Growing public concern about the health of rivers and wetlands, and the ecosystems they support, puts pressure on large water users–such as the irrigation industry–to find ways to use less water. At the same time, the growing competitiveness of the economic environment places demands on the industry to maintain its productivity and profitability. This study develops a method, based on the concept of an environmental performance index (EPI), to measure the economic and environmental performance of irrigated agricultural enterprises. In defining environmental pressure exerted by the irrigation industry the method incorporates certain characteristics of ecological assets affected by water withdrawal for irrigation. As an empirical application, the method was applied to a case study of seventeen natural resource management (NRM) regions within the Murray–Darling Basin (MDB), Australia. Data Envelopment Analysis was used to compute the component distance functions in order to construct an EPI for each considered irrigated enterprise in each NRM region. The results of the analysis show that environmental efficiencies of irrigated enterprises vary considerably across NRM regions. These findings support the case for policy targeting by type of irrigation enterprise and by location of enterprises.

Item Type:	Non Refereed Article
Keywords:	Distance functions; Environmental performance index; Irrigation
Research Division:	Economics
Research Group:	Applied economics
Research Field:	Environment and resource economics
Objective Division:	Environmental Management
Objective Group:	Other environmental management
Objective Field:	Other environmental management not elsewhere classified
UTAS Author:	Azad, M (Dr Samad Azad)
ID Code:	103013
Year Published:	2003
Deposited By:	TSBE
Deposited On:	2015-09-15
Last Modified:	2015-09-15
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