Water Policy

Water markets in Australia's Murray–Darling Basin (MDB) and the western USA are compared in terms of their ability to allocate scarce water resources. The study finds that the gains from trade in the MDB are worth hundreds of millions of dollars per year (note that all monetary units of dollars in this article are treated as US$ because Australian$ are converted at par). Total market turnover in water rights exceeds US$2 billion per year while the volume of trade exceeds over 20% of surface water extractions. In Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada and Texas, trades of committed water annually range between 5 and 15% of total state freshwater diversions with over US$4.3 billion (2008 US$; monetary units in dollars are expressed in their value in US$ in 2008) spent or committed by urban buyers between 1987 and 2008. The two-market comparison suggests that policy attention should be directed towards ways of promoting water trade while simultaneously mitigating the legitimate third party concerns about how and where water is used, especially in conflicts between consumptive and in situ uses of water. The study finds that institutional innovation is feasible in both countries and that further understanding about the size, duration and distribution of third party effects from water trade and how these effects might be regulated, can improve water markets' ability to manage water scarcity better.

As water scarcity worsens globally, there is growing interest in finding ways to reduce water consumption, and for reallocating water savings to other uses including environmental restoration. Because irrigated agriculture is responsible for more than 90% of all consumptive water use in water-scarce regions, much attention is being focused on opportunities to save water on irrigated farms. At the same time, many recent journal articles have expressed concern that claims of water-saving potential in irrigation systems lack technical credibility, or are at least exaggerated, due to failures to properly account for key elements of water budgets such as return flows. Critics have also asserted that opportunities for reallocating irrigation savings to other uses are limited because any freed-up water is taken up by other farmers. A comprehensive literature and internet survey was undertaken to identify well-documented studies of water-saving strategies in irrigated agriculture, as well as a review of case studies in which water savings have been successfully transferred to other uses. Our findings suggest that there is in fact considerable potential to reduce consumptive water use in irrigation systems when proper consideration is given to water budget accounting, and those savings can be beneficially reallocated to other purposes.

Increasing consensus about the end of cheap oil, the consequences of global warming and the need for rural development are catalyzing the expansion of biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel. While most nations are promoting the expansion of conventional crops, India's strategy for biofuels is to promote Jatropha curcas, a drought-tolerant, perennial crop with little prior commercial track record. The aim of this paper is three-fold. (1) To compare the characteristics of various crops with their potential as biofuels in order to assess the relative advantages and disadvantages of Jatropha curcas. (2) To analyze the implications of current biofuel policies for food supply, agricultural water demand and the rural poor. (3) To highlight briefly some alternative strategies that can overcome drawbacks in the current strategy. One conclusion is that although Jatropha curcas has a low water requirement, which is an important benefit, it has several other disadvantages. Another recommendation that emerges from this paper is that biofuel policies should also focus on short-duration, multi-purpose and proven drought-tolerant crops like sweet sorghum that can be adopted by small landholders while wasteland rehabilitation policies should focus on broader array of options, which can provide greater direct benefits to the rural poor.

Integrated management of surface water and groundwater can provide efficient and flexible use of water through wet and dry periods, and address the impacts of water use on other users and the environment. It can also help adaptation to climate variation and uncertainty by means of supply diversification, storage and exchange. Integrated water management is affected by surface water and groundwater resources and their connections, water use, infrastructure, governance arrangements and interactions. Although the Murray–Darling Basin is considered to be a leading example of integrated water management, surface water and groundwater resources are generally managed separately. Key reasons for this separation include the historical priority given to surface water development, the relative neglect of groundwater management, shortfalls in information about connections between groundwater and surface water and their impacts, gaps and exemptions in surface water and groundwater use entitlements and rules, coordination problems, and limited stakeholder engagement. Integration of surface water and groundwater management can be improved by the establishment of more comprehensive water use entitlements and rules, with extended carry-over periods and legislated rules for aquifer storage and recovery. Collective surface water and groundwater management offers greater efficiency and better risk management than uncoordinated individual action. There are opportunities for more effective engagement of stakeholders in planning and implementation through decentralized catchment scale organizations.

Water scarcity is a long-standing problem in Catalonia, as there are significant differences in the spatial and temporal distribution of water throughout the territory. There has consequently been a debate for many years about whether the solution to water scarcity must be considered in terms of efficiency or equity, the role that the public sector must play and the role that market-based instruments should play in water management. The aim of this paper is to analyse the advantages and disadvantages associated with different policy instruments, from both a supply and a demand viewpoint, which can be applied to water management in Catalonia. For this purpose, we use a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, in which we introduce an ecological sector that allows us to analyse the environmental and economic impact of the alternative policies simulated. The calibration of the exogenous variables of the CGE model is performed by using a social accounting matrix (SAM) for the Catalan economy with 2001 data. The results suggest that taking into account the principle of sustainability of the resource, the policy debate between supply and demand in water policies is obsolete and a new combination of policies is required to respect the different values associated with water.

The current study is designed to see the effects of water access on the well-being of the farming community in rural areas of Pakistan. The data were collected from 300 households of ten villages in rural Faisalabad, Pakistan where the population is facing serious water quality and access issues due to industrial pollution, lack of clean water supply system and limited access to fresh water for agricultural use. We employed ordinary least square and ordered probit methods to measure the association between water access variables and households’ well-being. We found that source and quality of drinking water, access to irrigation water, and percentage of crop water requirement fulfilled, and water expenses were statistically significant influencing the households’ well-being. The study concluded that water access conditions strongly influence the life satisfaction and water access conditions must be considered in future research. Acknowledging the contribution of village-level economic activities to economic growth, a strong policy is proposed to re-evaluate the existing rural water supply strategy to enhance the households’ well-being and enhance livelihood generation among neglected pro-poor farmers in rural areas of Pakistan.

The determination of the total amount of water pollutant emission in different regions is a difficult problem faced by managers and researchers. Previous studies mostly focused on operability and fairness with little attention paid to local water quality. In order to make total emission pollutant control (TEPC) truly serve the improvement of water quality, a water total emission pollutant allocation model was built based on water environmental carrying capacity (WECC) in this paper. This model was used to construct a water pollutant emission control allocation scheme for 28 cities in Henan Province, China. The results showed that the chemical oxygen demand (COD) reduction rates for these cities ranged from 16.8 to 38.6% and ammonia-nitrogen (NH3-N) reduction rates ranged from 5.7 to 43.5% in 2020, which were different from the previous targets for these cities without considering their current status of water quality. The largest COD reduction rates for different types of point sources (industrial, urban, and large-scale livestock sources) were 35.4%, 39.0%, and 38.0%, respectively, and the largest NH3-N reduction rates were 62.2%, 42.5%, and 43.5%, respectively. This study solves the problem of long-term disconnection between TEPC and water quality improvement in China. The results can also be applied to implement the TEPC to improve water quality in other regions with a similar problem.

The subject of drinking water supply falls under the legislative jurisdiction of the State governments in India. States have their own mechanism of drinking water supply through urban and rural local bodies. Drinking water supply itself is a multidimensional phenomenon of sources, quality, accessibility, sufficiency, etc. This study combines various aspects of drinking water supply at the district level, by assigning weights through analytic hierarchy process, to result in a drinking water supply index. The spatial pattern of drinking water supply index is not in favor of the areas having abundant natural water endowment. Areas which are low in the natural endowment of water are better in drinking water supply, while areas which have abundant natural water are not able to manage the available water and are low on the drinking water supply index. Among various socio-economic-political factors, water governance is most important in the wake of water supply being the function of urban and rural local bodies.