Measuring progress in agricultural water management
Challenges and practical options
Measuring policy progress on agriculture and water policies is essential to help decision
makers identify necessary policy changes and understand how further progress may be
achieved to improve agricultural water management. A thorough review of existing evaluations
of agriculture and water policies suggests three types of progress to be measured:
policy design, policy implementation capacity and policy results. The quality and
robustness of these measures of policy progress depends upon three main factors. First,
assessment of policy design requires matching policy alignment with cross cutting
objectives or with a reference text. Second, assessment of progress in implementation
capacity requires gauging evolution towards predefined capacity needs or identified
governance gaps. Third, evaluation of policy results requires clearly defined objectives,
timelines and scales for assessments. Seven practical options are identified for applying
these principles to agriculture and water policies, illustrated by applying them to
assessing progress in the sustainable management of water for irrigation under climate
change and in controlling diffuse nutrient pollution.
Published on June 30, 2021
In series:OECD Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Papersview more titles