Strategic Decision-making in Irrigated Agriculture Using Sustainability–related Criteria

The use of indicators for sustainability evaluation is an important step towards operationalization of the concepts of sustainability and sustainable development. Many literatures on framework for sustainable water management consider any one dimension of sustainability. In this paper, the sustainability of an irrigation system is assessed from economic and environmental dimension. An optimization model to obtain a trade-off between two conflicting objectives (economy of application and environmental performances) for sustaining irrigated agriculture under water-limited condition through Pressure-State-Impact-Response (P-S-I-R) framework using total water use, soil moisture at the root zone, reservoir level, yield loss and water use efficiency as indicators is developed. Compromise programming is used for the development of indicators. The developed methodology is tested in a water deficit tank irrigation system to evaluate and compare different irrigation polices based on the sustainability indicators and management options. Keyword: Sustainability, Deficit Irrigation, Compromise programming, P-S-I-R.