Gestión del agua regulada por una presaEl precio del agua como instrumento de planificación y financiamiento para la modernización de los sistemas de irrigación

Abstract

In the province of Jujuy was developed an irrigation area regulated by a dam, and currently is planned to increase the area to be irrigated. This will lead to increased water demand that would exceed the supply available given the current state of infrastructure, generating scarcity. Since prices contribute to allocate scarce resources among competing users, set out to explore a maximum threshold price of water that allow producers set up a fund for financing irrigation technologies and changing efficiency in resource use due technological substitution. This will contribute consequently, to increasing the irrigated area due water saving. Mathematical programming model was constructed for estimating land use and consumption of water at different prices and inverse demand curve was graphed. A price threshold was defined at the inelastic part of the inverse demand curve, and the amount of money to finance the replacement of irrigation technologies was established. Then the amount of water to be reallocated was estimated. It was found that the price surplus would finance the modernization of surface irrigation to drip irrigation to the entire area. Maintaining constant efficiencies rural infrastructure and reaching an overall efficiency of 80% is achieved irrigate the incremental surface with the average annual volume of water dammed. International experience shows that to induce a reduction in water demand, significant price increases are required and those prices are politically difficult to enforce. Therefore, was proposed to determine the threshold price of water in the inelastic portion of the demand curve that producers would willing to pay to finance the replacement of the irrigation technology to achieve savings targets, and investigate the relevant aspects perceived due to modernization. In order to have empirical evidence, a research process was designed and developed through a survey structured. This allowed testing the relevant hypotheses in the field. In order to quantify the cause-effect variables structural equation model (SEM) was used. The results demonstrate that the producer is willing to pay up to four times the price of water to finance and invest in irrigation technologies. There was also confirmed that they are predisposed to participate in the creation of a single organization to manage the whole area irrigated by the dam. The challenge for achieving the goal of saving water in an area served by a dam would be determined by the motivations of producers regarding technological modernization and their propensity to invest, as well as proper design of an organizational structure that allow to incorporate most of them. Because of that, the support for strengthening organizations and institutions throughout the process is required.