Water Resources and Economics最新文献

Nitrogen and phosphorus emissions from urban sources degrade aquatic ecosystems. Reducing these emissions cost-effectively in an urban environment is challenging because they are non-point source pollutants and abatement strategies range from behaviour change for garden fertilizer use to large scale infrastructure investments. This paper analyses policy options for the Canning catchment in Western Australia with a dynamic and spatial hydro-economic model. Currently responsibility for N and P abatement is fragmented across government agencies. A coordinated cost-effective policy to meet N and P abatement targets in the case study catchment would cost A$0.5 billion over the next fifty years. The minimum cost is approximately doubled if the policy set excludes septic tank infill and constructed wetlands. Costs are significantly reduced if there is a city-wide policy to mandate the use of slow-release nitrogen fertilizer on public open space. We conclude that there is a significant benefit to society from adopting a coordinated approach to nitrogen and phosphorous abatement. Further, in this case study, a non-point source pollution problem can be addressed by abatement measures, such as infrastructure investment, that are directly observable.

Consumption of bottled water in the U.S. continues to grow despite the higher user price and greater environmental cost relative to municipal tap water. Convenience is surely one reason for this trend, but it is less relevant for in-home consumption of bottled water. The existing literature highlights perceptions of quality, access to information and personal experience as important factors influencing water usage in the home. In this paper we report the results of a 2018 survey of water customers of Jacksonville Electric Authority (JEA), the primary municipal water utility in Northeast Florida. The survey includes detailed questions regarding self-reported household water usage, information availability, information processing, trust in institutions and demographic characteristics. In addition, in cooperation with JEA, we matched the survey results with administrative data on geographic location within the system. Using a bivariate probit regression method, we estimate the determinants of water usage in the home. The results show that concern for drinking water safety is the principal contributor of bottled water consumption. Moreover, the evidence illustrates how information from water quality reports and objective measures of water hardness translate into the drinking water choice. We also show that greater transaction costs of bottled water due to low access to retail suppliers is associated with a substitution of water filtration for bottled water.

We study urban water tariff setting and its welfare implications with a unique panel of Chinese cities in the 2000s. First, we find that peer cities' water tariff levels have a significant influence on a city's choice of tariffs. Using the peer cities' average tariffs as instrumental variables in estimating water demand functions, we obtain price elasticities around −0.41 for both residential and industrial sectors. Our estimation of cost functions reveals the supply of urban water services to be characterized by strong economies of scale and economies of scope. More than half of the sample have residential water tariffs higher than the corresponding marginal costs while the share increases to 71% for industrial sector. The deadweight loss calculated under first-best pricing suggests moderate welfare loss due to prices deviating from marginal costs.

In this paper we explore the economic value of groundwater in irrigation – both in terms of the way in which it stabilizes water supply for those facing uncertain surface water flows – as well as in the way it augments water supply to farming enterprises beyond what would be available from precipitation or surface water flows alone. These respective components of groundwater's economic value – its ‘stabilization’ and ‘augmentation’ value – have been discussed in the literature before, but we point out some important ways in which they could be diminished if sub-optimal groundwater abstraction is allowed to persist. Groundwater ‘mining’ tends to diminish the augmentation value of groundwater, while leaving the stabilization value unaffected – as long as the resource extraction only manifests itself in terms of increased pumping costs. We illustrate, however, a situation in which even the stabilization value can be attenuated – which arises when constraints to the user's ability to abstract groundwater become binding and prevent her from realizing the stabilizing value that is embodied in the immediate exploitation of the resource. We demonstrate these losses in groundwater's economic value in irrigation through simulating increasingly sub-optimal, non-cooperative and strategic groundwater pumping behavior in a way that has not been done explicitly in the literature, and use a well-studied example from California to give an empirical illustration of our points.

Drought is one of the main limiting factors affecting crop production in many areas in the world. Pressurized irrigation systems enable more efficient use of water compared to surface irrigation systems but are rarely used by small farmers due to higher initial investment and energy costs. The main question investigated in the study is if remittances affect investment in pressurized irrigation (drip or sprinkler irrigation systems). A quantitative questionnaire survey was conducted among 234 small-scale farmers in the Republic of Moldova in 2016. The main result of the binary probit regression model revealed that remittances increased the likelihood of utilization of pressurized irrigation facilities in the study region. This study further contributes to a better understanding of factors that affect farmers’ adoption of pressurized irrigation systems. This knowledge helps policy makers and development organizations shape proper measures to increase the diffusion of this technology and thus the adaptation of smallholder farmers to climate risks.

