An integrated hydro-agro-economic approach for sustainable water resources management in a Mediterranean area

The increasing scarcity of water resources, driven by rising global demand associated with demographic and economic growth and further exacerbated by climate change, represents a major challenge for many regions worldwide, particularly in Mediterranean and semi-arid areas. In such contexts, the persistence of water deficits, in combination with the increasing frequency and intensity of drought events, intensifies the structural imbalance between demand and availability. This makes the adoption of efficient water management and allocation strategies imperative. The resulting implications are potentially highly significant for the agricultural sector, which is one of the largest consumers of water in the Mediterranean region.

In Campania, southern Italy, these challenges are further amplified by the scarcity of streamflow data, a consequence of the interruption of hydrological monitoring since the early 2000s. This lack of data has hindered assessments of surface water availability and the definition of physically consistent water constraints for irrigation planning over the past two decades.

In this context, the present study proposes a workflow based on an integrated hydrological and agro-economic modelling approach, applied to an irrigation consortium located in a major agricultural area of the region. The reconstruction of streamflow series is achieved through the implementation of hydrological models, which estimate natural flows and the volume of water potentially available at the consortium scale. This approach provides physically consistent constraints on water availability. These outputs feed an agricultural value optimization model, representing the consortium’s crop portfolio in terms of cultivated areas, irrigation requirements, yields, prices, and production costs, generating both water consumption and key economic indicators.

The proposed approach's key strength lies in the consistent integration of the hydrological and agro-economic components, which enable a systematic and forward-looking analysis of the effects that climate change variability has on water resource management. The framework enables the assessment of alternative climate scenarios through the modification of key input variables. These include alterations in the volumes of water available for irrigation and allocable to users, signifying reductions in water availability; variations in crop irrigation requirements associated with rising temperatures and evapotranspiration and the implementation of different water prices, incorporated into crop costs, as a measure for regulating demand. The assessment of the robustness of allocation and production strategies in relation to critical hydrological conditions is supported by future scenarios. Furthermore, they enable the analysis of the potential reorganisation of the crop portfolio, affecting water consumption, return flows and economic indicators in contexts of increasing resource scarcity. The framework thus provides a decision-making tool for proactive drought management, enabling the development of more efficient and resilient water management policies.