BASINS UNDER PRESSURE: THE BASIN

EDITED BY Edoardo Borgomeo CONTRIBUTORS

JOSE ALBIAC is a researcher at the Agrifood Research and Technology Center (CITA) at the University of , working on environmental and natural resource eco- nomics and policies, water management, nonpoint pollution and climate change. LUCIA DE STEFANO is Associate Professor at Universidad Complutense de Madrid () and international consultant on water management. Previously she has worked on different facets of water management for the Water Observatory of the Botin Foundation, USAID, Oregon State University (USA), the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Spanish private sector. ROGELIO GALVAN PLAZA is the head of the hydrological planning office at the Ebro Basin Authority. He is a civil engineer and also holds a degree in history. He has 16 years of experience working on water planning and IWRM in the Ebro basin. He was involved in the implementation of the European Water Framework Directive and of the Ebro Basin Management Plan. He is also in charge of inter- national projects and partnerships. NINA GRAVELINE is a researcher in agricultural and water economics at the Bureau de Recherche Geologiques et Miniers in Montpellier since 2004 where she is in- volved and/or leads reseach and science support to policy projects dealing with water management. As an economist she is concerned with the analysis and eval- uation of water uses and contaminations regulation. After a stay at the University of California, Davis in 2011 she defended a PhD on adaptation to global change

v in . She is interested in water policies and how they can be integrated with economic mathematic programming approaches. She has worked in several parts of , La Reunion, Germany, North Africa and Spain on topics dealing with water quality or quantity management. CARLES IBANEZ holds a PhD in Biology from the University of Barcelona. He did his postdoctorate in the Laboratory of Ecology of Fluvial Systems (CNRS), Rhone Delta, France (1993-1994). Since 2005 he is the Chief of the Aquatic Area of the Institute of Research and Technology of Food and Agriculture (IRTA). He is a member of the Council for Sustainable Management of Water of the Cata- lan Government. He specialized in ecology of , and , with 24 years of research experience in the , but also in the Mississippi (USA), Rhone (France) and Po (Italy) deltas. MANUEL OMEDAS MARGELI has been working at the Ebro River Basin Authority as the Head of Water Planning since 2005. He holds degrees in Political Science, Sociology and Civil Engineering, Manuel Omedas is a specialist in integrated wa- ter management in river basins. He has 30 years of experience working in the Ebro River Basin, and has seen first-hand the legal, socio-economic and technical challenges of managing of the largest river in Spain. He has authored numerous publications and presentations on water management. ALBERT ROVIRA holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Barcelona 2001 and carried out his postdoctorate at the University of California at Berkeley (2004- 2006). Since 2006 he is a senior researcher of the Institute of Research and Tech- nology of Food and Agriculture (IRTA) in the Aquatic Ecosystems Area. Special- ized in transport and hydraulics, river restoration and water management, with more than 20 years of research experience. MOHAMED TAHER KAHIL is a Ph.D researcher at the Agrifood Research and Tech- nology Center (CITA) at the University of Zaragoza, working on water resources management at basin scale, and water scarcity, climate change and policy analysis. SERGIO VILLAMAYOR-TOMAS is currently assistant professor at the Division of Re- source Economics, Department of Agricultural Economics (Humboldt Univer- sity). He obtained his PhD in Public Policy and Management at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs and the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis (Indiana University, Bloomington). He has carried research on and watershed management, climate change adaptation, and the role of communi- cation and information in common pool resource contexts in Spain, Mexico and Colombia. He is also interested in expanding common pool resource through the lenses of social movements theory and the environmental policy tool literature.

vi CONTENTS

1 The Ebro River Basin Authority and the 2014 Basin Plan 1 R. Galvan Plaza and M. Omedas Margeli

2 Restoring sediment fluxes downstream of large dams: The case of the Lower Ebro river 5 Albert Rovira and Carles Ibanez

3 Climate change and water management in the Ebro basin 11 M. Taher Kahil and J. Albiac

4 Beyond the public-private dichotomy: an institutional analysis of drought robustness in the Riegos del Alto ´ irrigation project 15 Sergio Villamayor-Tomas

5 The Ebro basin: an example of the evolution of polycentric governance arrangements 21 Lucia De Stefano

vii 6 Hydro-economic modelling of water scarcity: an application to an Ebro sub-catchment 25 Nina Graveline

viii CHAPTER 1

THE EBRO RIVER BASIN AUTHORITY AND THE 2014 BASIN PLAN

R. Galvan Plaza and M. Omedas Margeli Confederacion´ Hidrografica´ del Ebro, Zaragoza, Spain

When the Ebro River Basin Authority (Confederacion´ Hidrografica´ del Ebro - CHE) was established in 1926 - the first institution of this kind in the world- it incorporated two elements which were radically innovative at the time: (i) the natural watershed boundaries as the scale for water governance and (ii) water users‘ opinions as part of the decision making process.

In arid and semi-arid areas, where the lack of water is a limiting factor for devel- opment, the exploitation and use of water have always required a high degree of community involvement, often leading to the formation of collective resource man- agement organizations. In Spain, since the Middle Ages -when water shortages led to the absolute need for collective decision-making and adequate water allocation to different irrigators- users organized themselves creating communities of users, real parapublic entities in charge of building diversion dams and acequias (community operated artificial watercourses), organizing irrigation scheduling and maintenance, collecting fees from the community members, or penalizing the misuse of water via special irrigation tribunals.

River basin organizations in Spain, such as the Ebro River Basin Authority, were born as a new symbiosis between the private and public spheres. These user communities

1 were brought together under single public institutions, where they could elect their representatives and influence decisions that affected them. Today there are more than 2000 user communities represented in the Ebro River Basin Authority, protected both in national water laws and in the Ebro River Basin Authority. This structure means that all conflicts between users, even during times of drought, are minimized and resolved via appropriate discussions and negotiations. The 1985 Water Act articulated and reinforced this collective management dimension by opening up participation to other stakeholders, particularly Spain‘s Autonomous Communities (regions) and civil society, and since the European Water Framework Directive adopted in 2000, active participation has been further encouraged and extended to multiple stakeholders.

