A guideline for sustainable irrigation water management: a case of a developing country

ABSTRACT

Irrigation Water Management (IWM) being considered essential as it contributes to crop production all over the world. Nonetheless, water losses throughout the system, inefficient irrigation practices and lack of attention towards the proper maintenance of existing infrastructure were the constraining factors to achieve the benefits of sustainable use of water. Hence, this paper develops strategies to achieve sustainable water management of irrigation systems. Sixteen semi-structured interviews were conducted for industry professionals in the IWM sector in Sri Lanka as the main data collection method in this study. The collected data were analysed using a code-based content analysis based on the directed approach. The research findings identified four main categories of strategies, namely, engineering, management, operational and regulatory. The findings are substantially beneficial for industry practitioners in the water management sector to overcome the issues in IWM practices regarding the water use efficiency, equity of water distribution, environmental integrity and economic acceptability. This study can be further extended to prioritise the issues and strategies to statistically generalise the findings.

KEYWORDS:

• Irrigation systems
• water management
• sustainable
• strategies
• Sri Lanka

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

D. C. Sirimewan

D. C. Sirimewan is a Lecturer attached to the Department of Building Economics, University of Moratuwa, who is a first class holder of the degree; B.Sc. (Hons) in Quantity Surveying, University of Moratuwa. Her research interest includes Construction and Project Management, Sustainable Construction, Urban Planning and Development and Water Management.

Aparna Samaraweera

Dr. Aparna Samaraweera is a Lecturer at UniSA STEM, University of South Australia, Australia. She is a former Senior Lecturer at the Department of Building Economics, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. She is a graduate in B.Sc (Hons) Quantity Surveying and also holds a PhD from University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. Her research interests are Culture, Leadership, Stakeholder Management and Team Behaviour. In addition, she has two years of industry experience, working as a quantity surveyor for two public sector and private sector organisations in Sri Lanka.

N. H. C. Manjula

N. H. C. Manjula is a PhD research scholar attached to the University of Hong Kong. She obtained a bachelor’s (B.Sc (Hon) in Facilities Management) and Master’s (MPhil) from the Department of Building Economics, the University of Moratuwa. Her research interests include Occupational Safety and Health, Social Capital, Sustainability and Construction Management.

E. M. A. C. Ekanayake

E. M. A. C. Ekanayake is currently a doctoral researcher at the Department of Building and Real Estate, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She is a recipient of the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme and holds first-class honours in Quantity Surveying, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. Her research interests include Supply Chain Resilience, Prefabricated Construction, Value Engineering and Lean Construction with a current focus on the ‘Supply Chain Resilience in Industrialized Construction’.