Summary

This book deals with the complex issue of promoting the development towards sustainable irrigation. It does not see sustainable irrigation as a fixed defined endpoint but rather as a locally defined and constantly changing objective. It provides a comprehensive discussion of the importance of institutions and governance to guide this process and then provides examples from around the world of how incentives and instruments have been introduced to support this development, how successful they have been and what the factors have been promoting or impeding the successful outcomes. The book also highlights the need to see sustainable irrigation in the context of other objectives such as food and water security, reallocating existing scarce resources between competing uses such as urban and industrial users as well as the environment, and how emerging issues such as bio-fuel production and increasing energy prices influence the process.