Avinash C. Tyagi, presently Secretary General of the ICID, has about four decades of experience dealing with various facets of water resources management. He has worked in water resources sector for Government of India for about three decades at Central Water Commission (CWC), Inter-state Tungabhadra Board, and Ministry of Water Resources. He had 9-year long stint at the World Meteorological Organization before taking over as Secretary General of the ICID in 2012. He has developed an intimate knowledge of issues related to water resources management in developing countries around the world. Following are the excerpts from his interview with the Focus Global Reporter:
Established on 24 June 1950 as a scientific, technical and voluntary Not-for-profit Non-Governmental International Organization (NGO) with headquarters in New Delhi (India), the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID) has come a long way in fulfilling its objectives for which it was established over six decades ago. It is dedicated to augmenting the worldwide supply of food and fibre for all people by improving water and land management and the productivity of irrigated and drained lands through appropriate management of water, environment and application of irrigation, drainage and flood management techniques.
Dr Arvind Kumar, Editor, Focus Global Reporter, interviewed Shri Avinash Chand Tyagi, Secretary-General, ICID. Following are excerpts of this interview:
(Editor) 1. What was the rationale behind establishing ICIDsome sixty years ago and how is it relevant in today’s context?
Shri Tyagi In early half of the twentieth century, aided by the industrial revolution, the western world had ushered in a new era of agricultural prosperity made possible by harnessing science to build dams for water storage to exploit and manipulate water for economic gains: navigation, hydropower generationand transferring water to far off parched landsfor irrigation.On the other hand, a number of countries emerging out of colonial shadow in Asiain the second half of the twentieth century were struggling in their fight against hunger due to repeated floods and droughts.
Under the visionary leadership of Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru, first prime minister,and meticulous planning of Indian Irrigation Engineers, inspired by the transformation brought forward by the irrigation projects in indo-Gangetic plains and southern deltas of Cauvery, Krishna and Godavari, some nine countries came together to put the dream of a ‘world without hunger’ into reality and established International Commission for Irrigation and Drainage with a view to share experiences and expertise in the field of Irrigation, which was to become one of the pillars of the ‘Green Revolution’ ushered in 1970s.
Inability of the age old rain- fed agriculture to feed the growing population and meet the higher standards of living due to risks and uncertainty in agriculture production, and the potential demonstrated by the irrigated agriculture in increasing food production set forth the rationale for exchanging experiences and setting up the Commission.ICID has facilitated developing countries to take concrete steps towards self-sufficiency in food and has been successful in providing the platform for sharing the experiences and a means for transfer of technology. This sharing has succeeded in responding to the increasing demandby increasing the average yields of irrigated crops in these countries.
Over the coming decades, feeding a growing global population and ensuring food and nutrition security for all will depend on increasing food production through the sustainable use of the most critical finite resource – water. And with climate change making the process much more complex, the extreme weather is likely to play spoil sport in these efforts and needs to be prevented through building resilient irrigated agriculture. In future the process will be many fold more complex making it more knowledge extensive requiring sharing of data, information and experiences imperative among a wider range of stakeholders. Today, in a resource constrained world, we cannot afford to make the kind of mistakes that we have made in the past. We need to understand the development complexities and share the best practices and continuously improve water productivity with minimal carbon footprints. In this increasingly complex, multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder effort ICID has crucial and ever increasing role to play in ensuring water security and supporting food security and support.
(Editor) 2. How does ICID contribute to ensure global food security?
Shri Tyagi After suffering from numerous famines affected by prolonged droughts in late nineteenth century, living under humiliating ‘ship to bowl’ conditions in 50s and 60s after independence, India today,ranks second in the world in farm output. This transformation has been made possible by extensive use of High Yield Variety seeds, fertilizers made possible by assured irrigation. Not only in India, worldwide, irrigated agriculture expansion and productivity increases have made a major contribution to meeting rising world food demand.
To ensure global food security, we need to enhance local, national and regional level food production. This is particularly crucial in countries where agriculture provides livelihoods to masses. At the same time the food production has to be made more resilient to the vagaries of extreme weather. The climate change, through increased variability of weather and water availability will further endanger water security in many regions already under water stress. With the diversion of agricultural products for bio-fuel, both the natural resource land and water crucial for increased production for food are coming under greater pressure.
