Why is trade in wholesale water so rare, when markets can actively trade bread, tractors, and electricity? This book shows that water markets fail because of high transaction costs, resulting in inefficient allocations and unpredictable environmental effects. To overcome these obstacles, this book proposes a trading mechanism called a smart market. A smart market is an auction cleared with optimization. A smart market can reduce the transaction costs of water trading, while improving the environmental outcomes. The authors show why a smart market for water is needed, how it would work, and how to implement it. The smart market described here uses a hydrology simulation of the water resource, user bids via the internet, and mathematical optimization, to maximize the economic value of water while meeting all environmental constraints. The book provides the background to understand the smart market for water, and the detail to help the reader start working on its application. The book explores topics such as: Why water should be more expensive near sensitive environmental locations, Ways to set initial allocations of water rights, The role of regulatory oversight, The prerequisites of a water market, and How to counter objections to water markets. The culmination of a decade of investigation, this book combines explanation, examples, and detail to inform policymakers, large water users, environmental organizations, researchers, and a thirsty public.
This book provides a first comprehensive legal examination of water rights arrangements and water rights trading in China. Although recent water reform in China has made substantial progress in policy development and practice, how its legal and institutional framework facilitates or hinders the application of tradable water rights remains less addressed in the existing scholarship. Against the backdrop of China’s water reform and the wider international debate in water governance, this book aims to provide an innovative approach to the complex issue of water governance by critically analysing the recent legal and policy developments in China towards tradable water rights. It examines the deficiencies of the current systems for water rights arrangements and trading, explores how China may learn from and build on the international trends in water rights trading practice (mainly Australia and the US), and proposes legal and policy frameworks for defining and administering tradable water rights in China that underpin sustainable water use in the face of exacerbated water scarcity, variability, and uncertainty. All in all, the book proposes pragmatic strategies for China’s water law and policy reform to move towards tradable water rights, which encompasses a comprehensive prescription from initialising and defining tradable water rights to administering water rights and trading. By reflecting on the deepening water reforms in both China and other jurisdictions, the book aims to contribute to the international water governance debate by exploring from a legal and policy perspective, how China, comparative to other cases around the world, can find a balanced combination of water allocation mechanisms to address its water challenges. It is hoped that the observations and proposed implications for China’s water reform will contribute to developing a better understanding of the way in which experiences in water markets can be shared from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
Environmental Markets explains the prospects of using markets to improve environmental quality and resource conservation. No other book focuses on a property rights approach using environmental markets to solve environmental problems. This book compares standard approaches to these problems using governmental management, regulation, taxation, and subsidization with a market-based property rights approach. This approach is applied to land, water, wildlife, fisheries, and air and is compared to governmental solutions. The book concludes by discussing tougher environmental problems such as ocean fisheries and the global atmosphere, emphasizing that neither governmental nor market solutions are a panacea.
Markets for Water: Potential and Performance dispels many of the myths surrounding water markets and gives readers a comprehensive picture of the way that markets have developed in different parts of the world. It is possible, for example, for a water market to fail, and for the transaction costs in water markets to be excessive. Too often water trading is banned because the water resources have been developed with public funds and the water agencies do not want to lose control over water. There is also a concern that poor farmers or households will be disadvantaged by water trading. These concerns about public resources and the poor are not very different from those that have been voiced in the past about land sales. The problem is that in many cases the poor already have limited access to resources, but this limit is not due to water trading. In fact, water trading is likely to expand the access to water for many small-scale farmers. Markets for Water: Potential and Performance provides an analytical framework for water market establishment. It develops the necessary conditions for water markets and illustrates how they can improve both water management and economic efficiency. Finally, the book gives readers an up-to-date picture of what we have learned about water markets in a wide range of countries, from the US to Chile and India.
"A clear grasp of economics is essential to understanding why environmental problems arise and how we can address them. ... Now thoroughly revised with updated information on current environmental policy and real-world examples of market-based instruments .... The authors provide a concise yet thorough introduction to the economic theory of environmental policy and natural resource management. They begin with an overview of environmental economics before exploring topics including cost-benefit analysis, market failures and successes, and economic growth and sustainability. Readers of the first edition will notice new analysis of cost estimation as well as specific market instruments, including municipal water pricing and waste disposal. Particular attention is paid to behavioral economics and cap-and-trade programs for carbon."--Publisher's web site.
Economical, Political, and Social Issues in Water Resources provides a fully comprehensive and interdisciplinary overview of all three factors in their relation to water resources. Economic issues consist of Water accounting, Water economy, Water pricing, Water market, Water bank and bourse. Political issues consist of Water power and hydrogemistry, Water diplomacy and hydropolitics, Water rights and water laws, Water governance and policy, Shared water resources management, Water management systems, and social issues consist of Water and culture, civilization and history, Water quality, hygiene, and health, Water and society. This book familiarizes researchers with all aspects of the field, which can lead to optimized and multidimensional water resources management. Some of abovementioned issues are new, so the other aim of this book is to identify them in order to researchers can easily find them and use them in their studies. - Includes diverse case studies from around the world - Presents contributions from global and diverse contributors with interdisciplinary backgrounds, including water engineers, scientists, planners the economic, political and social issues surrounding water - Contains in-depth definitions and concepts of each topic
Markets for Water: Potential and Performance dispels many of the myths surrounding water markets and gives readers a comprehensive picture of the way that markets have developed in different parts of the world. It is possible, for example, for a water market to fail, and for the transaction costs in water markets to be excessive. Too often water trading is banned because the water resources have been developed with public funds and the water agencies do not want to lose control over water. There is also a concern that poor farmers or households will be disadvantaged by water trading. These concerns about public resources and the poor are not very different from those that have been voiced in the past about land sales. The problem is that in many cases the poor already have limited access to resources, but this limit is not due to water trading. In fact, water trading is likely to expand the access to water for many small-scale farmers. Markets for Water: Potential and Performance provides an analytical framework for water market establishment. It develops the necessary conditions for water markets and illustrates how they can improve both water management and economic efficiency. Finally, the book gives readers an up-to-date picture of what we have learned about water markets in a wide range of countries, from the US to Chile and India.