Download or read book Economics of Water Reform in the Murray Darling Basin written by Quentin Grafton and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The paper reviews current water reforms and initiatives in the Murray-Darling Basin from an economic perspective. It argues that while the principles (National Water Initiative) and rules (Water Act 2007) of water reform provide the framework to achieve the goals of reform, the financial incentives (2008 Water for the Future) need to change. In particular, the $3.1 billion allocated to buying water entitlements and the $5.8 billion targeted for water infrastructure subsidies under Water for the Future should be combined and spent on the basis of 'value for money'. If this were accomplished, and the funds were spent prior to the implementation of sustainable diversion limits in July 2011, the Australian Government would be much more likely to achieve a sustainable future for the environment and agriculture within the Basin, at no extra cost.
Download or read book Basin Futures written by Daniel Connell and published by ANU E Press. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique book brings together 27 chapters from some of the world's leading practitioners and experts on environmental water, communities, law, economics and governance. Its goal is to understand the many dimensions of water in the Murray-Darling Basin and provide guidance about how to implement a water management plan that addresses the needs of communities, the economy and the environment. The comprehensiveness of topics covered, the expertise of its authors, and the absolute need to take a multidisciplinary approach to resolving the "wicked problem" of governing our scarce water resource makes this volume a must read for all who care about Australian communities and the environment.
Download or read book Water Policy Reform written by John Quiggin and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'This book is a must-read for anyone interested in how to ensure sustainability while effectively addressing social and economic issues. The contributors are all well-recognised in their areas of expertise and their chapters are highly informative. The book's focus is on policy reform in the MurrayDarling Basin. It offers a "window to the future" and important insights for other parts of the world that are also facing the dilemma of the overextraction of water and what to do about it. I highly recommend it.' Quentin Grafton, The Australian National University 'Managing the water of the MurrayDarling Basin has emerged as one of the greatest challenges for Australia's scientists, social scientists and policymakers. This book brings together some of Australia's leading economists and social scientists to discuss ideas and solutions for a national problem that is both intriguing and exasperating. Readers will enjoy the candid discussion of both the distant and recent history of this issue, plus the innovative solutions. From a philosophical perspective the reader may wish to muse on the relative merits of different degrees of free market and private property approaches vs top-down control as they pertain to the past, present and future of Australia's largest river basin.' Hugh Possingham, University of Queensland, Australia Agriculture in the MurrayDarling Basin of Australia represents a controversial 'policy experiment' comprising large capital investments, innovation and enterprise across a 100-year period. This book, which contains contributions from some of Australia's foremost economic, social science and public policy researchers and writers, examines the evolution of public policy frameworks that transformed water management from initial exploitation for irrigation as a dominant single use to a dynamic multiple-use resource system. Water Policy Reform provides both analytical insights and examples of successes and failures in developing water policy in a complex and politically-contested environment. As such, this work attempts to develop a comprehensive management plan for the Basin and provides novel and invaluable lessons for an increasingly global problem. This well-researched study will interest both economists and those with public policy interest in academia and the public sector, including development agencies concerned with sustainable water resource management.
Download or read book Water Allocation in Rivers under Pressure written by Dustin Evan Garrick and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2015-07-31 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book compares water allocation policy in three rivers under pressure from demand, droughts and a changing climate: the Colorado, Columbia and MurrayÐDarling. Each river has undergone multiple decades of policy reform at the intersection of water m
Download or read book Economics of Water Recovery in the Murray Darling Basin Australia written by Quentin Grafton and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We review recent water reforms and the consequences of water recovery intended to increase stream flows in the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB), Australia. The MDB provides a natural experiment of water recovery for the environment that includes ( a) the voluntary buy-back of water rights from willing sellers and ( b) the subsidization of irrigation infrastructure. We find that ( a) the actual increase in the volumes of water in terms of stream flows is much less than claimed by the Australian government; ( b) subsidies to increase irrigation efficiency have reduced stream and groundwater return flows; ( c) buy-backs are much more cost effective than subsidies; ( d) many of the gains from water recovery have accrued as private benefits to irrigators; and ( e) more than a decade after water recovery began, there is no observable basin-wide relationship between volumes of water recovered and flows at the mouth of the River Murray.
Download or read book The Australian Water Reform Journey written by Jane Doolan and published by . This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Australian Water Partnership is pleased to provide this high-level overview of the Australian water journey. Over the past three decades, this journey transformed water policy, management and institutional arrangements in Australia.Driven by the recognition that water is an economic enabler, our experience has shown that water can be managed sustainably, in a way that increases its economic value while meeting environmental objectives. This paper outlines the drivers for water reform, identifies the key areas transformed and provides some insights on the pathway to implementation.