Agriculture accounts for about 80per cent of water withdrawals in many developing countries. Demand for larger share of water by domestic, industrial and energy sectors and the need to allocate water to the nature to maintain eco-services brings down the availability of water for agriculture/ irrigation.And the trend will continue.
ICID is a network of professionals from over 100 countries. Each country, through a National Committee brings together various stakeholders engaged within the country on the issues of irrigation, drainage and flood management. Most of these National Committees are lead by Departments of Irrigations but their membership, in addition to irrigation and civil engineers, includes agriculture and soil scientists, agriculture economists, the social scientists and educators. In many countries these Committees include researchers from universities as well as private irrigators and companies.
Optimal use of water for sustainable agriculture production is essential to enhance food security at all levels. While a range of agricultural water management options are available, their implementation is a challenging task. They range from sizable expansion of irrigated area in some emerging countries to water saving irrigation systems like micro and sprinkler irrigation to piped water conveyance in others. Water use efficiency/ productivity of most public canal irrigation schemes is quite low and needs to be enhanced by adopting modern irrigation technologies.
There is call for a ‘second green revolution’, particularly by including Africa in the process which has seen an extraordinary rebound in economic growth over the past decade but has not brought food security for the substantial proportion of the population still gripped by hunger.The second green revolution will essentially be knowledge extensive as against the knowledge intensive development during the first green revolution and will require empowering of the farmers, particularly, the smallholders, on whose shoulders the recovery of its agriculture rests, liberating them from beurocratic processes and unleashing their potential. Irrigation will play a key role in future in sustaining the food security.
(Editor) 3 What role has been played by irrigation in poverty alleviation, particularly in the Indian context?
Shri Tyagi Poverty is a major consequence of deteriorating or slow economic growth. Increasedagricultural productivity through assured irrigationfuels rural economic growth and leads to rises in rural income and employment andreduces the flow of labour to the towns. Irrigated agriculture provides a greater opportunity than rainfedagriculture to achieve significant production increases as it brings a range of potential changes in agricultural production. It givesmore assured cropping and a more secure food supply to meet rural basic needs. Irrigation can change the cropping timetable to take advantage of good weather conditions, allows multiple cropping, improve the quality of produce and permit new commercial crops and varieties to be grown, increases outputs.
Irrigation has increased disposable income in, provided access to water and reduced vulnerability of the beneficiary farmers.The farmers from the well irrigated Delta regions, Punjab and Haryana – the main beneficiaries of Bhakra and other projects in the foothills Himalayas in the Indus Basin, the command areas of Tungabhadra and many such irrigation projects have seen destitutions turn into prosperity. The credit for the country avoiding any famine during the last forty years and today making is a net exporter of food grains can be to a large extent be attributed to the irrigation infrastructure.
The irrigation canals and the ground water constitute the major source of safe drinking water to not only rural areas but also some major urban centres. For example, the National Capital Region gets its bulk supply of raw water from the Yamuna Canals. Similarly, Rajasthan Canal serves as source of drinking water to five dessert districts of Rajasthan.
Increased and more stable flow of income from farming and new farm enterprise / technology mixes has appreciated the value of agricultural land with access to water for irrigation.These assets have increased resilience of poorfarmers to natural disasters and economic shocks and enabled them to resist impoverishment.Irrigation infrastructure provides uninterrupted water supply for the cattle and supports the dairy industry that provides off farm income to the landless.However, initiatives that involve the landless gaining access to the benefits of irrigationrequire greater exposure.
Spill-over effectsof irrigated agriculture include increased and more evenly spread farm labour opportunities and improvedwage rates, more water for non-agricultural uses, including domestic uses that improvehealth, growth in non-farm employment, reduced out-migration and increased return migration.
Q. (Editor) 4. Apart from irrigation, what are other priority areas being addressed by ICID?
Shri Tyagi First of all let me mention that an erroneous perception has been that ICID community confines itself to irrigation through large scale infrastructure.ICID deals with the complete range of irrigation sources and means. As the name of the Commission itself suggests, drainage is an essential part of our activities. The additional irrigation water brought in to the farm system, if applied in excess of the evapo-transpiration requirements, under a variety of soil conditions, has the tendency to develop salinity and water logging problems. This excess water needs to be evacuated from the system to maintain the productivity of land, and necessitates drainage to be considered as integral part of irrigation.
