Abstract High water availability enhances agricultural performance and food security. However, many countries where water is abundant according to hydrological indicators face difficulties in the utilization of water in agriculture, being in a situation of economic water scarcity (EWS), due to lack of institutional and material means for water management and governance. EWS faces a stronger challenge of measurability, if compared to physical water scarcity. Since the Sustainable Development Goal Indicator on Integrated management of domestic and transboundary water resources (IWRM) is a unique attempt to quantify information on water management at a national level, we explore whether it can represent a valid metric for EWS measurement. We first show that a high level of water management is neither necessarily associated to high economic power of the country nor to low physical water availability. Then, we analyze whether the indicator can predict typical EWS situations such as low agricultural productivity and inefficient water use. Although the importance of water institutions for agriculture is well known through case studies at the local level, we make the first attempt to quantify the strengths of this relation at a global scale for different crops in climatic diverse countries. We detect a positive and significant association between IWRM level and yield, and consequently a negative and equally significant association between the IWRM level and the crop water footprint. Statistical significance holds also when potentially confounding variables are included in a multiple regression analysis. We infer from this analysis that good water management, as detectable through the IWRM indicator, improves land productivity and water saving, in turn mitigating EWS. Our findings pave the way toward the use of the IWRM indicator as a valuable tool for measuring EWS in agriculture, bridging the measurability gap of economic water scarcity, with straightforward policy implications in favour of investments in water management as a lever for enhancing food security and development.

中文翻译：

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衡量农业中的经济缺水：一项跨国实证调查

摘要 高可用水可提高农业绩效和粮食安全。然而，由于缺乏水资源管理和治理的制度和物质手段，许多水文指标丰富的国家在农业用水方面面临困难，处于经济缺水（EWS）的境地。与物理缺水相比，EWS 面临着更大的可测量性挑战。由于关于国内和跨界水资源综合管理的可持续发展目标指标 (IWRM) 是在国家层面量化水资源管理信息的独特尝试，我们探索它是否可以代表 EWS 测量的有效指标。我们首先表明，高水平的水资源管理既不一定与该国的高经济实力相关，也不一定与物理可用水量低有关。然后，我们分析该指标是否可以预测典型的 EWS 情况，例如农业生产力低下和用水效率低下。尽管通过地方层面的案例研究，水机构对农业的重要性众所周知，但我们首次尝试在全球范围内量化这种关系对气候多样化国家不同作物的强度。我们发现 IWRM 水平与产量之间存在正相关且显着相关，因此 IWRM 水平与作物水足迹之间存在负相关且同样显着。当多元回归分析中包含潜在的混杂变量时，统计显着性也成立。我们从这一分析中推断，通过 IWRM 指标可以检测到的良好的水资源管理，可以提高土地生产力和节水，进而减轻 EWS。我们的研究结果为将 IWRM 指标用作衡量农业 EWS 的宝贵工具铺平了道路，弥合了经济缺水的可衡量性差距，并具有直接的政策影响，有利于投资于水资源管理，作为加强粮食安全和发展。