Moreover, water scarcity also required harmonious planning and management at the watershed scale to: (1) enable the identification of the most efficient solutions for the entire basin, (2) allow for the development and implementation of policies not achievable by local private or public initiative and (3) overcome arbitrary administrative boundaries. Therefore river basin authorities were created as effective watershed scale governance organizations since their inception and were also linked to the planning and to the realization of a shared vision of water management within the naturally defined boundaries of the basin.

Figure 1.1 Meeting of the Ebro River Basin Authority

2 Today, the Ebro River Basin Authority is an autonomous body -although legally it is an administrative unit of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment- 70% self-financed through the collection of fees and charges to water users and polluters, embodying the paradigm of Integrated Water Resources Management. The Ebro River Basin Authority has multiple responsibilities under Spain‘s water law: water quality and ecological status management; wastewater discharges authorization and control; environmental restoration activities; water use licensing, authorization and control; construction and operation of infrastructure; prevention and management of floods and . The same water law defined the need for a River Basin Management Plan to serve as a regulatory reference and as a road-map for future water management actions. The first River Basin Management Plan was approved in 1998 and recently (February 28, 2014) the second plan was approved and framed within the requirements of the European Water Framework Directive.

The 2014 River Basin Management Plan aims to achieve good ecological status of water bodies in the basin, preserving and restoring the river environments that were significantly damaged in the 1960s and 1970s, and at the same time retain water’s capacity to generate wealth, particularly as a basis for preserving the Ebro basin agri-food system‘s role as one of the most important food producing areas in Europe. All of this within the complexity added by water scarcity, which makes planning even more necessary.

The 2014 Ebro Basin Management Plan, like any plan, is above all a societal effort in favor of a collective project. Therefore, during the Plan preparation stages the River Basin Authority interacted not only with stakeholders that traditionally have interest in the planning process, but also with other stakeholders traditionally excluded from water planning decisions, so as to represent interests from different sectors of society. A participatory process was performed at the sub-catchment scale, resulting in over 120 meetings of 1609 representatives from 1205 different organizations and entities, each one making their case and proposing management actions, for a total of 7000 comments and contributions during the meetings plus 500 comments in writing, all of which can be consulted on River Basin Authorityâ^s website. This process also included a basin-wide call of representatives of the major economic actors and citizen groups in the basin. Municipalities, water utilities, irrigators, hydropower representa- tives, businesses, recreational users, environmentalists, and researchers, institutions took part in this process.

The participatory process culminates in the Water Council for the demarcation of the Ebro, a formal participatory body regulated by law, which has 93 members distributed as follows (Figure 1.1): - 15 members representing various ministries - 5 members representing the River Basin Authority - 34 members representing the different Autonomous regions located within the Ebro basin - 3 members representing local administrative bodies

3 - 32 members representing water users (water utilities, irrigators, hydropower, other uses) - 2 members representing agricultural associations - 2 members representing environmental organizations - One member representing business associations - One member representing labor organizations - 2 members with the right to participate and voice their concerns but without the right to vote, on behalf of recreational users.

The Water Council met several times throughout the development of the Management Plan and ultimately approved the Ebro Basin Management Plan on July 4, 2013, with 72 votes in favor, 9 votes against and 5 abstentions, achieving a broad consensus beyond extreme or partial positions. The Ebro Basin Management Plan was finally approved by the Government on February 28, 2014. Water management in the Ebro River Basin Authority is carried out in close contact with society, and especially water users, which gives them ability to influence decisions. The Management Plan, follow- ing this idea of empowering participation, has collected all of society‘s requests and interests, which have been responsibly assimilated and prioritized by their represen- tatives on the Water Council, and in turn by the National Government.

4 CHAPTER 2

RESTORING SEDIMENT FLUXES DOWNSTREAM OF LARGE DAMS: THE CASE OF THE LOWER EBRO RIVER

Albert Rovira and Carles Ibanez IRTA-Aquatic Ecosystems, Sant Carles de la Rapita, Spain

The construction of dams produces a number of social benefits. But, in producing these benefits, dams also alter the natural balance of sediment flow in rivers by impounding sediment within and upstream of the and discharging clean water downstream [1]. Sediment retained in also leads to the disruption of the transport continuity while reducing the land to ocean sediment transfer. Under these conditions the morphological system is dramatically altered, leading to the imbalance between the fluvial and the marine processes that cause coastal retreat and land subsidence. A clear example is the case of the Ebro River, located in the North-East of the (Figure 2.1).

The of the lower Ebro River ( 85,530 km2) is being altered by the Mequinensa and Riba-Roja reservoir system constructed at the end of the 1960s. As a result, the lower Ebro River and its delta are facing a severe sediment deficit which is leading to a progressive change of the river channel morphology and sediment transport dynamics [2,3], the degradation of the fluvio-deltaic system [4], and the dramatic reduction of fluvial sediment inputs to the delta [5]. In the long- term, a significant elevation loss of the delta plain due to subsidence and sea level rise is expected, with the prediction that 45% of the emerged delta will be under mean sea level by the end of this century [6]. Under these conditions, the sediment

5 Figure 2.1 Map of the Lower Ebro river showing major dams and irrigation canals.

supply required to maintain the delta is estimated to be about 1.3 x 106 tonnes/yr, but considering the predictions of sea level rise for the year 2100 the value could be about 2.1 x 106 tonnes/yr [7].

Confronted with this situation, the Catalan Autonomous Government has developed a management plan (SedMa), whose main goal is to achieve sustainable management of the Ebro River and its delta through an integrated management of water, sediment and habitats, following the Water Framework Directive requirements. The successful implementation of the Plan requires an integrated approach including long-term research, intense consultation with local representatives and organizations, as well as the coordination of different administrative bodies where the stakeholders, administrations and experts are represented.

The SedMa plan mainly consists of the restoration of the sediment flux of the lower Ebro River by means of the removal of the sediment trapped behind the dams, and the effective transport of the by-passed sediment to the and delta plain through an ecological engineering approach [8]. Three major elements constitute 6 the framework of the SedMa plan: (i) the application of some kind of technology to remove and by-pass the sediment stored in the dams; (ii) the definition of a specific flow regime to transport the sediment from the river to the delta, including periodical pulses (floods); and (iii) the establishment of a controlled system to deliver part of the sediment to the delta plain.

