Columbia Water Center Receives $6 Million
The project will focus on bottom-up strategies engaging communities, governments and the private sector, and will emphasize the role of market forces and public-private partnerships. According to Professor Lall, the grant will allow the Columbia Water Center to “bring our knowledge of climate prediction, remote sensing, hydrology, market economics and agricultural technologies together to innovate new business models for reliable local water supplies and responsible water use.”
The grant is unique in that it will allow researchers to study a range of approaches to mitigating problems of water scarcity. Researchers will focus on technical innovations, such as drip irrigation, as well as policy measures such as the elimination of perverse subsidies and price supports. “We hope to provide a way for people to work with the water they already have by increasing and stabilizing farmer income, introducing water-saving crops, and exploring the use of new technologies of climate forecasting and irrigation,” said Professor Lall.
Each of the four areas presents its own unique challenges to water sustainability, said Lall. In India, the problem is both water scarcity and unsustainable irrigation methods. Currently, irrigation uses such large amounts of energy that even the reliability of the country’s electric system is affected, according to Professor Lall.
Two United Nations-designated Millennium Villages in the sub-Saharan Africa country of Mali, Tiby and Tombouctou (also called Timbuktu), are the focus of an effort led by Professor Vijay Modi of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. The Tiby Millennium Village cluster is located in one of the poorest areas in Mali and agricultural yield is dependent upon rainfall. The goal there is to increase crop yield and sustainability by determining the best crops to grow, not only for subsistence but also for outside markets, and by developing appropriate irrigation technology for the area.
“A green revolution in India would not have been possible without an extensive transport network and access to energy technologies,” said Professor Modi. “What should a green revolution in Mali, a land-locked country with near absence of energy technologies for irrigation in rural areas, look like? We hope that judicious and efficient use of energy and water in this part of the Sahel that is adjacent to the River Niger can allow one to overcome the risks of low and variable rainfall,” he said.
“For Brazil,” said Professor Lall, “the goal is to explore how, at the village level, we can develop an integrated water solution that will relate to a larger, state-wide irrigation infrastructure network. We are looking at the competition between high-value users—such industries as leather processing, canning and semiconductors—and individual agricultural users, who are heavily subsidized. The challenge is to change the dynamic that has been in place for the past 10 years into one that better acknowledges integrated agricultural growth.” Given the predicted climate changes in Brazil, the larger scope of the inquiry will determine the principles that influence the future design of the water infrastructure of the country.
In China, meanwhile, identifying the scope of the problem will be the first step, through conferences, workshops and data collection.
The logistics of the project are daunting, and the Columbia Water Center is currently mobilizing partners in all four of the countries, as well as beginning preliminary research. However, Professor Lall believes that the breadth of the grant will allow the Center to begin making important findings within the first year, and looks forward to seeing fruitful results come from the project.