Due to certain miss-conceptions irrigation has been branded as a tool incapable of providing sustainable development brushing aside its contribution towards thwarting the Malthusian theory of doom in the absence of enough food for the growing population.Irrigation, in the absence of balanced impact assessments has been wrongly associated with all sorts of adverse impacts, some genuine others far-fetched. ICID through its study of historical development of irrigation projects, setting standards for environmental management in irrigation projects and making ‘drainage’ an integral part of irrigation advocates and supports environmental sustainability of irrigation schemes.
Another area where ICID is engaged in is the mitigation of the impacts of climate change on the agriculture productivity, particularly through flood management and drought mitigation. It must be remembered that climate change is likely to increase the incidences of flooding making them more severe and frequent. In addition, more than 200 million people around the world, already vulnerable to flooding by sea levels around the globe could grow to 800 million by the 2080s and would be exposed to sea level rise due to climate change. ICID through its technical Working Groupsdealing with Flood, Drought, Climate Change and Tidal Areasaddress these issues that have the potential to adversely impact agriculture production. It advocated an integrated approach to flood management in all its aspects – hydrological, social, economic, environment, human induced changes in land use and impacts of climate change – and potential measures – flood risk reduction, flood protection flood forecasting and warning, preparedness as well as their optimal combination.
Q. (Editor) 5. How has the relevance of irrigation in meeting food security been effected by climate change?
Shri Tyagi In its Fourth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that Climate change has substantial impacts on both water resources demand and availability. The rainfall is going to be more intense and in smaller spells. The dry periods are going to be longer. Rising temperatures will increase crop water demand. There is a 90 per cent probability that the extent of drought-affected areas will increase.Climate change is expected to impact both rainfed and irrigated agriculture. The challenge is, therefore, to increase the resilience and preparedness of farmers. Irrigation, particularly supplemental irrigation will have greater relevance to meet the water demand of crops in a timely manner.More frequent and severe droughts and floods will hurt subsistence agriculture in the semi-arid zones.
Several densely populated farming systems in developing countries are at risk from the impacts of climate change. Irrigation systems that rely on high mountain glaciers for water, high runoff periods will advance earlier in the spring, when irrigation water demand is still low. Large contiguous areas of irrigated land associated with river deltas are also atrisk – from a combination of reduced inflows, change in annual flood cycles, increased salinity and rising sea levels.
Farming is a risky business. Under irrigation, risks are lesser than rainfed farming, but an irrigation farmer still has to deal with multiple risks, such as quality of irrigation service, market risks, water entitlement and unreliable or inequitable water supply. If the risk is too high the farmers will not invest in in water-saving technologies such as precise land levelling and pressurized irrigation systems.Water-related disaster risk reduction (DRR) and its strategies should be considered as tools in climate change adaptation. Growing food security concerns due to demographic pressures, combined with the increasing climate variability have brought forward the importance of irrigation to grow more food. Continued investment in irrigation will be central to future food production asrainfed agriculture will not be able to cope up with the increased risks and meet the growing demands to feedincreasing populations.
Q. (Editor) 6. What measures are advocated by ICID currently to save water in agriculture, especially in water-deficit countries?
Shri Tyagi A variety of measures are needed to achieve better/more – hygienic conditions, agriculture production, industrial output and energy generation – with less water. The choice of the method depends on the water availability, its distribution, its quality on one hand; the reasons for scarcity – economic or physical on the other; and the means – technical, economic and institutional – available with the society.
ICID advocates, promotes and facilitates recycling of water including safe use of wastewater for irrigation; promotion of water efficient techniques and technologies;improvement in water use efficiency;mandatory water audit; adequate provision for operation & maintenance of water resources projects;water conservation & efficient use of waterthrough incentives and awards; and use of efficient irrigation practices. Promotion of efficient irrigation practices that include application of irrigation water at critical stages of crop growth; farm interventions such as laser levelling, strips cultivation, raised bed planting for high rain fall areas, aerobic rice cultivation, promotion of water use efficient cropping sequences, and application of optimum depth of irrigation, just to name a few.
