Ethics of Water Use
The vast majority of available freshwater is used for agriculture, to grow food, fibre, and sometimes biofuels. Decisions about agriculture are also decisions about water: How do we want our water to be used within agriculture? What values, and whose values, get reflected in those agricultural choices? Resources on Agricultural Ethics
Economics offers one way of answering the question of competing values: Which ever use can provide the highest net benefits would be the best choice. But then we need to decide which categories of benefits to include in the cost-benefit calculation, and how to "value" each type of benefit. From the perspective of cultural valuation, economics can offer a useful procedure but economics alone cannot substitute for subjective cultural decision-making. What is the value of cultivating an heirloom variety of chili, or an ancient local variety of rice? What is the value of farming the same plot of land as your ancestors?
Multifunctional Agriculture
The concept of multifunctional agriculture views culture as an integral part of the agricultural valuation process: Farmers make decisions within a cultural framework about what crops to grow and what practices to use, and the way agriculture is done can enhance cultural heritage and a sense of cultural or regional identity. This is not to deny the importance of conventional economics in farm decisions. Farmers invariably seek higher yields and bigger profits, but that is rarely their only consideration. By looking at agriculture as an expression of a society's cultural values, we can empower ourselves (and others) to use agricultural decisions consciously as leverage for shaping the kind of society that we want. We can become active participants in designing our world, through agriculture, even if we're not farmers. We are all consumers of farm products, and in some way, we are all stakeholders in the agricultural sector. The fundamental role that food plays in our physical lives renders agriculture a deep and powerful force in shaping, and expressing, our cultural values.
The list of functions that are considered as priorities within the agriculture sector vary from country to country but generally include environmental benefits, economic spin-offs (e.g., agro-tourism) social welfare (job security), cultural identity, landscape aesthetics and personal well-being. The water used in agriculture can also be seen as "multifunctional" because it supports multifunctional agriculture, and also because the water that is used for irrigation continues to provide benefits as it continues its water journey and is used for bathing, drinking, irrigating more crops further downstream, or providing aquatic habitat for wildlife
The Water-Culture Institute's program on multifunctional agriculture combines research and analysis with policy advocacy. By gaining a better understanding of the concept in diverse ecological and cultural settings, we seek to promote the concept as an integral component of agricultural development policies and projects. Our aim is to influence agricultural development towards practices that are environmentally sustainable and culturally supportive.
The Water-Culture Institute has worked in partnership with the International Network for Water and Environment in Paddy Fields (INWEPF) to review lessons from European experience with multifuncationality that could be transferable to the situation of Monsoon Asia. Click on the link below to download the WCI report:
Multifunctional Agricultural Policies and Practices in Europe.
PDF 201kb, December 2009.
Resources on Multifunctional Agriculture
Multagri Project. A series of papers written as part of the EU-sponsored Multagri Project which was active from 2001-2006. The reports are categorized into "work packages" which can be searched from the website. While somewhat dated, these reports comprise an invaluable resource of key concepts and country-level analysis.
Wageningen University Rural Sociology Blog on Munltifunctionaltiy, a good source for recent information and links.
MEA Scope Project analzes economic interactions of multifunctional agriculture at the local level. (Good set of publications available for download)
Roes of Agriculture Project, a detailed set of reports from an FAO research project focusing on eleven countries (Chile, China, Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Mali, Mexico, Morocco and South Africa).
CERES Project (Multifunctional agriculture and environmental issues).
AMANDE Project (Rural amenities and new ruralities
UNESCO Series on Water and Ethics (2004)
Water in Agriculture, by Bo Appelgren
Use of Groundwater, by Ramon Llamas
FAO Program on Ethics in Food and Agriculture:
Report on Ethical Issues in Food and Agriculture (2001)
Report on Ethics of Sustainable Agricultural Intensification (2004)
European Group on Ethics in Sciences and New Technologies
Ethics of Modern Developments in Agriculture Technologies, 2008
IWMI Policy Brief, Improving Water Productivity (2003)