ABSTRACT
In Chapter 2, we considered the relationship between water use and economic growth, typically driven by industrial and urban expansion. A characteristic of this pattern of development is that it is uneven, the process of urbanisation generating contrasting, non-urban, areas from which population may migrate to urban centres of economic growth. As we observed in Chapter 2, water tends to follow economic activity, being diverted and stored to supply the urban population. As well as supplying water, however, rural areas remain important as sources of supply of food and agricultural raw materials for industry. Governments may therefore be concerned to increase agricultural activity as part of the industrialisation process, investing in irrigation to raise farm productivity. This was the case, for example, in nineteenth-century Japan (Hayami and Ruttan, 1985; Karshenas, 2004). In other instances, where good transport infrastructure connects commercial agriculture to large regional or international markets – the case of California observed in Chapter 2 – it may constitute a principal driver of economic development. In both instances agricultural intensifi cation will demand improved control of water to enable higher crop productivity. In drier climates, and especially the drier tropics, water is the main limiting factor in agricultural production, and governments have seen irrigation as a key investment to increase productivity. In wetter climates, such as the UK, the key investment in water management to increase agricultural productivity took the form of drainage schemes.