Download or read book The Evolution of Markets for Water written by Jeff Bennett and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How policymakers are striving to move away from government regulation and achieve a balance between a property rights and a market based approach to the allocation of water resources.
Download or read book Reforming Water Law and Governance written by Cameron Holley and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-04-27 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book identifies the most effective water policy tools and innovations, and the circumstances that foster their successful implementation by taking a comparative look at a world-leading ‘laboratory’ of water law and governance: Australia. In particular, the book analyses Australia’s 20-year experience implementing a hybrid governance system of markets, hierarchical regulation, and collaborative integrated water planning. Australia is acknowledged as a world leader in water governance reform, and an examination of its relatively mature water law and governance system has great significance for many international academics and jurisdictions. This book synthesises practical lessons and theoretical insights from Australia, as well as recommendations from comparative analysis with countries such as the United States to provide useful guidance for policymakers and scholars seeking to apply water instruments in a wide range of policy contexts. The book also advances our understanding of water and broader environmental governance theory and is a valuable reference for scholars, researchers and students working in law, regulation and governance studies – especially in the field of water and environmental law. Chapter “Lessons from Australian water reforms: Indigenous and environmental values in market-based water regulation” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
Download or read book Policy Review of Water Reform in the Murray Darling Basin Australia written by Quentin Grafton and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The water reforms undertaken in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia since 2007 have been viewed as a model for other countries seeking to respond to water insecurity. Here, a policy review is provided of this water reform and whether it delivers on key environmental objectives in the 2007 Water Act (the Act). The evaluation includes a review of the 2012 Basin Plan, a key instrument of the Act, and complementary policies associated with the acquisition of water entitlements for the environment via direct (reverse tenders) and indirect (infrastructure subsidies) means. Using the objects of the Act as a benchmark, an evaluation is provided of the following: (i) planned reductions in irrigation water extractions in the 2012 Basin Plan; (ii) risks associated with the 2018 amendments to the Basin Plan that, collectively, allow for an increase in irrigation water extractions of some 22 per cent, relative to the sustainable diversion limits specified in the 2012 Basin Plan; (iii) Basin-scale environmental outcomes achieved, as of the end of 2018; and (iv) economic effects of direct and indirect methods of acquiring water for the environment. Findings from the review generate the “Do's” and “Do Nots” of water reform for Australia, and possibly other countries, when managing the trade-offs between water for irrigation and the environment.
Download or read book Routledge Handbook of Water Economics and Institutions written by Kimberly Burnett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-05 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Growing scarcity of freshwater worldwide brings to light the need for sound water resource modeling and policy analysis. While a solid foundation has been established for many specific water management problems, combining those methods and principles in a unified framework remains an ongoing challenge. This Handbook aims to expand the scope of efficient water use to include allocation of sources and quantities across uses and time, as well as integrating demand-management with supply-side substitutes. Socially efficient water use does not generally coincide with private decisions in the real world, however. Examples of mechanisms designed to incentivize efficient behavior are drawn from agricultural water use, municipal water regulation, and externalities linked to water resources. Water management is further complicated when information is costly and/or imperfect. Standard optimization frameworks are extended to allow for coordination costs, games and cooperation, and risk allocation. When operating efficiently, water markets are often viewed as a desirable means of allocation because a market price incentivizes users to move resources from low to high value activities. However, early attempts at water trading have run into many obstacles. Case studies from the United States, Australia, Europe, and Canada highlight the successes and remaining challenges of establishing efficient water markets.
