Agri-vector water: boosting rainfed agriculture with urban water allocation to support urban–rural linkages

Bruce A. Lankford, Catherine F. Grasham

Research output: Contribution to journalComment/debatepeer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)
17 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

We propose the concept of ‘agri-vector water’ (AVW) to refer to water allocated to towns to maintain urban-based agricultural services that support rainfed farming in surrounding areas. AVW captures the idea that highly scarce ‘blue water’ can be productively used in this way to support rainfed ‘green water’ rather than be applied as consumptive irrigation, especially when the latter exacerbates water shortages during drought and dry seasons in arid and semi-arid regions. To illustrate, we present two case studies from Ethiopia.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)432-450
Number of pages19
JournalWater International
Volume46
Issue number3
Early online date9 Apr 2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

Keywords

  • Ethiopia
  • irrigation
  • rainfed agriculture
  • rural–urban linkages
  • urban services
  • Water allocation

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