Figure 2.2 Satellite image of the Ebro , one of the largest wetlands in the Mediterranean.

Different options to mobilize the sediment stored into the Riba-Roja reservoir (e.g. generation of flushing floods; construction of a by-pass system; mechanic dredging, etc.) were analysed; and the ’flushing flood’ method was found to be the most suitable [10]. This method consists in partially or totally emptying the reservoir in order to erode the stored , and evacuate them through the bottom outlets by using the water column pressure (in the first case) or by temporally restoring the water flow through the reservoir bed (in the second case) [1]. The application of this method in the Ebro River is focused on the removal of the sediment stored in the Riba-Roja reservoir by: (1) emptying of the Riba-Roja dam. At this stage, sediment located close to the dam bottom out-level outlets can partially be removed by using the water column pressure; (2) generation of discharges from Mequinensa reservoir. Sediment stored into Riba- Roja dam should be remobilised by water ; (3) closure of Riba-Roja bottom outlets and refilling of the reservoir. Prior to flushing operations, a detailed analysis of the required operations of the reservoir system, and the associated economic costs (i.e. opportunity and marginal) and environmental impacts, has to be undertaken. 7 Once the sediment is transferred downstream of the reservoirs and transported by the river, it has to be deposited in the appropriate areas of the delta. The transport and deposition of sand to the mouth area (and silt to the delta front) can be achieved without technical intervention. However, some human intervention is needed to deliver part of the sediment transported from the river to the delta plain. This could be achieved by means of using the two irrigation canals that are diverting part of the water and sediment transported by the river through the delta plain (Figure 2.1). This system was designed at the end of the 19th century and is widely used by local farmers to transform the natural wetlands into rice fields by increasing land elevation with fertile sediments. This practice continued until the construction of the Mequinensa and Riba- roja dams [7, 9]. When considering the whole delta (excluding beaches) it has been estimated that about 1.3 x 106 tonnes/yr of sediment would be needed to compensate relative sea-level rise; this is 10 times more the present sediment load but 20 times less the pre-dam sediment load [8]. It has been estimated that recovering about 20% of the original load (5-6 x 106 tonnes/yr) and supplying about 20% of this load to the delta plain, a vertical accretion of 1 cm/yr could be achieved [11].Vertical accretion can be also increased by means of stimulating plant productivity and organic soil formation [12, 13], and this alternative is being evaluated as a complementary measure to compensate relative sea level rise.

Overall, the sustainability of the lower Ebro River and its delta could only be guaranteed by the implementation of a new reservoir management concept with the allocation of an appropriate liquid and solid flow regime. The determination of this flow regime requires taking into account a number of processes essential for the system‘s functioning and specific requirements for sediment transport (i.e. pulses) in order to avoid the loss of geomorphic functionality of the river and of the delta. However, the SedMa plan is a non-mandatory document and it has to be approved by the Confederacion´ Hidrografica´ del Ebro (CHE) (Ebro River Basin Authority) who has the full competences and the legal responsibility of the water and sediment management of the whole Ebro basin. Meanwhile, discharges released from reservoirs are designed as a function of hydropower production and water demand (i.e. irrigation cycle), without taking into account the hydromorphological and ecological needs of the river and delta. Furthermore, alternatives to the SedMa plan have not been yet evaluated.

References 1. Morris GL, Fan J (1998): Reservoir sedimentation handbook. McGraw-Hill, New York. 2. Guillen J, Palanques A (1992) Sediment dynamics and hydrodynamics in the lower course of a river highly regulated by dams: The Ebro River. Sedimentology 39, 567579. 3. Tena A., Batalla R.J., and Vericat D. (2012) Reach-scale suspended sediment bal- ance downstream from dams in a large Mediterranean river. Hydrological Sciences Journal, Vol. 57(5), pp. 831-849. 8 4. Ibanez C., Alcaraz C., Caiola N., Rovira A., Trobajo R., Alonso M., Duran C., Jimnez P.J., Munn A., and Prat N. (2012) Regime shift from phytoplankton to macro- phyte dominance in a large river: top-down versus bottom-up effects. Science of the Total Environment, Vol. 416, pp. 314-322. 5. Jimenez JA, Snchez-Arcilla A (1993) Medium-term coastal response at the Ebro Delta, Spain. Marine Geology 114, 105118 6. Ibanez C., Sharpe P.J., Day J.W., Day J.N., and Prat N. (2010) Vertical Accretion and Relative Sea Level Rise in the Ebro Delta Wetlands (, Spain). Wetlands, Vol. 30, pp. 979988. 7. Ibanez C, Canicio A, Day JW, Curc A (1997) Morphologic development, relative sea level rise and sustainable management of water and sediment in the Ebre Delta, Spain. J Coastal Conservation 3, 191202. 8. Rovira A. and Ibanez C. (2007) Sediment Management Options for the Lower Ebro River and its Delta. Journal of Soils and Sediments, Vol. 7(5), pp. 285295. 9. Gorria H (1877) Desecacin de las marismas y terrenos pantanosos denominados de los alfaques. Technical report. Ministerio de Agricultura, Madrid. 10. Martin-Vide JP, Mazza de Almeida GA, Helmbrecht J, Ferrer C, Rojas Lara DL (2004) Estudio tcnico-econmico de alternativas del programa para corregir la subsi- dencia y regresin del delta del Ebro. Technical Report (unpublished). 11. Ibanez´ C, Day JW, Reyes E (2013) The response of deltas to sea-level rise: natu- ral mechanisms and management options to adapt to high-end scenarios. Ecological Engineering, Vol. 65, pp. 122-130. 12. DeLaune RD, Jugsujinda A, Peterson GW, Patrick WH (2003) Impact of Missis- sippi River freshwater reintroduction on enhancing accretionary processes in a Louisiana . Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science 58, 653, 662. 13. Mendelssohn IA, Kuhn N (2003) Sediment subsidy: Effects on soil-plant re- sponses in a rapidly submerging coastal . Ecological Engineering, Vol. 21, 115128.

