india water project
Ongoing aquifer depletion in India threatens agricultural production in the future. The provision of free energy for pumping as well as price distortions on the agricultural market are giving wrong incentives to producers who then end up depleting these groundwater resources. The current system, with its energy, water and food components fatefully interlinked, is in urgent need of repair. Corrective policies to address the current highly inefficient and unsustainable setup are difficult to formulate due to complex institutional obstacles as well as welfare and sustainability constraints.
Our work to date has focused on the Telangana region in Andhra Pradesh. Due to the unreliable Monsoon in this region, irrigation from shallow groundwater is a critical component in agriculture. After the collection of a comprehensive dataset for the region we have now gained a proper mechanistic understanding of the dynamics of the shallow groundwater resources, their extent and their management potential. With this, we have laid the foundation for future work that will focus on the economic and institutional system. In the long-run, we aim at an integrated human-environment systems approach within which interventions can be tested. The extensive personal contacts with have with key players in the region have greatly facilitated access to relevant information. We are also working with them in close collaboration so as to identify suitable field sites where our scientific findings/approaches can be tested in the future.
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Contact researchers: Tobias Siegfried, ts2392@columbia.edu
Ram Fishman, rf2241@columbia.edu
Victor Vazquez, vv2158@columbia.edu