Drip irrigation is claimed to save water and fertilizers and improve land productivity. Considerable recent evidence supports the water-saving effect of drip irrigation techniques, but little attention has been given to the effect on fertilizer savings and land productivity improvement. This study examines the effects of collective and individual drip irrigation (CDI and IDI, respectively) on fertilizer use intensity and land productivity. Using a multinomial endogenous switching treatment regression and a survey dataset collected in Awati County, Xinjiang, we found that (1) on average, CDI reduces fertilizer use intensity by 10.31%, but IDI increases it by 5.57%; and (2) compared to IDI, CDI improves land productivity by more than 13.65%. Moreover, based on quantitative analyses, we found that (3) a high frequency of mutual adjustment of fertigation (an information coordination mechanism) gives CDI these advantages. The policy implications are to continue the top-down promotion of CDI technology and strengthen the information coordination on fertigation during the operation of CDI systems.

Almost 800 million people lack access to basic water supply, and almost 2000 million lack access to sanitation. Therefore, achieving universal access remains a crucial goal of the global development agenda. In order to shed light on whether international aid might help accomplish that goal, this study evaluates its impact in a sample of 121 developing countries during 1990–2015. A new approach is adopted in which aid affects access not only through provision of infrastructure (supply) but also through health education (demand). Additionally, the long-held concern about the persistence of impacts over time is addressed by estimating panel vector autoregressive models (PVAR). The results show that both supply- and demand-side interventions financed by aid can contribute to promoting access to water, but consistent long-term investments are needed.

Human demand for adequate water resources and supplies has been and will continue to be a fundamental issue in the 21st century due to rapid population growth, growing economies and globalization, and increasing water pollution, among others. Water withdrawals in regions which are already encountering scarcity will impose intensifying pressure on water resources locally and globally, threatening the achievement of long-term sustainable development targets. Decoupling has increasingly been recognized and incorporated in policy making as a way to reconcile limitless economic growth with environmental pressures. Filling evident literature gaps, the current state and projected future decoupling factors of water withdrawals in relation to GDP are assessed through decoupling and regression analyzes for 155 countries and 12 potential socioeconomic development pathway scenarios. Findings suggest that average levels of water withdrawal decoupling are moderate in 2025 but will increase throughout the century in all countries. By 2075, average water withdrawal decoupling becomes common and widespread, with high decoupling factors across the world. Yet, some countries and regions will continue to lag behind in this development. GDP growth is the most significant driver of water withdrawals. Climate and regional differences among countries are major influential factors on decoupling outcomes, more so than current country-level income group classification. Altogether, these results are of high significance to water resource managers and policy actors, offering a chance to act proactively to change the course on global water resource and country-specific development. In this way, decoupling provides a pathway to a more water-wise world.

Assessing the possible locations and evaluating the spatial distribution of hydropower potentials at the global and regional scale is crucial for planning future energy development activities. This study assesses run–of–river-based hydropower potential and evaluates potential sites under technical, economic, and environmental constraints globally. The study used the recent (1965–2014) global runoff dataset (0.5° x 0.5° resolution) for design discharge computation and 90 m × 90 m resolution Digital Elevation Model (DEM) covering 90°N-60°S for topographical analysis. The design discharges (Q_d) calculated for 30%, 75%, and 95% flow dependability were used in the assessment and evaluations. Further, the economic feasibility of identified potential sites was evaluated by developing empirical relations derived from the observed cost of electromechanical equipment to corresponding head (H) and installed power (P). Globally a theoretical hydropower potential of 25.48 Peta watt-hours per year (PWh/yr) at 95% flow dependability to 184.17 PWh/yr at 30% flow dependability was estimated. The energy ranges from 7.06 PWh/yr to 49.05 PWh/yr are technically feasible for the design discharge calculated from 95% to 30% flow dependability, respectively. After excluding environmentally unsuitable and economically less competitive (Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCoE) > US$ 0.1/kWh) potential sites, it was estimated that an exploitable hydropower potential of 5.42 PWh/yr at 95% flow dependability to 39.56 PWh/yr at 30% flow dependability would be available globally.

During the 2011–2017 drought in California, water providers used a variety of demand-side management (DSM) policies to successfully reduce water consumption by over 20%. Unfortunately, because utilities used numerous conservation policies simultaneously, little is known about support for specific policies—specifically, an untested water-budgeting policy wherein utilities gave households an allotment of water and charged higher prices for water used in excess of the budget. California recently legislated mandatory long-term reductions in water usage. It is therefore critical to obtain a better understanding of which policies, including water budgeting, have strongest public support, and to understand how the drought experience changed residents' water use behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, habits, and personal capabilities surrounding conservation. This work surveyed individuals residing in northern California, the “North State,” during a period of severe drought. We used best-worst scaling to determine households’ preferences for DSM policies; asked households how their water use behaviors changed; and evaluated psychological attitudes toward drought and water conservation. Results show the vast majority of households changed their water use behaviors during the drought. Over two-thirds of respondents never exceeded their water budgets and said they would continue to conserve after the state lifted conservation requirements. Respondents preferred water budgets relative to more familiar DSM policies, a result with implications for forecasting future water demand. Last, our survey finds only minor differences in policy preferences for respondents with different demographics and attitudes toward water use, even for variables (e.g., income) that previous literature has found to have disparate welfare effects across users.