International research

Economics of water management in hyper-arid areas

Managing water resources in hyper-arid regions requires proactive management and infrastructure planning. Our research project investigates the benefits and costs of alternative water demand and supply management scenarios in Peru, when water is managed across multiple water catchments and when there are multiple water users involved, including urban, agriculture, mining, and the environment. We applied a stochastic benefit-cost method to account for the uncertainty around the benefits and costs of water demand and supply planning scenarios. The benefit-cost analysis is underpinned by a well-calibrated water resources management model that (i) describes the hydrology of the basins under consideration, (ii) includes operational agreements and protocols (existing or potential) for water sharing, (iii) represents the current (or foreseen) operation of the existing (or potential) water infrastructure, and (iv) describes demand management, for example, including improvements in water use efficiency for irrigation and urban water consumption. You can read our publication here:

For more information, please contact Dr Sorada Tapsuwan.

Water-Energy-Food Security Nexus

Population growth, uneven economic development, a growing middle class and its demands for scarce resources, as well as unplanned urbanization put additional pressures on already strained water, food, and energy resources throughout the world. This requires researchers, professionals, and managers to seek alternative ways to find possible trade-offs and synergies to avoid potential conflicts in managing complex interactions between these three inherently interconnected sectors. This project initiative takes as its conceptual starting point the interaction and cross-sectoral management of water, food and energy, and their related security dimensions. Integrated hydro-economic modelling is employed to capture the complexity of interplays between water allocation and resulting economic outcomes for the purpose of informing policy choices.

You can read our publication here:

For more information, please contact Dr Shokhrukh Jalilov.

Mainstreaming gender in agricultural policy and rural development

Despite significant participation of women in the agricultural labour force in developing countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, their contribution is not properly acknowledged and rewarded. We conducted studies to explore female agricultural labour participation, its determinants in the rice–wheat cropping system of the Punjab province, Pakistan (Acknowledging the role of Pakistan’s women in agriculture), and to provide a new insight into family dynamics in household and farm decision-making processes in Bangladesh (Women’s work in agriculture in northwest Bangladesh under-valued).

The findings have important policy implications for mainstreaming gender status in agricultural policy and rural development and contribute directly to the Sustainable Development Goals on Gender Equality (SDG#5) and Decent Work and Economic Growth (SDG#8), and indirectly to No Poverty (SDG#1), Zero Hunger (SDG#2), Responsible Consumption and Production (SDG#12) and Climate Action (SDG#13).

You can read our publications here:

For more information, please contact Dr Shokhrukh Jalilov.