9

CHAPTER 3

CLIMATE CHANGE AND WATER MANAGEMENT IN THE EBRO BASIN

M. Taher Kahil and J. Albiac Department of Agricultural Economics, CITA, Zaragoza, Spain

The pressure on water resources has been mounting worldwide with water scarcity becoming a widespread problem in most arid and semiarid regions around the world. Global water extractions have increased from 600 to 3,900 km3 in the last century, which is almost twice the rate of population growth. Both water scarcity and water quality problems result from the intensive growth of population and income. This degradation of water resources has resulted in 35 percent of the world population living under severe water scarcity. Furthermore, about 65 percent of global river flows and aquatic ecosystems are under moderate to high threats of degradation [1].

Climate change is going to exacerbate the degradation of water resources in arid and semiarid regions, by reducing water availability and increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme drought events [2]. Spain is one of the regions where water resources will suffer large negative impacts from climate change. The Ebro Basin of Spain is presented as a case to explore water management options for addressing the effects of climate change on water scarcity and droughts.

The Ebro Basin extends over 85,600 km2, covering a fifth of the Spanish territory, and carrying one of the largest stream flows in the country. The irrigation area in the basin is considerable although the pressure on water resources from population and

11 economic activities is less severe than in other Spanish basins. The river flow at the mouth has been falling in recent decades but the river has not yet become a closed system, a problem found in other Spanish southeastern basins. Despite that, the new water plan of the Ebro basin indicates that the limit of extractions has been reached in most watersheds, especially in the basin southern tributaries [3].

Figure 3.1 Current and future water demands in the Ebro basin.

The Ebro basin renewable resources are estimated at 14,600 Mm3, and these re- sources sustain 8,400 Mm3 of water extractions, of which 8,050 Mm3 are surface water resources (including 200 Mm3 of inter-basin transfers to the Basque and Cat- alonia regions) and 350 Mm3 are groundwater resources (Figure 3.1). Extractions for agricultural production amount to about 7,680 Mm3 (92%) to irrigate 700,000 ha of field crops (wheat, barley, corn, rice, and alfalfa) and fruit trees. Extractions for urban water supply are 360 Mm3 serving 3 million inhabitants, including households and network connected industries and services. Direct extractions by industries amount to 160 Mm3, and there are also non-consumptive extractions for cooling (3,100 Mm3) and hydropower (38,000 Mm3).

The fraction of consumptive extractions per year over renewable resources is 60 percent, and further pressures from economic activities have to be curtailed to avoid the gradual closing of the basin. This is not consistent with the planned demand in the basin for 2027, which is projected to increase by 30 percent (Figure 3.1), while climate change impacts would reduce water availability 10% in 2040 and up to 30% in 2100 [4].

The current water extractions are already bringing about noncompliance with the min- imum environmental flow thresholds established in the previous basin plan of 1998. Noncompliance is occurring in between 10 and 30 percent of the river gauging sta- tions [5], with high noncompliance events in the Gallego and tributaries. The Ebro river flow in Zaragoza (middle Ebro) and (mouth) also shows signif- icant noncompliance events. The basin river flows have been stable during the last decade, but the implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) involves higher minimum thresholds for environmental protection. Some measures have been taken to curtail water extractions in aquifers with serious overdraft problems (Alfamen, Campo de Carinena, ), and new programs are being prepared to 12 fulfill the new monthly flow regimes by improving flow measurements, and verifying concession licenses (rivers Aragon, Gallego, , , Noguera-Pallaresa, and along the Ebro).

The set of measures laid out in the 2014 Ebro basin plan to achieve the WFD objectives includes investments of 4.8 billion Euros: 2.75 billion for environmental objectives, 1.63 billion for satisfying water demand, and 0.42 billion for coping with extreme events. The main investments for environmental objectives are wastewater treatment plants and irrigation modernization, together with protection of the Ebro Delta and elimination of chemical pollution sediments in . The main investments for satisfying water demand are irrigation facilities in Catalonia, Aragon´ and Navarra.

The Ebro drought plan was approved in 2007 and it is part of the new Ebro basin plan. It includes a system of hydrological drought indicators, drought management rules for the watershed boards, and urban emergency plans. There are progressively more stringent drought measures for the whole basin as drought severity intensifies. There are also specific measures for each watershed, which are taken by the watershed boards.

The drought plan allocates water among users following the priority rules that guar- antee the provision of urban, industrial and environmental demand, while giving lower priority to irrigation. During severe drought events, all stakeholders are involved in the Drought Board with full power to manage water resources in order to mitigate economic and environmental damages. Drought damage costs in the Ebro could be considerable, with estimates of 400 million Euros during the last 2005 drought (agri- culture 280 million, urban sector 18 million, energy sector 90 million, and environment 20 million) [6].

One key issue for water management in the Ebro basin is adaptation of water re- sources to the upcoming effects of climate change, which is projected to exacerbate water scarcity and the intensity and frequency of droughts. Solving this adaptation issue requires more sustainable water management in the basin, backed by suitable policy instruments. The policy approach in the Ebro basin is institutional, based on the cooperation among stakeholders inside the basin authority. There is a strong tradition of cooperation among water user associations dating back centuries in all Spanish basins.

The experiences in water governance worldwide show two different approaches for the management of water scarcity. One approach is economic instruments such as water markets and water pricing, where water is managed as a private good. The other approach is institutional instruments based on collective action, where water is managed as a common pool resource. Water markets seem more suitable than water pricing for allocation of irrigation water [7]. Water pricing is a good instrument for urban networks, but it fails in irrigation because of its common pool resource

13 characteristics. Nevertheless, economic instruments can be introduced in irrigation provided that irrigation water is transformed into a private good.

Water markets and collective action are alternative approaches to achieve welfare gains in the form of private and social benefits. Both approaches are intertwined though, because the water trading experiences worldwide indicate that markets tend to disregard third party effects, including environmental impacts [8]. Well functioning water markets would require a great deal of cooperation by stakeholders within a strong institutional setting. Conversely, the institutional approach in basins such as the Ebro would work better by using carefully designed economic instruments. These incentives would introduce more flexibility into the institutional process of decision making and implementation leading to sustainable water management.