Various technical working groups have been providing opportunities to experts from developed and developing countries to share experiences, best practices and new innovations. These experts compile their experiences together in form of manuals and other publications.
Recognizing the need to encourage innovations in irrigation and drainage, ICID instituted WatSave Annual Award(s) in 1998 and are presented each year to recognize outstanding contributions to water conservation or water saving in agriculture. The Awards given to individuals or a team of individuals are made in respect of actual realized savings and not for promising research results, plans and/or good ideas/intentions to save water. They include Technology Award, Innovative Water Management Award, Young Professional Award, and Farmer Award.
ICID is also initiating Irrigation Achievement Award on the lines of World Food Prize starting next year and is looking for partners and sponsors to make it truly international award. The objective is to facilitate resurgence of ‘Irrigation‘as an important tool in climate change adaptation and address water security.
(Editor) 7. What are the impediments in bringing fresh areas under irrigation through new irrigation schemes?
Shri Tyagi Water and land serve as two crucial ingredients in increasing food production. These natural resources are under severe pressure due to increasing population. The per capita availability of arable land and renewable fresh water is declining. With large chunks of fertile lands undergoing urbanization and industrialization due to expanding cities and water availability for irrigation increasingly constrained limits on increasing the extensive margin of irrigated agriculture have been set. For increasing the agricultural production and to meet the food demand, we have to increase the productivity of land as well as water.
Results of past investments in agricultural water management have been mixed.Large-scale irrigation systems developed by governments have failed to achieve their expected level of performance. The supply-led approaches and large scale irrigation infrastructure have resulted in bureaucratic institutions that lack the structure flexible and efficient management and are unable to respond to farmer’s evolving needs.At the same time small scale individual entrepreneurial efforts through exploitation of groundwater have given rise to lowering of water tables often mining the non-replenishable ancient water. In most of the irrigation system, water productivity remains low. Environmental and social aspects of irrigation have been positive and negative, but stresses are growing. Tensions between agricultural production and protection of natural resources are growing.
The financial model used for irrigation development has also not drawn the attention that it deserves. Irrigation systems that serve more than one social cause need not be looked from a commercial angle justifiable by return on investment or a profit philosophy. Under the growing social concerns, there is need for giving a relook at the financial model. Under this scenario, the second green revolution will entail use of new and not so new technologies, and innovative solutionsfor empowering small food producers and conserving essential ecosystem services. We need to mmodernize irrigation services through upgrading existing infrastructure, involving farmers in their management, using water efficient irrigation techniques such as drip and sprinkler.
(Editor) 8. What suggestions would you like to offer for enhancing cooperation between ICIDand other institutions within the Member countries for increasing agricultural production with judicious use of water?
Shri Tyagi Guaranteeing sustainable food and water security for all will require the full engagement of all sectors and actors. The plight of the poorest of farmers, the small-holders is likely to be worsened under the new climatic variability endangering their food security. The increasing pressure on the natural resources due to complex water-food energy linkages also means that increase in food production cannot be achieved through mono-disciplinary approaches.Expansion of irrigation, therefore has become more critical in all it’s forms and interaction, requiring inputs from all stakeholders and actors working with in irrigation and agriculture, particularly with the small holder farmers.
Realising the all-encompassing nature of agriculture production, ICID, through its National Committees has been advocating for active involvement of all stakeholders, including the private sector and NGOs working in water sector in its activities. To facilitate this process further ICID is now inviting companies, institutions including NGOs and individuals to enrol as ‘direct members’ and participate in the activities of ICID. The platform will enable the NGOs to have a first-hand exposure of the new technologies that can help achieve water security through more efficient use of water in agriculture. Private companies will get the opportunity to present their services to the researchers, operators and policy makers.
In addition, ICID working together with its international partners will be providing a platform to all the stakeholders in irrigation by organizing World Irrigation Forum once every three years. Designed on the lines of World Water Forum, but focussing on issues close to irrigation, within the context of Integrated Water Resources Management. It will facilitate closer interaction with the farmer’s organizations and agent organizations working at field level with the farmers.
We must remember that unless we increase the capacity of farmers, particularly the small farmers,to use water wisely in agriculture, making use of new technological developments and modern tools of management, we will fail to end hunger.
