Climate change adaptation from the farmer's perspective: an exploration of adaptation pathways with a global hydro-economic model of groundwater-fed irrigation (HELGA)

Groundwater fed irrigation is on the rise because of increasing food demand and the falling reliability of surface water resources due to climate change. However, overexploitation of groundwater eventually threatens the viability of agriculture; falling groundwater levels become too deep to sustain the costs of groundwater extraction. We explore whether this economic limit is reached using a newly developed hydro-economic model HELGA: Hydro-Economic Limits as a Global Analysis. We subsequently use HELGA to evaluate adaptation strategies from the farmer’s perspective, assessing the costs and benefits of groundwater extraction for agriculture. Under different scenarios that include climate, socio-economy and farmers traits.