Chapter 10
Cross-cutting Perspective on Agriculture
Gül Özerol and Jenny Troeltzsch
10.1 Introduction
Agriculture is among the major water user sectors in the North-west Europe region.
While the use of water for energy production, mainly for cooling of power plants,
has a higher share in most of the countries in the region, agricultural water use
maintains an average of 24 % share within the total water use in Europe (EEA:
European Environment Agency 2009). At the same time, agriculture is a vulnerable
sector in terms of the impacts of drought on both global and European agricultural
production (Geng et al. 2015). Although making a universal definition of drought is
not straightforward due to its diverse drivers and impacts, the following definition
can be made for agricultural drought: “the result of a shortage of precipitation over
a particular timescale that leads to a soil moisture deficit that limits water availability for crops to such an extent that yields are reduced” (Sepulcre-Canto et al.
2012: 3519). A key relationship that is addressed in this definition is the sensitivity
of crop yields to limitations in water availability.
This chapter elaborates on the governance of drought adaptation in the North-west
Europe region from an agricultural perspective. For this purpose, the elements of the
governance systems that are relevant for agricultural production and water use processes are examined and their influence on drought management and adaptation
processes are investigated in the subsequent sections of the chapter. In each section,
illustrative examples are provided from the six cases of the DROP project that are
presented in Chaps. 4–9 of this book. Section 10.2 starts with the general problem
G. Özerol (&)
CSTM—Department of Governance and Technology for Sustainability,
University of Twente, 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands
e-mail: g.ozerol@utwente.nl
J. Troeltzsch
Ecologic Institute, 10717 Pfalzburger Strasse 43/44, Berlin, Germany
e-mail: jenny.troeltzsch@ecologic.eu
© The Author(s) 2016
H. Bressers et al. (eds.), Governance for Drought Resilience,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-29671-5_10
203
Cross-cutting Perspective on Agriculture
Gül Özerol and Jenny Troeltzsch
10.1 Introduction
Agriculture is among the major water user sectors in the North-west Europe region.
While the use of water for energy production, mainly for cooling of power plants,
has a higher share in most of the countries in the region, agricultural water use
maintains an average of 24 % share within the total water use in Europe (EEA:
European Environment Agency 2009). At the same time, agriculture is a vulnerable
sector in terms of the impacts of drought on both global and European agricultural
production (Geng et al. 2015). Although making a universal definition of drought is
not straightforward due to its diverse drivers and impacts, the following definition
can be made for agricultural drought: “the result of a shortage of precipitation over
a particular timescale that leads to a soil moisture deficit that limits water availability for crops to such an extent that yields are reduced” (Sepulcre-Canto et al.
2012: 3519). A key relationship that is addressed in this definition is the sensitivity
of crop yields to limitations in water availability.
This chapter elaborates on the governance of drought adaptation in the North-west
Europe region from an agricultural perspective. For this purpose, the elements of the
governance systems that are relevant for agricultural production and water use processes are examined and their influence on drought management and adaptation
processes are investigated in the subsequent sections of the chapter. In each section,
illustrative examples are provided from the six cases of the DROP project that are
presented in Chaps. 4–9 of this book. Section 10.2 starts with the general problem
G. Özerol (&)
CSTM—Department of Governance and Technology for Sustainability,
University of Twente, 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands
e-mail: g.ozerol@utwente.nl
J. Troeltzsch
Ecologic Institute, 10717 Pfalzburger Strasse 43/44, Berlin, Germany
e-mail: jenny.troeltzsch@ecologic.eu
© The Author(s) 2016
H. Bressers et al. (eds.), Governance for Drought Resilience,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-29671-5_10
203