Upali A. Amarasinghe

International Water Management Institute | IWMI · Research

Prolonged and recurrent droughts seriously threaten Africa’s food and water security. This threat frequently coexists with human-induced calamities, such as domestic and international conflicts and civil unrest, which could exacerbate the socio-economic instability already present in the region. Using a novel data-driven approach, we evaluated how...

This innovation brief presents a methodology that was developed and empirically applied in Morocco to support the "setting up (of) a multiscale polycentric governance framework for promoting transformative adaptation options for climate change" as part of the overarching goal of Work Package #4 (WP4) of the CGIAR Initiative on Climate Resilience (a...

With the increasing frequency and intensity of climate-related disasters, several social protection and livelihood resilience tools have been tested to reduce agricultural risks. The findings of this study are based on the initial bundled climate insurance solutions pilot conducted in five districts in Sri Lanka (Anuradhapura, Vavuniya, Monaragala,...

The AWARE platform disseminates information on climate, market, health, nutrition, and population climate, market, health, nutrition, and population displacement, to promote collaborative efforts by multiple displacement, to promote collaborative efforts by multiple partners at local-to-national scales to enhance preparedness, partners at local-to-...

Drought is an almost annual phenomenon affecting many parts of Sri Lanka, causing huge damage to agriculture and losses to the broader economy in general and farmers in particular. Climate change threatens to exacerbate these risks. Risk transfer mechanisms, such as crop insurance schemes, may help buffer farmers against these hazards and has gaine...

This Study forms part of the research under Work Package #4 (WP4) of CGIAR Research Program: Building Systemic Resilience against Climate Variability and Extremes (ClimBeR). This research has the overarching goal of “setting up a bottom-up polycentric governance framework for promoting multiscale transformative adaptation options and targeted clima...

In spite of being water surplus, the 600⁺ million population of the large Ganges basin spread over 1.09 m km² in South Asia is water insecure, poor, and highly exposed to water-induced stresses of floods and droughts. The contribution from the glaciers to the streamflow is ~70% in the Himalayan catchments though spatially distributed quantification...

The general perception of canal irrigation systems in India is one of built infrastructure with low service performance. This paper presents an analytical framework, applied to the Sina medium irrigation system in Maharashtra state of India, to study the performance of an expanded water influence zone (WIZ) including a buffer zone outside the canal...

The Ganga is an international transboundary river that flows across three major riparian countries: India, Nepal, and Bangladesh, where India shares a significant proportion of the total basin area. The river system is highly dynamic and regularly floods in all three countries due to abundant rainfall in a short period of only four months each year...

This paper tries to shift the focus of research on the impact of natural disasters on economic growth from global and national levels to sub-national levels. Inadequate sub-national level information is a significant lacuna for planning spatially targeted climate change adaptation investments. A fixed-effect panel regression analyses of 19 states f...

This study on Water Productivity Mapping of Major Indian Crops explores two primary questions: Are the existing cropping patterns in India in line with the natural water resource endowments of various regions? Are these cropping patterns sustainable from a water-use perspective? The broad findings of the study indicate that there are regions in Ind...

Groundwater samples were collected from 44 wells in the Ramganga Sub-Basin (RSB), India, and analysed for major ions, nutrients and trace metals. The primary goal of this study is to evaluate the hydrochemistry and to identify the geochemical processes that govern the water chemistry in the shallow and deep tube wells in the study area using geoche...

Runoff generated in the monsoon months in the upstream parts of the Ganges River basin (GRB) contributes substantially to downstream floods, while water shortages in the dry months affect agricultural production in the basin. This paper examines the potential for subsurface storage (SSS) in the Ganges basin to mitigate floods in the downstream area...

Although the Ganges River Basin (GRB) has abundant water resources, the seasonal monsoon causes a mismatch in water supply and demand, which creates severe water-related challenges for the people living in the basin, the rapidly growing economy and the environment. Addressing these increasing challenges will depend on how people manage the basin’s...

Reviving the Ganges Water Machine (GWM), coined 40 years ago, is the most opportune solution for mitigating the impacts of recurrent droughts and floods in the Ganges River Basin in South Asia. GWM create subsurface storage (SSS) by pumping more groundwater from the aquifers before the monsoon for irrigation and other uses and recharge it during th...