Download or read book Environmental Flows in the Murray Darling Basin written by Vinoli Thampapillai and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Murray Darling Basin (MDB) is a major irrigated agricultural region known as the food bowl of Australia. Over-allocation of water rights to irrigation in the MDB has mimicked a tragedy of the commons and has led to the degradation of the ecosystem of rivers in the basin. Competition between environment and agriculture is at the heart of the problem. As water in the river systems is semicommon, where private and common rights coexist and interact due to the fluid nature of the resource, employing an exclusion strategy is difficult. Hence governance is central to the management of the river system to ensure ecosystem resilience. The key governance solutions to this problem employed by the Commonwealth government are the use of the water market to reconfigure water from irrigation to the environment, and use of the Federal Water Act 2007 to harmonize water planning across the transboundary river system which extends over four states and one territory. There exists ongoing disappointment in current market based, legal and institutional policy in the Murray Darling Basin articulated by irrigators and State governments. Significant resistance to the government water buyback program has been expressed by irrigators and the upstream state governments. The governments of Queensland and New South Wales waited until February 2014 to sign the agreement for implementation of the MDB Plan which entered into effect in November 2012. Agreement was secured after the Federal government agreed to legislate to cap buybacks at 1500 GL. As of February 2014, 1200 GL (long term average) of the 2750 GL required for the environment has been acquired by government due to resistance by upstream states and irrigators. There is an absence of comprehensive treatment of the water governance problem. Therefore this research examines the limitations of the water market, water law and public institutions to address the identified problem in the MDB. A combination international comparative water law, a qualitative survey of 41 irrigators, conducted across four jurisdictions of the MDB, documentary analysis is employed in the research, viewed through the lens of New Institutional Economics. This dissertation is concerned with two central research questions pertaining to water governance structures for addressing over-allocation and the delivery of environmental flows to build ecosystem resilience in the Murray Darling river system. The research questions are articulated as follows: (i) What are the limits of market based water governance expressed as water buybacks, as a means of reconfiguring private water rights toward environmental flows in the Murray Darling river system for building ecosystem resilience? (ii) Which public institutional and legal reforms are necessary to resolve the conflict between environmental and socio-economic uses of the Murray Darling river system in order to maintain ecosystem resilience? The analysis of the research highlights three central limits to the use of water markets for the reconfiguration and efficient management of environmental flows by the Commonwealth Enviromnental Holder. Through examination of bounded rationality articulated in New Institutional Economics Theory, three interrelated limits were identified namely, the endowment effect, free rider effect, and lack of a transition economy to overcome the contraction of the rural economy caused by reduction of irrigation activity. This dissertation is one of the few to demonstrate the presence of an endowment effect in the real world setting, outside an experimental setting. The endowment effect refers to the initial assignment of property, the effect of which has been shown to place a limitation on trading activity in numerous contexts. This occurs because the willingness to accept (WT A) payment to relinquish property owned, far exceeds the willingness to pay (WTP) to acquire the same property. The endowment effect tied to the free rider effect can be addressed by a sustainable rural economic transition strategy. Lack of viable, alternate economic development has proven to be a problem in rural and regional Australia. This dissertation highlights the importance of investment in training, research and innovation in Information Communication Technology (ICT) in the MDB as a transition strategy attached to water policy. New Institutional Economics theory informs of the importance of institutional linkages for the achievement of transition economy goals between the MDBA and relevant government departments, including Treasury, Finance, Communications, Education, Employment and Training, and AUSTRADE. These institutional linkages have the potential to convert the economy dependent on agriculture to a knowledge economy over a period of two decades. This transition has the potential to reduce the level of youth migration from the rural sector to the urban sector, increasing the possibility of service sector expansion. At every major stage of water reform in the MDB to reduce over-extraction, from the 1994 cap and trade system, to the 2004 National Water Initiative to the Water Act 2007, a sustainable rural economic transition strategy has been repeatedly missed by successive governments. However State governments post-2011 have very belatedly commenced raising the matter of structural adjustment repeatedly in negotiations with the Federal government following vocal protests by irrigators. This dissertation also highlights limitations of water law and public institutions which include the absence of effective conflict resolution rules, mistrust in government management of water, mistrust in government institutional capacity, inadequate information flow and lack of clarity over property rights and compensation rules. Reform proposals therefore concern inclusion of conflict resolution provisions at the daily operational level and the Federal and State level. Daily operation rules adapted for the MDB focus on ongoing cooperation between heterogeneous users at the regional level to minimize conflict. At the Federal and State level the reform model proposes modification of the "no significant harm rule" articulated in international law, to include cost-benefit analysis rules and compensation rules. This dissertation proposes inclusion of the substantially modified "no-significant harm" rule as an amendment to the Water Act 2007. The aim of the no significant harm rule is to ensure all parties consider the impact of their actions upon other stakeholders and to promote respectful dialogue between parties. The model proposed sought to address key concerns pertaining to institutional bias, valuation methods and mechanisms to address harm to the rural economy. Inclusion of the modified "no significant harm rule" holds the potential to improve cooperative negotiations between State and Federal governments to optimize environmental, social and economic outcomes, as required by Article 3 of the Water Act 2007.
Download or read book Investing in Water for a Green Economy written by Mike Young and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-03-24 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the context of the economies of the world becoming greener, this book provides a global and interdisciplinary overview of the condition of the world’s water resources and the infrastructure used to manage it. It focuses on current social and economic costs of water provision, needs and opportunities for investment and for improving its management. It describes the large array of water policy challenges facing the world, including the Millennium Development Goals for clean water and sanitation, and shows how these might be met. There is a mixture of global overviews, reviews of specific issues and an array of case studies. It is shown how accelerated investment in water-dependent ecosystems, in water infrastructure and in water management can be expected to expedite the transition to a green economy. The book provides a key source of information for people interested in understanding emerging water issues and approaches that are consistent with a world that takes greater responsibility for the environment.