References 1. Vorosmarty, C., McIntyre, P., Gessner, M., Dudgeon, D., Prusevich, A., Green, P., Glidden, S., Bunn, S., Sullivan, C., Liermann, C., Davies, P. (2010) Global threats to human water security and river biodiversity. Nature, 467, pp. 555-561. 2. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2014) Climate Change 2014: Im- pacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC. IPCC. Geneva. 3. Confederacion Hidrografica del Ebro. (2013) Propuesta de Proyecto de Plan Hidrolgico de la Cuenca del Ebro. Memoria. CHE. MAGRAMA. Zaragoza. 4. Centro de Estudios y Experimentacion de Obras Publicas. (2010) Estudio de los impactos del cambio climtico en los recursos hdricos y las masas de agua. Ficha 1: Evaluacin del impacto del cambio climtico en los recursos hdricos en rgimen natural. CEDEX. MARM. Madrid. 5. Confederacion Hidrografica del Ebro. (2008) Esquema Provisional de Temas Im- portantes en Materia de Gestin de las Aguas en la Demarcacin Hidrogrfica del Ebro. CHE. MARM. Zaragoza. 6. Henandez, N., Gil, M., Garrido, A., Rodriguez, R. (2013) La Sequia 2005-2008 en la Cuenca del Ebro: Vulnerabilidad, Impactos y Medidas de Gestin. CEIGRAM. Universidad Politcnica de Madrid. Madrid. 7. Cornish, G., Bosworth, B., Perry, C., Burke, J. (2004) Water charging in irrigated agriculture. An analysis of international experience. FAO Water Reports 28. FAO. Rome. 8. Connor, J., Kaczan, D. (2013) Principles for Economically Efficient and Environ- mentally Sustainable Water Markets: The Australian Experience. In K. Schwabe et al. (Eds) Drought in Arid and Semi-Arid Environments. Springer. Dordrecht (pp. 357-374).

14 CHAPTER 4

BEYOND THE PUBLIC-PRIVATE DICHOTOMY: AN INSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS OF DROUGHT ROBUSTNESS IN THE RIEGOS DEL ALTO ARAGON´ IRRIGATION PROJECT

Sergio Villamayor-Tomas Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany

The increased global exposure to climate change disturbances such as droughts and floods has generated a new interest in understanding how communities at different scales cope with those threats [1]. This paper aims to contribute to fill that gap by offering some explanations of the ability of more than 10,000 farmers in the Riegos del Alto Aragon (RAA) project to cope with droughts through a mixture of common property and private property institutions.

The RAA project is located in the inter-basin of the Gallego and Cinca rivers. The Gallego and the Cinca are two -melt dependent rivers that flow from the Mountains to the Ebro river valley, Spain (see Figure 4.1). The local climate is semi- arid Mediterranean continental, with an annual precipitation of around 400 mm and reference evapotranspiration of around 1100 mm [2]. A series of reservoirs and canals store and divert the water from the rivers to the project, which encompasses more than 100,000 irrigable hectares and an average demand of around 750 million m3 per year [3]. The reservoirs serve the RAA systems as well as other systems outside the project for a total average demand of around 1,500 million m3.

One key challenge in large irrigation projects like the RAA‘s is the allocation of water across farmers [4,5]. This challenge can be framed in collective action terms. As

15 Figure 4.1 The RAA irrigation project.

coined by Hardin [6] in his “tragedy of the commons“ tale, users of common pool resources (CPR) like many irrigation systems, forests, fisheries and pastures do not have the incentives to self-restrain resource extraction because they cannot exclude others from the benefits of such effort, so the resource is overexploited and may collapse.

Farmers in the RAA case seem to have overcome well the“tragedy of the commons“, as judged by the endurance of the project and the increasing production of irrigated crops over time [3]. In the last 40 years, however, the Ebro valley has witnessed an increased climatic uncertainty caused by rapid changes between wet and dry periods [7]. As illustrated in Figure 4.2, the drought of 2005-2006 stands out as the severest of the period, with a decrease by almost 60% of the 1971-2003 series average inflows.

In the event of a drought, irrigators may need to adapt their cropping patterns to reduce collective water demand, which requires cooperation. In a context where water is shared, farmers may not be willing to decrease their irrigated acreage or switch from higher to lower water demand crops- higher water demand crops like corn or alfalfa tend to yield higher economic returns than lower water demand crops like wheat or barley [2] - if they cannot prevent other farmers from free riding on such effort. 16 Despite the severe decrease of water availability and salience of the social dilemma, the RAA project performed relatively well during the 2005 drought, with a decrease of not more than 25% in irrigation performance, where irrigation performance was first calculated as a ratio between “Water supplied to RAA“ and “RAA crop water needs“ for each year [8]. Then the scores were transformed into percentages using 2004 as the base year.

Figure 4.2 Series of total inflows in the RAA reservoirs (million m3). Series calculated from October to September of each year. Drought threshold was set to one standard deviation below the series mean ( 1200 m3) after [20]

An important property of the project that permits explaining the RAA robustness to droughts is the implementation of a common pool quota policy. This policy can be understood as a mixture of common property and private property regime features. During non-drought periods, all farmers within the project share an equal right to use the water and then coordinate through a series of rules to allocate the resource. Water management involves three organizational actors, from the bottom to the top: water user associations (WUAs), which operate within the boundaries of irrigation systems/districts (50 of them); the General Community of RAA (GCRAA), which co- ordinates WUAs; and the Ebro river basin authority that coordinates the RAA project and other systems within the Cinca-Gallego and Ebro basins.