Groundwater quality receives increasing attention in water management in India. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the emerging issues of groundwater quality in the Ramganga Sub-Basin (RSB), a tributary joining the Ganga River from the northern plains, which extends over 30,839 Sq. km and covers 15 districts in both Uttarakhand and Uttar Pra...

The Ganges River basin faces severe water challenges related to a mismatch between supply and demand. Although the basin has abundant surface water and groundwater resources, the seasonal monsoon causes a mismatch between supply and demand as well as flooding. Water availability and flood potential is high during the 3–4 months (June–September) of...

The public discourse on the National River Linking Project (NRLP) has been hopelessly lopsided—with the protagonists of the project unable to take on the antagonists on either their rhetoric or their analytics. This paper contributes to the discourse by presenting a balanced analytical point of view from a series of studies conducted by the Interna...

The Ganges River Basin may have a major pending water crisis. Although the basin has abundant surface water and groundwater resources, the seasonal monsoon causes a mismatch between supply and demand as well as flooding. Water availability and flood potential is high during the 3–4 months of the monsoon season. Yet, the highest demands occur during...

Responding to rainfall variability has always been one of the most critical risks facing farmers. It is also an integral part of the job of water managers, whether it be designing interventions for flood management, improving the reliability of water supply for irrigation or advising on priorities during drought conditions. The conventional tools a...

Water consumption and landholding size are major determinants of agricultural development in Indo-Gangetic basin (IGB). Though high attention has been given to irrigation policy and land consolidation in the three riparian countries of Pakistan, India and Nepal, the effects of water consumption and land size to farmers’ welfare in the IGB are still...

Surface runoff generated in the monsoon months in the upstream parts of the Ganges River Basin contributes substantially to downstream floods, while water shortages in the dry months affect agricultural production in the basin. This paper examines the parts (sub-basins) of the Ganges that have the potential for augmenting subsurface storage (SSS),...

Water demand projections (WDPs) are widely used for future water resource planning. Accurate WDPs can reduce waste or scarcity associated with overdevelopment or underdevelopment, respectively, of water resources. Considering that the projection period of some WDPs have now passed, this paper examines how closely such past projected withdrawals mat...

Water demand projections (WDPs) are widely used for future water resource planning. Accurate WDPs can reduce waste or scarcity associated with over-development or underdevelopment, respectively, of water resources. Considering that the projection period of some WDPs have now passed, this paper examines how closely such past projected withdrawals ma...

The bulk of the water productivity (WP) literature has focused on static cross-sectional analysis with inadequate attention given to long-term, time series analysis, either at the country level or at a lower level of aggregation (e.g., district). The present study fills this gap by analyzing WP in Bangladesh using panel data of 21 districts over 37...

This study assesses the changing consumption patterns of rice in Bangladesh and its implications on water demand by 2030. Rice dominates food and water consumption patterns in the country; it contributed to 72% of the total calorie supply from food, and 81% and 79% of the total cropped and irrigated area, respectively, in 2010. Forecasts using time...

Can the System of Rice Intensification be the answer to meet the country's future rice demand? A macro-level study covering 13 major rice-growing states indicates that fields with SRI have a higher average yield compared to non-SRI fields. Out of the four core SRI components typically recommended, 41% adopted one component, 39% adopted two to three...

We report on a discussion among IWMI's Asian researchers on our strategy for policy research on canal irrigation in India. Poor service delivery, persistence of head-tail inequity, growing gap between irrigation potential created and utilized, shrinking of command area despite growing investments in construction and rehabilitation, sustained build...

On-farm water storage (OFWS) is a farmers' response to mitigating inadequate and variable water supply in canal commands in the Indira Gandhi Nahar Pariyojana project in Rajasthan, India. This paper assesses the impact of OFWS on on-farm performance, based on a sample of farms with and without storage tanks. OFWS facilitated the use of sprinklers,...

Currently, groundwater irrigation is the most dominant form of irrigation in India. The paper explores whether the canal irrigation recharge has been a necessary condition for the recent groundwater expansion and also test the alternative hypothesis that groundwater boom in India is largely contributed by demand factors, for instance, rural populat...

This paper assesses the potential loss of irrigation benefits in reallocating water from irrigation to meet requirements for environmental flows (e-flows) in the Upper Ganga Basin (UGB) in northern India. The minimum requirement for e-flows in the UGB is 32 billion cubic meters (BCM), or 42 % of the mean annual runoff. The current runoff during the...

