摘要：Change in freshwater availability is arguably one of the most pressing issues associated withglobal change. Agriculture, which uses roughly 70% of the total global freshwater supply, figuresprominently among sectors that may be adversely affected by global change. Of specific concern are small-scale agricultural systems that make up nearly 90% of all farming systems and generate 40% of agriculturaloutput worldwide. These systems are experiencing a range of novel shocks, including increased variabilityin precipitation and competing demands for water and labor that challenge their capacity to maintainagricultural output. This paper employs a robustness-vulnerability trade-off framework to explore thecapacity of these small-scale systems to cope with novel shocks and directed change. Motivated by thePumpa Irrigation System in Nepal, we develop and analyze a simple model of rice-paddy irrigation anduse it to demonstrate how institutional arrangements may, in becoming very well tuned to cope with specificshocks and manage particular human interactions associated with irrigated agriculture, generatevulnerabilities to novel shocks. This characterization of robustness-vulnerability trade-off relationships isthen used to inform policy options to improve the capacity of small-scale irrigation systems to adapt tochanges in freshwater availability