During droughts the water use rights are ‘privatized‘ at the district level, i.e. each district receives a quota of water based on its irrigable hectares. Quotas are exclu- 17 Figure 4.3 Correlations between water, land and technology variables across RAA systems in 2005.

sive, but some transferability is possible: farmers who own land in different districts can request a transfer of their theoretical quota from one of the systems to the other. Pooled quotas allow users to share the risk of financial losses if the resource is more scarce than expected [9], i.e., conservation efforts by farmers with lower dependence on irrigated agriculture can be used to serve the needs of those that are more de- pendent on irrigation. Also, transferability of rights can facilitate the concentration of rights into uses that are more efficient or necessary [10], i.e., as irrigation water use rights can be transferred from areas where the costs of reducing acreage or switching crops are higher to areas where the costs are lower [11,12]. In the RAA water tends to be concetrated in districts where sprinkler irrigation is more dominant (see Figure 4.3).

Figure 4.4 Spatial autoregressive models for drought performance in 2005 - calculated as the difference between the irrigation performance in 2004 and 2005.

18 The success of the quota policy depends also on features of the WUAs and irrigation districts. As illustrated in Figure 4.4, performance of the quota policy increases when the WUAs enjoy the monitoring role fulfilled by field guards (see “Formal monitoring“ variable in Figure 4.4); the information-sharing and coordination leadership fulfilled by experience and legitimate presidents; high water retention soils (“Hydric soils“ variable); and incoming water (quota) transfers.

The combination of different property right institutions for effective natural resource governance has been recognized by scholars in different environmental sectors [13,14, 15,16,17]; however, studies testing the conditions under which such institutions can be successful are relatively rare [9,18,19]. This study addresses that gap by focusing on the successful combination of common property institutions with pooled transfer- able quotas in water scarcity scenarios. These effects, however, are contingent on other important bio-physical and institutional properties. Discounting the relevance of these contextual variables when prescribing the use of pooled transferable quotas might lead to undesirable outcomes.

References 1. UN/ISDR. 2004. Living with Risk: A Global Review of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. Geneva, Switzerland: United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR). 2. Lecina, S., D. Isidoro, E. Playn, and R. Arags. 2010. ”Irrigation modernization and water conservation in Spain: The case of Riegos del Alto Aragn.” Agricultural Water Management 97 (10):1663-1675. 3. RRAA. 2010. Riegos del Alto Aragon 2010. Available from http://www.riegosdelaltoaragon.es/. 4. Lam, Wai Fung. 1998. Governing Irrigation Systems in Nepal. San Francisco: CA: ICS Press. 5. Subramanian, Ashok , N. Vijay Jagannathan, and Ruth MeinzenDick. 1997. User Organizations for Sustainable Water Services. Vol. 354. Washington DC: The World Bank. 6. Hardin, Garret. 1968. ”The Tragedy of the Commons.” Science 162 (5364):1243- 48. 7. Vicente-Serrano, S. M., and J. M. Cuadrat-Prats. 2007. ”Trends in drought inten- sity and variability in the middle Ebro valley (NE of the Iberian peninsula) during the second half of the twentieth century.” Theoretical and Applied Climatology 88 (3):247-258. 8. Salvador, R., A. Martnez-Cob, J. Cavero, and E. Playn. 2011. ”Seasonal on- farm irrigation performance in the Ebro basin (Spain): Crops and irrigation systems.” Agricultural Water Management 98 (4):577-587. 9. Holland, D. S. 2010. ”Markets, pooling and insurance for managing bycatch in fisheries.” Ecological Economics 70 (1):121-133. 10. Copes, Parzival. 1986. ”A Critical Review of the Individual Quota as a Device 19 in Fisheries Management.” Land Economics 62 (3):278-291. 11. Chong, Howard, and David Sunding. 2006. ”Water Markets and Trading.” An- nual Review of Environment and Resources 31 (1):239-264. 12. Garrido, Alberto. 2007. ”Water markets design and evidence from experimental economics.” Environmental and Resource Economics 38 (3):311-330. 13. Cole, Daniel. 1999. ”Clearing the Air: Four Propositions about Property Rights and Environmental Protection.” Duke Envtl. L., Policy F. 10 (103). 14. Costello, Christopher, Steven D. Gaines, and John Lynham. 2008. ”Can Catch Shares Prevent Fisheries Collapse?” Science 321 (5896):1678-1681. doi: 10.1126/sci- ence.1159478. 15. Ostrom, Elinor. 2010. ”Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems.” American Economic Review 100 (3):641-72. 16. Dietz, T., and P. C. Stern, eds. 2002. New Tools for Environmental Protec- tion: Education, Information, and Voluntary Measures. Edited by National Research Council Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. 17. Dietz, Thomas, Elinor Ostrom, and Paul C. Stern. 2003. ”The Struggle to Gov- ern the Commons.” Science 302 (5652):1907-1912. 18. Calatrava, Javier, and Alberto Garrido. 2005. ”Modelling water markets under uncertain water supply.” European Review of Agricultural Economics 32 (2):119- 142. 19. Molle, Franois 2009. ”Water scarcity, prices and quotas: a review of evidence on irrigation volumetric pricing.” Irrigation and Drainage Systems 23 (1):3-58. 20. Hisdal, H., and L.M. Tallaksen. 2000. Drought Event Definition. In: Assess- ment of the Regional Impact of Droughts in Europe. Oslo, Norway: Department of Geophysics, University of Oslo.

20 CHAPTER 5

THE EBRO BASIN: AN EXAMPLE OF THE EVOLUTION OF POLYCENTRIC GOVERNANCE ARRANGEMENTS

Lucia De Stefano Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain

The Ebro river (85 362 km2 or 17% of Spain) is located in the north-east of Spain and provides an interesting example of the evolution of competences and strategies to manage water in a changing institutional context. The Ebro river crosses nine autonomous regions and is managed by the Spanish government through the Ebro River Basin Authority (RBA). Its evolution during the past century shows that poly- centric governance arrangements in federal rivers (or quasi-federal, as it is the case of Spain) are not static and instead have adapted by renegotiating the balance of devolved decision-making and federal coordination[1].

