ABSTRACT
Water and irrigation have been and continue to be fundamental to food production and thus instrumental in the history of human demographics. Institutional and regulatory frameworks for water in Latin America prioritize agricultural use, creating perverse incentives to maximize water use without control. In general, water quantity and quality are not effectively measured nor paid for, and management decisions are neither transparent nor accountable. Therefore, True Cost Accounting can provide a framework to better measure water stocks and flows, understand environmental limits, and inform financial decisions that are equitable and sustainable over time. This is a complex and collective process, but there is a growing list of experiences—both bottom-up and top-down—that contemplate the true value of water, particularly as it relates to sourcing the natural resource, which is a facet largely ignored worldwide.
