Agricultural water demand management is at the core of the "water for food programme" launched as a result of a pledge by the Netherlands' Minister for agriculture at the 2nd world water forum. This article highlights the contribution of Wageningen URwithin the concept

The current financial crisis of irrigation sector is attributable to and characterized by inadequate budgetary allocations, low irrigation water rates and their poor recovery, inadequate maintenance of irrigation works, meagre financial resources available for organization and management, highly subsidized electricity for irrigation pumping and absence of any groundwater extraction charges and regulation policies. The 'business as usual' scenario of the irrigation sector, if allowed to continue, will add to the already severe financial crisis and make the perceived investments financially unviable and unsustainable. Sustaining the huge investment envisaged for the irrigation sector would require moving towards an "improved management" scenario.

This book, which contains 13 separately authored chapters, has been developed from the ADAPT Project, focusing on the development of regional adaptation strategies to climate change and climate variability for water, food and the environment in river basins across the world. Chapter 1 describes a generic methodology for river basins (called the Adaptation Methodology for River Basins, AMR). Chapter 2 discusses the use of climate change scenarios as provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and, more specifically, how these scenarios can be used for regional studies. Chapters 3 and 4 describe in more detail the possible consequences of climate change and climate variability for food security and environmental quality. The application of the generic AMR methodology to 7 basin case studies in contrasting geographical areas of the world is presented in Chapters 5-11: Syr Darya (Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan), Zayandeh (Iran), Rhine (Germany, Netherlands and France), Mekong (Yunnan (China), Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam), Volta (Ghana), Walawe (Sri Lanka), and Sacramento (California, USA), respectively. Chapter 12 integrates the findings of the basin studies and compares these findings with global trends in climate change related to food security. Finally, Chapter 13 gives a summary of the experiences encountered during the ADAPT project, and provides key findings that should be addressed in new regional adaptation studies. This book will be of interest to researchers in climatology, geography, ecology, agriculture, environmental studies and related disciplines. | Gift