Download or read book Water Policy in Australia written by Lin Crase and published by Earthscan. This book was released on 2011 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few policy areas in recent history have the attention of the Australian public and polity as much as those relating to water. Water Policy in Australia considers the current policy reform agenda from agricultural, environmental, and cultural perspectives. It presents a comprehensive account of the country's critical water issues and provides expert perspectives from behavioral and institutional economists, engineers, hydrologists, sociologists, and water law specialists. The environment can no longer support Australia's legacy of institutions, norms, and values relating to the exploitation of.
Download or read book Water Trading and Global Water Scarcity written by Josefina Maestu and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-12-12 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Water scarcity is an increasing problem in many parts of the world, yet conventional supply-side economics and management are insufficient to deal with it. In this book the role of water trading as an instrument of integrated water resources management is explored in depth. It is also shown to be an instrument for conflict resolution, where it may be necessary to reallocate water in the context of increasing scarcity. Recent experiences of implementation in different river basins have shown their potential as instruments for improving allocation. These experiences, however, also show that there are implementation challenges and some limitations to trading that need to be considered. This book explores the various types of water trading formulas through the experience of using them in different parts of the world. The final result is varied because, in most cases, trading is conditioned by the legal and institutional framework in which the transactions are carried out. The role of government and the definition of water rights and licenses are critical for the success of water trading. The book studies the institutional framework and how transactions have been undertaken, drawing some lessons on how trading can improve. It also analyses whether trading has really been a positive instrument to manage scarcity and improve water ecosystems and pollution emission problems in those parts of the world which are most affected. The book concludes by making policy proposals to improve the implementation of water trading.
Download or read book Murray Darling Basin Australia written by Barry Hart and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2020-10-23 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Murray-Darling Basin, Australia: Its Future Management is a much-needed text for water resources managers, water, catchment, estuarine and coastal scientists, and aquatic ecologists. The book first provides a summary of the Murray-Darling River system: its hydrology, water-related ecological assets, land uses (particularly irrigation), and its rural and regional communities; and management within the Basin, including catchments and natural resources, water resources, irrigation, environment, and monitoring and evaluation. Additionally, the recent major water reforms in the Basin are discussed, with a focus particularly on the development and implementation of the Basin Plan. Murray-Darling Basin, Australia: Its Future Management then provides an analysis of the next set of policy and institutional reforms (environmental, social, cultural and economic) needed to ensure the Basin is managed as an integrated system (including its water resources, catchment and estuary) capable of adapting to future changes. Six major challenges facing the Basin are identified and discussed, particularly within the context of predicted changes to the climate leading to an increased frequency of drought and a hotter and dryer future. Finally, a ‘road map’ or ‘blueprint’ to achieve more integrated management of the Basin is provided, together with some ‘key lessons’ of relevance to others involved in the management of multijurisdictional river Basins. Provides a consolidated account of the Murray-Darling Basin system; an area of global relevance to those interested in rebalancing river systems where the water resources have been over allocated Offers a detailed analysis of the current system and its management, with a focus on water and ecosystem management Discusses a number of key challenges, particularly those related to climate change, facing future reforms to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan Provides a blueprint for changes needed to ensure the Basin is managed as an integrated whole (from catchment to coast)
Download or read book International Trade in Water Rights written by Aline Baillat and published by IWA Publishing. This book was released on 2010-06-14 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: International Trade in Water Rights provides a new approach to the questions raised by international water transfer projects: To whom does water belong? More precisely, what rules should govern international water transfers from transboundary watercourses? These issues are usually studied through the lenses of international trade law. International Trade in Water Rights offers a new approach by highlighting the fundamental issue of domestic and international water property regime and introducing the difference between trade in water and trade in water rights. International Trade in Water Rights analyses the conditions under which market-based instruments could participate in the resolution of water disputes over international watercourses and recommendations are made based on the study of two cases of inter-state water trading in the Colorado River Basin and in the Murray Darling Basin. It is argued that the recognition of water as an economic good in domestic water reform will increasingly impact the management of international watercourses. The book is of key interest to water professionals, economists, lawyers, and political scientists dealing with transboundary disputes over water.
Download or read book Water Policy Reform written by Donna Brennan and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proceedings of an international workshop held in Bangkok, Thailand which brought together researchers working in the area of water resource management. The aim was to explore possible synergies in water policy research focusing on experiences with water policy reform in different countries.
