Water Resources Management as An Agricultural Policy Tool for Crop Restructuring: Implementation in a Rural Area of the Spercheios River Basin

Abstract Current international economic and environmental research focuses on topics like regional planning, sustainable development, biodiversity conservation plus a number of other relevant issues, environmental decision making and implementation, especially at times of economic crisis as today. Environmental protection and economic growth can go hand in hand, provided that decision makers develop and use tools and insights targeting in the implementation of successful and robust long-term policies. Water management and crop distribution are a major problem that concerns the primary sector. In this study, five vulnerability scenarios are recreated using the linear programming methodology in a rural area of the Spercheios River basin in Central Greece. The variables used are net crop yields, and the social, economic and environmental constraints taken into account are crop irrigation, use of phosphate and nitrogen fertilizers, working hours and land uses. Only four feasible vulnerability scenarios result from the optimal solution and rank the water quality as high or good or moderate or poor or bad.