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Abstract:
This paper proposes a new Economic Drought Management Index (EDMI) that could assist water managers to inter-temporally manage water reservoirs. The index's main appeal is that it can be easily interpreted and that it encompasses in a single number hydrological processes, structural constraints, water institutions' rules and the economic benefits of the customers served by the supply system. An empirical application of EDMIs is performed for two irrigation districts in Andalusia (Southern Spain), that are managed under different institutional arrangements. EDMIs are then re-evaluated and estimated for various scenarios of climate change, and for a 8-year real period, which includes three consecutive drought years. Results show that the region's vulnerability to drought could be reduced following the interpretation of the EDMIs. EDMIs under climate change scenarios suggest that the water stocks management criteria should be vastly reformed. Lastly, EDMIs evaluated for the actual period of 1990-98 indicated that the severe drought suffered by the region could have been partially avoided, or at least delayed, if water managers had followed the recommendations that are warranted by the EDMIs evaluated for those years.

Water Resources, irrigation, stocks management, climate change

Abstract:
Reservoir management and intertemporal water allocation are critical issues in semiarid regions where agriculture has to confront highly variable rainfall patterns. In this paper, we derive and propose an economic drought management index (EDMI) to evaluate water institutions' performance to cope with drought risk. The EDMI is based on the optimal conditions of a stochastic dynamic optimisation problem that characterises reservoir management. The index's main advantages are its ease of interpretation and breadth of scope, as it incorporates information on hydrological processes, structural constraints, water institutions' rules, and the economic benefits of water use. An empirical application is developed to assess the institutional rules governing water allocation in two different supply systems in Andalusia (southern Spain).

Abstract:
Historically, the Spanish water management model's predominate goal has been resource augmentation. This mindset has had important consequences for the system's capacity to cope with droughts. It has impacted the system's overall vulnerability, the discourse of scarcity, the conceptualisation of risk and the stakeholders' interests and their approach to risk. The aim of this article is to present the traditional hydraulic paradigm, its current crisis and implications for present and future risk management, and to explore stakeholder and institutional reactions and adaptation to changing risk scenarios. The adaptation process will be framed within the wider context of macro-trends, such as marketisation and re-scaling of institutions and global warming.