Measuring equity in the agricultural water sector: a dynamic negotiated concept

ABSTRACT Although the terms efficiency, equity, and environmental sustainability are often mentioned in the same breath in agricultural water management, less attention has been paid to equity than to efficiency and environmental sustainability. This occurs because equity involves making decisions about people and trade-offs in distribution and outcomes of which decision-makers have little quantitative knowledge. This paper aims to clarify the conceptual issues that arise in assessing and quantifying equity issues in the water sector. The implications of ignoring equity in favour of efficiency in the water sector are great. Understanding the equitable status of a distribution relies on four basic principles involving how the distribution of the resources is defined, determining what constitutes a fair distribution, how the resources are valued, and how redistribution problems are handled. Equity is a negotiated concept where shares of a resource or good are, in some cases, determined through a political process of debate, one that could be argued results in less equitable outcomes than desired.