Decentralization and Economic Incentives to Manage Groundwater Withdrawals for Irrigation: from Theory to Practice

France is currently embarking upon a drastic reform of quantitative water resources management. This reform relies on two principles: the definition of an upper limit to water abstraction per water body and the decentralization of the responsibility for allocating water among users, in particular in the agricultural sector. This paper looks at possible institutional arrangements and incentive-based economic instruments which could be used to implement this reform. It particularly focuses on issues and options related to the enforcement of water allocation within the agricultural sector. We present three water management scenarios relying on four levers: economic incentives, transparency, negotiation, joint liability. Scenarios were evaluated through 16 scenario workshops in five French case studies, gathering 124 farmers and agricultural stakeholders in total. This paper presents the results of the workshops through a semi-quantitative analysis of the arguments given by the participants.