Water Allocation Literature Review

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Literature Review 2.1 Multiple uses of irrigation water Poor populations need water for different uses like drinking, hygiene, sanitation and food production and income generation. Existing approaches to water service delivery systems are designed for a single use for example, drinking or irrigation. Poor people often rely on those single-use systems to meet multiple water needs that are not considered in the planning or design of the system. Multiple uses of irrigation water takes into account peoples’ multiple water needs as a basis for water system design. In arid and semi-arid areas, irrigation water may be the only source for other non-irrigation uses such as for drinking and livestock. These multiple uses of irrigation water to meet…show more content…
Rights are at the heart of any water allocation system, they define the amount of water that is going to be allocated to individuals or groups of people for different uses. Due to the vital nature of water, state law, religious law, customary law and local norms all contribute something in defining water rights. Water allocation is further complicated when we take into account multiple uses, as well as multiple users of water as a resource (Ruth, 2006). The strength of water rights can be indicated by the way in which all laws in the water service delivery are enforced. This is critical in the case of water resources, because the available water supply, as well as the demand, changes from year to year. Stronger water rights will apply even during drought. Most governments are rigid to incorporate multiple water uses in their water delivery system for both agriculture and domestic uses. 2.4Multiple water…show more content…
In Ethiopia, the NGO Catholic Relief Services introduced gravity schemes that incorporated multiple use water services (Ebatao and Van Koppen 2005). Nepal Smallholder Market Initiative (SIMI) and International Development Enterprise (IDE) introduced multiple systems in Nepal. They consist of collection tanks at stream diversions that deliver water to reservoir near a village settlements by gravity through a pipe network. The use of small drip irrigation kits improved water use efficiency and over yield (Nepal SIMI 2004). The South African NGO Association for Water and Rural Development is working on livelihood based bottom-up planning for multiple water uses, which fully is incorporated into developments plans of the local government (Maluleke et al 2005). A study of the West-Gandak Irrigation Scheme in Nepal also indicated that 44 percent of the poorest third of the population drew water from irrigation canals to use it for other purposes (Van Koppen et al

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