility of Results; Water Supply; Irrigated agriculture; Portfolio selection; Hydroeconomic analysis; Climate resilience
• ISSN: 0301-4797; 1095-8630
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.114032

Emerging evidence showing trends in climate change with a strong likelihood those changes will continue elevates the importance of finding affordable adaptations by irrigated agriculture. Successful climate adaptation measures are needed to affordably sustain irrigated agriculture in the face of elevated carbon emissions affecting the reliability of water supplies. Numerous potential adaptation options are available for adjusting irrigated agricultural systems to implement climate risk adaptation. This work focuses on addressing the gap in the literature defined by a scarcity of reviews on measures to elevate the capacity of irrigated agriculture to enhance its climate change resilience. Accordingly, the original contribution of this work is to review the literature describing measures for enhancing climate resilience by irrigated agriculture. In addition, it describes the role of economic analysis to discover affordable measures to enhance resilience by irrigated agriculture. It achieves those aims by posing the question “What principles, practices, and recent developments are available to guide discovery of measures to improve resilience by irrigated agriculture to adapt to ongoing evidence of climate change?” It addresses that question by reviewing several risk reduction measures to control the economic cost of losses to irrigators in the face of growing water supply unreliability. Following this review, a role for optimizing a portfolio of climate adaptation measures is described, followed by a discussion of potential contributions that can be made by the use of hydroeconomic analysis. Results provide a framework for economic analysis to discover economically attractive methods to elevate resilience of irrigated agriculture.
•Successful climate adaptation is needed to sustain irrigated agriculture.•This work reviews several risk reduction measures for irrigated agriculture.•A role for optimizing a portfolio of climate resilience adaptations is described.•Potential contributions by the use of hydroeconomic models is also described.