Energy Price and Groundwater Extraction for Agriculture: Exploring the Energy Water Food Nexus at the Global and Basin Levels

As oil prices have climbed to unprecedented heights the concern over sustainable energy use has intensified globally. Increased energy prices could have direct adverse impacts on some of the world’s largest bread bowls like the IndoGangetic Plains, Northern China, and the western United States, due to their large and growing reliance on energyintensive groundwater extraction for irrigation. This paper studies the effects of energy prices on global groundwater extraction with a global water and food model, IMPACTWATER, through analyses of a set of alternative scenarios of energy price and water management policies. In addition, increasing energy prices are also simulated at the basin level for the example of the Dong Nai basin in southern Vietnam to examine the impacts on crop production and farmer incomes.