Although relatively wet, the Ebro shows declining trends in historic runoff (average nat- ural runoff is 14.62 billion m3/yr, with a decrease of 11% during the past two decades) and faces large projected reductions in mean annual runoff (up to a 27% decrease) [2]. A large percentage of the basin‘s area is being irrigated, which magnifies the effects of projected reductions in future runoff. The Ebro‘s water resources support the irrigation of about 800,000 hectares, livestock breeding, energy production and water supplies for a sparsely populated territory (32.3 inhabitants per km2). Most users withdraw water from 135 reservoirs having a total capacity of 8 billion m3, while groundwater - a key source for river base flows - is still rather scarcely exploited. The Ebro delta hosts a high-value that is affected by the decrease in water and

21 sediment flows due to upstream water development and is threatened by projected climate change impacts on coastal dynamics [3]. Persistent pollutants from historical mining and industrial activities, and organic pollution from agricultural and urban areas are also sources of concern in the basin.

From an institutional point of view, the Ebro basin was the cradle of one of the oldest river-wide water authorities, when in 1926 the Spanish government created the Ebro River Basin Authority (RBA) to manage the river with the participation of irrigators. Water allocation systems and strategies to achieve water security evolved with time, mirroring the changing power balance between the central government and regional governments. During Franco‘s dictatorship (1939-1975), the powerful central govern- ment had a very centralized approach to water management. It determined water allocation to users (individual or collective water rights) and executed it through the construction of large water infrastructure. The 1978 democratic Constitution, however, established the creation of 17 regions having broad powers and their own parliament (autonomous regions are roughly equivalent to ‘states‘ in federal contexts). In relation to water resources, the Constitution established that while intraregional rivers would be managed by regions, interregional rivers like the Ebro would remain under the jurisdiction of the central government through its RBAs, with little involvement of the regions.

In 1985 the Water Act for the first time admitted representatives of regions into some of the RBA boards and committees, with participation quotas proportional to the re- gions‘ territory and population shares in the basin. According to the Water Act, water uses should be regulated through River Basin Management Plans (RBMPs), which allocate water volumes to basin subsystems sharing regulation and distribution net- works (exploitation systems) and to specific user groups (irrigators, industries, etc.) within each subsystem. Individual or collective water rights are nested in these sub- systems, where annual allocation quotas to rights holders are defined in user-based RBA bodies based on annual precipitation and available water volumes. Although since 1985 autonomous regions are represented in the RBA boards, allocation deci- sions are still largely controlled by a rather closed community of users and developers [4]. This inertia helps to explain the unrest of increasingly powerful regions, which progressively started claiming a larger control over water flowing within their borders. In 1992, Aragon, which has a large share of the Ebro basin, was the first region to make its claims over water explicit through the Aragon Water Pact (AWP). The AWP included a list of more than 20 new hydraulic works that would allow for doubling Aragon‘s irrigated surface. In 1998, the RBMPs of all the Spanish basins-including the Ebro-were approved. Three years later, the central government approved the National Hydrological Plan (NHP) to address interbasin issues. Both the Ebro RBMP and the NHP incorporate the AWP water works. The NHP,however, also proposed the transfer of 1 billion m3/yr from the Ebro to other basins along the Mediterranean coast, which triggered fierce opposition in the donor regions, mainly Aragon and Catalonia, and fueled regional expectations over the Ebro waters in the recipient regions. Even though the transfer was repealed in 2004 after a political shift in the central govern-

22 ment, it marked a tipping point in the evolution of the power balance between regions and the Spanish State. Since then, regions have engaged in intense political negoti- ations and in legal actions - with the Spanish government or amongst themselves - to gain larger control over water and earmark additional resources, within or outside of their territorial boundaries.

The 2000 European Union Water Framework Directive set new challenges that the Spanish government began facing only in 2004, after the repeal of the Ebro transfer. In terms of water allocation, the WFD entailed opening a new 6-year planning cycle and adding a new layer of complexity to allocation, as water uses should be compatible with the achievement of good status of all waters. The new RBMP, approved in February 2014, still includes Aragon‘s water claims and ‘water reserves‘ for other regions in the Ebro, to be executed through new hydraulic works. The plan was passed after strenuous negotiations over the in-stream flows in the Ebro delta (in Catalonia), whose maintenance is considered by many to be at odds with the current and planned upstream regulation.

A glance at the history of interstate relationships in the Ebro basin shows that water al- location reforms have evolved from a centralized system to a complex web of sensitive political relationships, where the central government manages to approve basin-wide plans only through political and economic concessions (e.g. via financing of public water works) to the regional powers. The strengthening of the decentralization model is mirrored by a request for more competences by regions and attempts to ‘earmark‘ water reserves for their own development. In the most recent RBMP new environmen- tal requirements and old territorial claims coexist on paper, while the viability of their coexistence in practice still needs to be proven. Planning of supra-regional infrastruc- ture (the NHP and its controversial Ebro transfer) first, and EU-driven environmental demands later have been catalysts for changes in institutional balances. Federalâ^s- tate relationships are not static, but evolve as drivers and institutions interact and change; and the balance between levels shifts and is increasingly impacted by politics and by policy changes at very different levels.

References 1. Garrick D, De Stefano L, Fung F, Pittock J, Schlager E, New M, Connell D. 2013 Managing hydroclimatic risks in federal rivers: a diagnostic assessment. Phil Trans R Soc A 371: 20120415. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2012.0415. 2. Quiroga S, Garrote L, Iglesias A, Fernandez-Haddad Z, Schlickenrieder J, de Lama C, Sanchez-Arcilla A. 2011 The economic value of drought information for water management under climate change: a case study in the Ebro basin. Nat. Haz- ards Earth Syst. Sci. 11, 643657. (doi:10.5194/nhess-11-643-2011). 3. Sanchez-Arcilla A, Jimnez JA, Valdemoro HI, Gracia V. 2008 Implications of climatic change on Spanish Mediterranean low-lying coasts: the Ebro delta case. J. Coastal Res. 24, 306316. (doi:10.2112/07A-0005.1). 23 4. Hernandez-Mora N, del Moral L, La Roca F, La Calle A, Schmidt G. 2013 Inter- basin water transfers in Spain. Interregional conflicts and governance responses. In Globalized water (ed. G Schneier-Madanes). Dordrecht, Germany: Springer.

