Water Resources and Economics最新文献

The lack of detailed and reliable data on the estimates of water use has been a key limitation in informing sustainable, equitable and efficient water reallocations in the agricultural sector. Conventional water use data have been commonly obtained from surveys or agronomic models, which have limitations on accurately reflecting the actual water use. This paper integrates cutting-edge satellite-based water use data with an ensemble of four Calibrated Mathematical Programming Models (CMPM) (one Positive Multi-Attribute Utility Programming model, one Weighted Goal Programming model, and two Positive Mathematical Programming models) to assess and compare the performance of water reallocations under satellite-based versus conventional water use estimates. We apply these methods to the water-stressed Mancha Oriental Aquifer (MOA) in central Spain, where we simulate the impacts of a hypothetical temporary water reacquisition policy in 2017, the last dry year in record. We find that water use estimates obtained with conventional approaches (which range between 4916 m³/ha and 4510 m³/ha, on average) are 13–24 % lower than satellite-based estimates (5577 m³/ha on average) during the dry year. Moreover, the water reacquisition simulation using the CMPM ensemble shows that the reserve prices (25–66 % higher) and buyback costs (26–67 % higher) derived from conventional water use data approaches are consistently and significantly higher than those derived from satellite-based water use estimates for all the elements of the ensemble, suggesting that a policy informed with satellite-based data could significantly reduce the costs of the reallocation.

Private household water and energy use are closely linked, especially in areas of intermittent water supply where more than one billion people live globally. However, the demand-side Water-Energy Nexus at the household level is often overlooked in empirical econometric studies. Based on a household survey (n = 1872) on water and energy in the Pune Metropolitan Region, India, we find statistical relationships between intermittent water supply and household electricity demand. More than 90 % of the surveyed households use water storage to cope with water supply intermittency, low-income households are particularly affected. Electricity consumption for water access accounts for 27 % of total household electricity consumption. Using a Discrete-Continuous Choice model, we identify significant impacts from factors such as household size and income, electricity price, and particularly the duration of water supply and the use of large water storage on household electricity demand. Our results indicate that households with 24-h water access consume 30 % less electricity than those with 12-h daily access. Extending municipal piped water supply by 1 h per day for all households could reduce total household electricity consumption by 3 %. Our findings suggest that water supply intermittency is a massive cause of unnecessary emissions in cities around the world that has thus far received hardly any attention. The significant amount of electricity used to access water reveals a hidden water affordability problem that can be more prevalent during droughts. Our analyses highlight the demand-side Water-Energy Nexus from an econometric perspective and emphasize the importance of breaking down silos in resource management.

Improving water efficiency in the agricultural sector is essential to ensure sustainable withdrawals and supply of freshwater in a context of increasing water scarcity and human water demand. The water footprint (WF) is an established metric of resource intensity while the drivers steering WF over time remain under-researched. To advance this line of research, this paper assesses the sign and magnitude of macroeconomic, climatic, and agronomic drivers on the agricultural crop WF in 43 countries of the African continent for the period 2002–2016, using econometric panel data techniques and considering potential spatial patterns. The results reveal a significant spatial dependence in the WF across neighbouring countries. Socioeconomic factors are the most important determinant of water productivity, indicating that economic development facilitates a falling water requirement per unit of production. A negative impact of the temperature variation on the WF is also found, while the share of total land dedicated to agriculture tends to increase the crop WF in the continent. These results support designing adequate agricultural and water management policies to achieve sustainable and resilient food systems capable of adapting to anticipated population growth, climate change and other future threats to human health, prosperity and environmental sustainability in Africa.

Based on the employment and output data of China's three industries, this paper measures the industrial structure distortion index of each province in China from 2000 to 2020, and uses a spatial panel model to examine the impact of industrial structure distortion on water intensity. The results show that China's industrial structure distortion index decreases from 0.4046 in 2000 to 0.2042 in 2020, and the industrial structure distortion index is 0.1247 in the east, 0.2139 in the center, and 0.2767 in the west. The regression of the Spatial Durbin Model shows that the indirect effect and total effect of industrial structure distortion both significantly increase the water use intensity, and the influence coefficients are 0.1712 and 0.1822, respectively. For other variables, water resource endowment significantly increases water intensity in the region, with an effect coefficient of 0.0100, and its indirect and total effects are both significantly negative, at −0.0465 and −0.0366, respectively. Foreign trade significantly inhibits water intensity in the region, with a degree of inhibition of −0.0164, and its indirect and total effects are not significant; and increasing Foreign Direct Investment increases water intensity in other regions and in general. The coefficients are 1.3170 and 1.2477, respectively; research and development input has no significant effect on water intensity. Therefore, China should eliminate distortions in its industrial structure, break the urban-rural dichotomy in labor mobility, improve the efficiency of the application of innovative technologies, and enhance the awareness of water crisis and water conservation and protection of the whole society.

