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Sustainability

Managing water by measurement, not estimation: see how our irrigation design meets five UN sustainability targets, and why efficiency starts with measuring.

Water is lost where it is not measured

Agriculture takes 72% of the freshwater withdrawn worldwide from rivers, lakes and aquifers (FAO, 2023). In Türkiye, 44 billion m³ of the roughly 57 billion m³ of water used each year goes to irrigation; available water per person fell to 1,346 m³ in 2020, and DSİ, the State Hydraulic Works, counts Türkiye among the countries under water pressure. Under these conditions irrigation design stops being only a question of yield and becomes a question of resource management: water efficiency cannot be discussed without knowing how much water reaches the site, where it goes and how much of it the crop uses.

How target 6.4 is measured

Target 6.4, the water-efficiency target of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, has two indicators, and FAO is the custodian agency for both. Indicator 6.4.1 tracks water-use efficiency as the value added per cubic metre of water used (USD/m³). Indicator 6.4.2 measures water stress as freshwater withdrawal as a share of renewable freshwater resources, after environmental flow requirements are set aside. In the UN classification, below 25% is no stress, 25–50% low, 50–75% medium, 75–100% high and above 100% critical; any value above 25% is regarded as increasingly problematic.

Where Türkiye stands

According to FAO data in the UN SDG Global Database, Türkiye withdraws 47.9% of its renewable freshwater resources (2022–2023), against 17.6% for the world as a whole (2023). Water withdrawn for agriculture accounts for 41.6 percentage points of Türkiye's figure, which places Türkiye at the upper end of the low-stress class, just below the medium-stress threshold. Agricultural water-use efficiency is 0.17 USD/m³ in Türkiye and 0.69 USD/m³ worldwide (2023). The gap reflects crop mix and prices as well as irrigation practice, but it shows how much room there is for agriculture to produce more value from the same water.

Irrigation efficiency is not, by itself, water saving

FAO's review of the evidence on irrigation technology (Perry and Steduto, 2017) finds that the on-farm benefit of converting to modern irrigation can appear dramatic, but when properly accounted at basin scale, total water consumption by irrigation tends to increase rather than decrease. The reason is the difference between withdrawal and consumption: part of the water applied to a field is consumed through evaporation and transpiration, and part returns to aquifers and rivers as return flow. Claims of percentage savings usually look only at the water applied to the field and leave those return flows out. Real savings can only be shown with a complete water account covering consumption, return flows and changes in storage. That is why AGIMEX does not promise percentage water savings: it measures the water applied and sets up the measurement data so that this distinction can be made.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals

AGIMEX's work relates directly to specific targets under five of the seventeen UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Each target below is given as a summary of its official wording, followed by the engineering practice that corresponds to it.

SDG 6: Clean water and sanitation

Target 6.4 · Clean water and sanitation

The target: substantially increase water-use efficiency across all sectors and address water scarcity. The practice: irrigation design starts from the site's water budget. Flow and pressure measurement by zone, and verification of distribution uniformity at commissioning, are written into the project scope; measurement points are placed in the hydraulic schematic from the outset, not added afterwards. How much water is applied is measured, not estimated.

SDG 2: Zero hunger

Target 2.4 · Zero hunger

The target: sustainable food production systems and resilient agricultural practices. The practice: irrigation is sized to the crop's actual requirement. The aim is to support yield by delivering water and nutrients at the right time and place, not by adding inputs.

SDG 12: Responsible consumption and production

Target 12.2 · Responsible consumption and production

The target: sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources. The practice: fertigation is separated by zone; water and nutrients are applied against measurement and the crop's growth stage, not against a fixed calendar.

SDG 13: Climate action

Target 13.1 · Climate action

The target: strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards. The practice: drought and water-scarcity scenarios are treated as design inputs; source capacity is checked against the peak-demand period, and every structure is sized with the site's own climate data.

SDG 9: Industry, innovation and infrastructure

Target 9.4 · Industry, innovation and infrastructure

The target: upgrade infrastructure with increased resource-use efficiency. The practice: new irrigation infrastructure is built to be measurable, and on existing systems measurement points are added first, so that how the system actually operates is established before anything is changed.

Data that can be reported

When a company within the scope of the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) identifies water as a material topic, ESRS E3 asks it to report water consumption, including in areas of high water stress, and to state whether the figures come from direct measurement or from estimates and models. A measured irrigation system produces that data; an unmeasured one produces only estimates.

What this page explains

The mapping above shows which targets AGIMEX's design approach relates to, and the public figures on this page describe countries and the world, not AGIMEX projects. It is not a certification, a pledge or a statement of water saved on any project: how much water a project saves can only be stated from that project's own measurement data. Sustainability is not a commitment. It is a measurement result.

Sources

About the UN Sustainable Development Goal icons

The SDG icons on this page are the official icons published by the United Nations, used unmodified and for illustrative purposes only. The content of this page has not been approved by the United Nations and does not reflect the views of the United Nations or its officials or Member States. The use of the icons does not imply the endorsement of the United Nations of AGIMEX, its products or services.