24 CHAPTER 6

HYDRO-ECONOMIC MODELLING OF WATER SCARCITY: AN APPLICATION TO AN EBRO SUB-CATCHMENT

Nina Graveline Bureau de Recherches Geologiques et Miniers, France

This chapter based on the work of Graveline et al. [1] highlights the importance of adopting integrated hydro-economic models [2] to investigate the climate-water nexus and to assess the effects of global changes in terms of water scarcity, salinity and agricultural economics at a regional scale. We develop a hydro-economic model for a sub-catchment of the Ebro basin -the Gallego catchment - that combines hydrological processes, regulation and operation of water reservoirs and economic processes that drive agricultural water demands.

The Gallego catchment covers a 4,009 km2 area and is located in the northern part of the Ebro basin (Figure 6.1). At the confluence with the Ebro river near the city of Zaragoza, the Gallego river has an average annual discharge of 1090 hm3. Sev- eral reservoirs have been constructed in the Gallego catchment since the 1960s for hydropower production and irrigation purposes. Reservoirs mostly supply irrigation water demand, which represents 94% of the water demand in the Gallego catchment.

The hydrological modelling system implements suitable modules for snow accumu- lation and melting, infiltration, evapotranspiration, subsurface flow generation and channel routing and it is specifically designed to model climate change impacts on this catchment [3]. The management of the 5 reservoirs present in the catchment is

25 Figure 6.1 Map of the Gallego catchment: a sub-catchment of the Ebro basin.

simulated as a trade-off between maximizing water availability for agricultural uses, satisfying the minimum ecological flow conditions in the river and satisfying the reser- voir security margins for flood control. The economic model is a linear programming model [4]. Irrigation water demands are simulated based on the water availability in the system, which influences the farmers‘ choices with respect to cropping patterns and irrigation practices. This means that in dry years, farmers may choose crops that are less water intensive, leading to lower irrigation demands. The integration of the different models is performed with a“compartment approach“ which consists of an exchange of input/output data done at specific locations in the systems. This allows for the adoption of sophisticated models for each“compartment“, as opposed to holistic models that integrate in one unique model (which often includes oversimplified hydrological and economic modelling) the representation of all processes.

The technical implementation of the coupled modeling system can be summarized in five steps: - Step 1: Based on different levels of water availability for agriculture, economic model runs have been performed in order to create a library of responses able to provide the input data for the hydrological model and the reservoir operation compartment (i.e. monthly water demand based on selected cropping pattern). The optimization time-horizon was fixed at one year, with each month being simulated separately. - Step 2: Based on the monthly water demands derived in Step 1 and on the reservoir management rules, expected withdrawals from reservoirs and water supplies to rivers and irrigation districts are fixed at daily time scale by the reservoir operation compart- ment. - Step 3: Based on output from Step 2, hydrological model runs are performed with a daily time-step, which provides data of water fluxes and water storage in selected nodes. 26 - Step 4: Based on aggregated yearly values of water supplied as output from Steps 2 and 3, the economic model provides irrigated area, crop yields, regional agricultural income and salt emissions. - Step 5: Coupling of the models is achieved by iterating steps 2, 3 and 4 over the simulation period in which the hydrological model updates yearly values of water availability together with the input data provided by the agro-economic library and the reservoir management compartment.

Figure 6.2 Overview on impacts of scenarios on main indicators (average values for either the reference period 2001-2005 or the 30 years period 2071-2100 for the climatic change and global change scenarios.

The hydro-economic model is then used to simulate different scenarios and their im- pact on water and agricultural economics (Figure 6.2). The impacts of three main changes are explored (i) projected changes in climate as characterized by previous work conducted in the catchment [5], (ii) an expansion of water storage capacity by reservoir enlargement, and (iii) the modernization of irrigation technology (from gravity irrigation to sprinkler irrigation for 50% of irrigated land) resulting in a decrease in per hectare-water demand by the improvement of water application efficiency. Further- more, two global change scenarios are also considered. They are both characterized by the modernization of irrigation technology and climatic change. The first, GC1, includes the enlargement of water storage capacity and the second, GC2, does not. In particular, the effect of reservoir expansion in the GC1 scenario is negligible if com- pared to thr GC2 scenario. As a result, the outcomes of both global change scenarios are almost identical.

The results suggest that in this part of the Ebro basin reservoir expansion appears not to be an effective solution for adapting to the impacts of climate change and for meet- ing water demands for extra irrigated land. The results also suggest that investments in modernization of irrigation technology would mitigate the negative impacts of cli- mate change on the agricultural sector. However, irrigation technology modernization has high implementation costs, which would slightly outweigh the extra regional agri- cultural income, and would result in negative enviromental impacts through increased salinity. Furthermore, we show that adoption of more efficient water-saving irrigation technologies does not result in an increased water-availability at the basin scale in dry years. 27 Our integrated hydro-economic model is practically relevant to decision-makers in the Ebro basin because it enables for the simultaneous assessment of different factors of change, both natural and socio-economic, and for the simulation of their impacts on future water availability. Different water management policies can be simulated in our model and results can be used to assist water planning decisions in the Ebro basin.

References 1. Graveline, N., Majone, B., Van Duinen, R., and Ansink, E. (2014). Hydro- economic modeling of water scarcity under global change: an application to the Gallego river basin (Spain). Regional Environmental Change, 14(1), 119-132. 2. Harou, J.J., Pulido-Velazquez, M., Rosenberg, D.E., Medelln-Azuara, J., Lund, J.R., Howitt, R.E., 2009. Hydro-economic models: concepts, design, applications, and future prospects. Journal of Hydrology. 375(3-4), 627-643. 3. Majone, B., Bovolo, C. I., Bellin, A., Blenkinsop, S., Fowler, H. J. (2012). Mod- eling the impacts of future climate change on water resources for the Gllego river basin (Spain). Water Resources Research, 48(1). 4. Hazell, P.B.R., Norton, R.D., 1986. Mathematical Programming for Economic Analysis in Agriculture. Macmillan, New York. 5. Burger, C. M., O. Kolditz, H. J. Fowler, and S. Blenkinsop (2007), Learning machines for rainfall-runoff modelling in the Upper Gallego catchment (Spain), En- vironemental Pollution, 148, 842854.

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