Allocation of water to cities, industries and agriculture has been a common practice in river basin planning and management. It is widely accepted that water also needs to be allocated for the aquatic environment, i.e. alongside the demands of other users. This paper describes the application of a basin planning model (Water Evaluation and Planning...

The irrigation services are often state-subsidized in agrarian economies for the enhancement of agricultural productivity while they also target poverty alleviation. The agriculture- dependent states of India offer representative examples of undervalued irrigation services mainly sourced by canal networks. However, canal irrigation is nowadays lagg...

The current research analysis is focused on the identification of the agricultural water use and land scaling effects to rural livelihoods in Indo-Gangetic basin (IGB) with emphasis to Bihar state. In particular, water use and landholding factors are widely acknowledged as major determinants of agricultural development and hence rural wealth in IGB...

This paper examines the nexus between milk production and water use in India. The nexus is examined in the context of extended consumptive water use (CWU) of milk production beyond drinking water. It includes the real CWU (evapotranspiration (ETa) that occurs during the production of green fodder and feed grains) and the virtual CWU (ETa embedded i...

Water use and landholding factors are widely acknowledged as major determinants of agricultural development in agrarian regions of the Indo-Gangetic basin (IGB). High attention is mainly given to irrigation policy while land is often apprehended through soil productivity aspects. However, the nexus between land scale and water consumption in respec...

The basins of the Indus and Ganges rivers cover 2.20 million km 2 and are inhabited by more than a billion people. The region is under extreme pressures of population and poverty, unregulated utilization of the resources and low levels of productiv-ity. The needs are: (1) development policies that are regionally differentiated to ensure resource su...

Against the backdrop of a discussion on the rationale, logic and scope of irrigation demand management in India, this paper provides a brief overview of the status, effectiveness and technical and institutional requirements of six demand management options, that is, water pricing, water markets, water rights, energy regulations, water saving techno...

Improvements in water productivity (WP) are often suggested as one of the alternative strategies for overcoming growing water scarcity in India. This paper explores the potential improvements in WP of food grains at district level, which currently varies between 0.11 and 1.01 kilogram per cubic metre (kg/m3), in the 403 districts that account for 9...

A detailed district and agro-ecoregional level study comprising the 604 districts of India was undertaken to (i) identify dominant rainfed districts for major rainfed crops, (ii) make a crop-specific assessment of the surplus runoff water available for water harvesting and the irrigable area, (iii) estimate the efficiency of regional rain water use...

Projected increases in irrigation water demand required to feed India's population have been a significant component of the justification for the ambitious and highly contentious India's National River Linking Project (NRLP), which, in its ultimate form, seeks to transfer water from relatively water‐rich basins to those basins where demand has alre...

Water, a critical component of food, livelihood and economic security, has always received a central place in India’s investment portfolios. The investment in water transfers of the National River Linking Project (NRLP) is one of the biggest proposed in recent times. When and if completed, the NRLP forms a gigantic water grid covering most of South...

b.sharma@cgiar.org) International Water Management Institute, New Delhi / Colombo 1 Will there be enough water to grow enough food? Lack of water or access to water has emerged as constraint to producing food for hundreds of millions of people. Additionally, in the face of intense competition for water resources, the economic value of water in agri...

Water, a critical component of food, livelihood and economic security, has always received a central place in India’s investment portfolios. The investment in water transfers of the National River Linking Project (NRLP) is one of the biggest proposed in recent times. When and if completed, the NRLP forms a gigantic water grid covering most of South...

This paper seeks to identify some promising policy options which could be part of a strategic and holistic effort to address India's future water challenges. Significant increases in agricultural water productivity would be a major factor in reducing the need for developing new water sources. Crop diversification, appropriately targeted to account...

A systematic attempt to determine the conditions under which, micro irrigation (MI) systems become the " best bet technology " in terms of realizing the potential benefits, and extent of reduction in crop water requirement possible through such systems is crucial for assessing our ability to address future water scarcity at the regional and nationa...

Part I: Global Water Scarcity 1995–2025 Part Ii: Water And Food-demand And Supply Food Demand Conclusion

A systematic attempt to determine the conditions under which, micro irrigation (MI) systems become the "best bet technology" in terms of realizing the potential benefits, and extent of reduction in crop water requirement possible through such systems is crucial for assessing our ability to address future water scarcity at the regional and national...