Elsevier

Agricultural Water Management

Volume 176, October 2016, Pages 263-265
Agricultural Water Management

Preface
Peri-urban water, agriculture and urbanisation

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2016.09.009Get rights and content

Introduction

Peri-urban areas are everywhere. They are in both developed and developing countries and in small towns and mega cities. These are the zones of transition from rural to urban land uses which are located between the outer limits of urban and regional centres and the rural environment. The boundaries of peri-urban areas are not static. They are porous and in transition as new suburbs are developed outwards from towns and cities into rural lands. Regardless of how urbanisation occurs the boundaries between urban and peri-urban areas change. There will always be peri-urban zones. The global area of urban irrigated agriculture is estimated at about 24 Mha, about 11% of the total area under irrigated agriculture in the world (Thebo et al., 2014). As such, urban agriculture is in direct competition with high priority water users such as for drinking and other domestic water uses in urban areas. Furthermore, the water availability for urban agricultural irrigation can get quite limited in times of drought.

Agricultural land at the periphery of towns and cities has been an important source of local fresh vegetables, fruits and other farm produce. One study indicates that peri-urban zones produce 15–20% of the world's food supply (Corbould, 2013). There are, however, growing concerns about conversion of productive agricultural land into suburbs and industrial and other urban uses, as this reduces the availability of agricultural land and water for food production worldwide. This situation is creating challenges for food security to meet increases in population in urban areas. For cities to be liveable and sustainable into the future, there is a need to maintain the natural resource base of soil and water, food production and ecosystem services in the peri-urban areas surrounding towns and cities (Fig. 1).

Peri-urban 14, the International Conference on Peri-Urban Landscapes: Water, Food and Environmental Security was held in Sydney, Australia during July 8–10, 2014. Various peri-urban issues and challenges, including governance, were addressed at the Conference, which was attended by over 150 policy makers, researchers, planners, government officials, NGOs, private sector specialists and community groups from 16 countries. Selected presenters from this conference were invited to submit full papers to this special issue, titled ‘Peri-urban Water, Agriculture and Urbanisation’. Three articles are included in this special issue and they cover risk management in peri-urban water recycling, an approach for quantifying impacts of urbanization on the irrigation water distribution networks and an application of Bayesian Belief Network analysis to understand soil salinity variation due to recycled water irrigation and develop management strategies for wastewater reuse in peri-urban agriculture.

Development of peri-urban areas involves the conversion of rural lands to residential use, closer subdivision, fragmentation and a changing mix of urban and rural activities and functions. Changes within these peri-urban areas can have significant impacts on ecohydrological functions, environmental amenity, natural habitat and supply and quality of water. Peri-urban areas also result in increased water and energy consumption. These changes affect peri-urban water and land management, as well as food production.

Section snippets

Urbanisation is unstoppable

Urban expansion is increasing with projections that more than 70% of the global population will live in cities by 2050 (United Nations, 2011). The growth of urban areas will be through both vertical expansion of towns and mega cities, and via horizontal expansion of surrounding peri-urban zones. There is often a lack of understanding and appreciation of the changes that take place in peri-urban areas, which can affect both the urban areas and surrounding rural environments. The urbanisation

Threats of urbanisation to agriculture and water availability

Urbanisation affects the availability of land and water resources. Land developers can afford to outbid land beyond what farmers can afford, and they can induce temptations to them to sell their land for urban development. Once a new suburb has been developed around existing farms in peri-urban areas, complaints from new non-farm neighbours tend to increase about ‘problems’ including manure smells, chemical sprays, noise, dust and slow-moving farm machinery on commuter roads. This can give rise

Key challenges of peri-urban and urban agricultural water management

The rate and complexity of urban expansion often results in ad-hoc and fragmented land and water policies and planning approaches with unsustainable development that is not able to incorporate peri-urban agriculture. The use of urban wastewater is one of the ways to improve water availability and sustain urban agriculture whilst enhancing safe disposal of wastewater to protect environmental and public health. However, particularly in developing countries, irrigation with wastewater is largely

Concluding remarks

There is at present insufficient focus on developing water and land policy to address the challenges that peri-urban and growing urban areas face. This is because peri-urban areas are not yet recognised as an integral part of the functional activities that drive the growth of urban areas and that they provide much fresh agricultural produce for city dwellers. Current policies tend to focus on making the central city more globally connected and internationally competitive. These often absorb a

Acknowledgements

We greatly appreciate the support and encouragement of Dr Brent Clothier, an Editor-in-Chief, Agricultural Water Management, for this special issue of the journal.

References (11)

  • Pay Drechsel et al.

    Agriculture in the rural–urban continuum: a CGIAR research perspective

    Agric. Dev.

    (2015)
  • Bristow, K.L., Stubbs, T., 2010. Reinventing Irrigation Catchments: The System Harmonisation Story, CRC for Irrigation...
  • Corbould, C., 2013. Feeding the Cities: Is Urban Agriculture the Future of Food Security?...
  • Harris, P., 2012. Too many ‘wicked problems’: how science, policy and politics can work together. The Conversation,...
  • B. Maheshwari et al.

    Planning for water and land: sustainability of expanding cities

    Aust. Water Assoc.

    (2014)
There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (6)

  • Urbanization-induced site condition changes of peri-urban cultivated land in the black soil region of northeast China

    2017, Ecological Indicators
    Citation Excerpt :

    The deterioration of cultivated land quality, which is an indirect effect of urbanization in China, poses another challenge to grain production. Researchers generally agree that urbanization-induced deterioration of cultivated land, which can be noticed through changes such as soil degradation (Roy, 2012; Davies and Hall, 2010; Pouyat et al., 2008; Chen, 2007) and irrigation water pollution (Maheshwari and Bristow, 2016; Adhikary and Dash, 2012; Wittmer et al., 2010), will seriously damage cultivated land resources and lower the quality of agricultural products. Furthermore, fragmentation and changes in land use within the cultivated area are reported to be additional obstacles for profitable agricultural production, as they can potentially lead to cultivation abandonment (Janus et al., 2016; Qian et al., 2016; Falco et al., 2010; Niroula and Thapa, 2007).

  • Exploring the urban water-energy-food nexus under environmental hazards within the Nile

    2021, Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment
View full text