Microorganism-mediated degradation of water quality is a major public health concern in developing countries. Previous literature has shown an association between household water pollution and childhood diarrhoea; however, its effects on child growth, respiratory health, and infant mortality have not been widely investigated. This study assesses the impact of household drinking water contaminated with Escherichia coli (E. coli) on child's weight-for-height and weight-for-age z-scores, acute respiratory infections (ARI), and diarrhoea incidence among five years children, and on infant mortality rate (IMR) in Pakistan. We use district-level geospatial information and the latest waves of unique Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) data containing information on ‘point-of-service delivery’ (POS) and ‘point-of-consumption’ (POC) water quality, collected for the first time on a large scale in Pakistan. We employ an instrumental variable approach to address potential endogeneity issues in household drinking water quality, finding that POC drinking water contamination significantly affects children's weight-for-height and weight-for-age z-scores and diarrhoea but insignificantly affects ARI and IMR. The effects of contaminated water are found to be particularly significant in children older than 6 months of age and an insignificant effect is observed for younger children. To protect the children from growth failure and contracting diarrhoea, household water quality should be improved.

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) has set a deadline for 2027 to reach at least good ecological status (GES) in coastal waters in the EU. As nutrient pollution (eutrophication) is one of the main pressures in most EU coastal waters, and Danish waters in particular, significant nutrient reductions are required. In this paper, we take an integrated environmental-economic modelling approach to assess alternative strategies to mitigate non-point source nutrient pollution. A spatially explicit optimization model, TargetEconN, is implemented at the Danish national scale and extended to include mussel production as a marine water quality improvement measure. Different eutrophication mitigation strategies investigated in the model are characterized by whether nitrogen emissions are reduced at the source, between the source and the recipient e.g., by establishing wetlands, or in the recipient itself. We run scenarios exploring the uncertainty in baseline load assumptions and the effects of mussel farming. The results show that the potential for marine measures depends on the baseline load assumptions and that marine measures have a limited impact on the overall costs of achieving GES. The results also show that including marine measures has a significant indirect impact through the influence on the spatial distribution of land-based measures. We conclude that including mussel farming in policy initiatives to meet WFD targets has potential, but that the distributional effects across sectors and spillover effects to other policy targets should be a central part of the ex-ante policy discussions. We argue therefore that spatially explicit integrated modelling, as the model developed for this paper, can offer useful insights to manage the unescapable trade-offs in effective policy design to meet the WFD.

The effectiveness of groundwater in fulfilling crop water deficits depends on its quality and quantity. This paper examines the relationship between irrigators’ stated concerns over groundwater quality and groundwater quantity and their past water use and cropping decisions. Information on irrigator concerns over groundwater quality and quantity is obtained from 626 survey responses of agricultural producers in the Kansas portion of the High Plains Aquifer. We combine 20 years of field-level water use and cropping data with each of the 626 survey responses. We find that irrigators indicating elevated concern over either groundwater quality or groundwater quantity correlates with less total water use, fewer total irrigated acres, and fewer acres of irrigated corn. Additionally, concerns over groundwater quantity generally correlate with a greater reduction in water use along multiple water use margins compared to equal concerns over groundwater quality.

Residential water demand has been extensively studied, with the impact of various household characteristics on consumption well-documented. However, the specific effect of gender on household consumption remains insufficiently identified due to the predominant focus on mixed-gender households in previous research. In this paper, we aim to address this gap by examining gender differences in water consumption specifically within single-gender households. To accomplish this, we analyze data from 275 households equipped with individual meters in the city of Gijón, Spain, between 2017 and 2021. Our approach involves two main steps: first, the estimation of a Stone-Geary demand function for water consumption for both women and men single-gender households, and second, employ the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition to examine gender differences based on the previous estimations. Our findings reveal that women's households consume significantly more water compared to men's households. Additionally, we observe that the demand for water is more inelastic among women, and their level of conditional use threshold is higher than that of men. Importantly, we find that these differences can be primarily attributed to distinct factors such as family composition, housing characteristics, and bill information between genders.