Question asked:
What methods for sharing the water resource during low water between farmers for irrigation in the lower Drôme valley?

Region:
Drôme river basin area downstream of Crest

Sponsor:
Communauté de Communes du Val de Drôme (association of villages and small towns of the Drôme River basin)

Researchers involved:
O. Barreteau, G. Abrami
(Cemagref)

Sharing water in the Drôme river basin

In 1999, the Communauté de Communes du Val de Drôme was in charge of the secretariat of the local water commission of the Drôme River SAGE (Water Development and Management Schemes). It requested support from Cemagref to define “water use instructions statements” for sharing the water resource in the Drôme basin, to comply with the flow rate objectives downstream of the Drôme river as defined in the Drôme river SAGE. Cemagref then added a research project to this request under the Environment Decision Consultation programme of the French Department of Environment to test the use of role playing games and agent-based simulations as support in designing jointly these methods of sharing the water resource. The main use covered was irrigation.

The approach was broken down into four phases:

1. Developing a model in a spreadsheet, based on volume assessments, only considering one type of crop (corn) and studying the effects of various water-sharing scenarios defined by the local water commission for all the irrigated surface area and the irrigating population;
2. On this basis, following public restitutions of work to the relevant stakeholders, a draft water sharing charter was designed collectively based on an initial proposal by Cemagref, but which had changed significantly in the interaction with these stakeholders;
3. Testing the development of an agent-based model used to specify the model from the viewpoint of types of action undertaken by the agents and to observe the consequences of measures at a more detailed scale in time and space;
4. Testing a hybrid role-playing game, Pieplue, aimed at initiating discussion and putting into practice rules on water sharing in a virtual space similar to the irrigated area of the Drôme.

The approach culminated in the signature of an official agreement and the disclosure of the possibility of win-win scenarios between the farming sector and the Communauté de Communes du Val de Drôme. However the role-playing game was found to compete with the activity of the agricultural extension services and had no follow up.

For further information: a paper dealing with the design of the ABM as a dialogue support tool (Barreteau et al., 2003), a paper dealing with the design and implementation of an hybrid tool based on a Computerized ABM and a Role-Playing Game (Barreteau et al. 2007), a book chapter dealing with the problems faced in stakeholders involvement in this case study (Barreteau et al ; 2006).

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