Oman’s ingenious water management solution
Environmental issues have started to seep into public consciousness and systemic changes are certainly due in resource usage. This snippet about a looming water crisis drives home the point:
In 2003, Frank Rijsberman, then the head of the International Water Management Institute, had expressed his concern: “If present trends continue, the livelihoods of one-third of the world’s population will be affected by water scarcity by 2025. We could be facing annual losses equivalent to the entire grain crops of India and the US combined.”
But what about ideas for systemic changes? How can things be done differently? An ingenious system in Oman that is the legacy of their forefathers, brilliantly balances out commercial and social aspects of fair water usage. Maybe it could inspire systemic change and lead to more efficiency in water usage in the future:
In Oman, farmers draw from a 4,500-year-old water system that is still functioning. Once the water arrives at a village, from underground sources and mountain springs, channeled over many kilometers, all villagers, guests, and travelers get free access to the drinking water they need. The canal then goes to the mosque: water is also free for ceremonial washing, and some is set aside and sold to finance the mosque and the school. After that, the water becomes private property in defined shares, days, hours, or minutes of rights to use it for irrigation. The rights are inherited and, even more important, tradable. In frequent auctions, parts of the water rights can be sold and purchased or leased within the village community. If a farmer does not need water temporarily, he leases it to another farmer who has additional land available to grow a crop. If a farmer wants to invest in more efficient irrigation, he can finance this investment by selling water rights permanently. Thus, water gets a market price set by those who know best: the farmers. This is an extremely strong incentive to use water efficiently. Since the market price varies over the year, this is a much smarter approach to efficiency than, for example, so-called water footprint calculations. And since farmers trade among themselves, the price places no additional financial burden on them.
The above information has been extracted from an interview with the chairman of Nestle, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, in the McKinsey Quarterly.
https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Water_as_a_scarce_resource_An_interview_with_Nestles_chairman_2482
