Measuring progress in agricultural water management: challenges and practical options

Measuring policy progress on agriculture and water policies is essential to help decision makers identify
necessary policy changes and understand how further progress may be achieved to improve agricultural
water management. A thorough review of existing evaluations of agriculture and water policies suggests
three types of progress to be measured: policy design, policy implementation capacity and policy results.
The quality and robustness of these measures of policy progress depends upon three main factors. First,
assessment of policy design requires matching policy alignment with cross cutting objectives or with a
reference text. Second, assessment of progress in implementation capacity requires gauging evolution
towards predefined capacity needs or identified governance gaps. Third, evaluation of policy results
requires clearly defined objectives, timelines and scales for assessments. Seven practical options are
identified for applying these principles to agriculture and water policies, illustrated by applying them to
assessing progress in the sustainable management of water for irrigation under climate change and in
controlling diffuse nutrient pollution.