Water Resources and Economics最新文献

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.

Access to safe water sources remains scarce in sub-Saharan African countries. We estimate the economic value of safe water from newly constructed boreholes in rural Zambia. Our quasi-experimental setting allows us to estimate the revealed preference measure of new safe water sources in a causal way, empowered by precise information on water collection and distance to new facilities. We show that the share of time value for water collection in total expenditures was about 10% at the baseline survey, which was reduced to about 3% at the end-line survey, but the difference-in-differences analysis reveals that the project did not reduce the time burden for collecting water due to the greater demand for safe water. The main net benefit of the project lies in improved productivity due to decreased diarrhea incidence among working-age adults. The estimated internal rate of return of the project is not large. However, the project is likely to have additional dynamic health benefits due to the decrease in disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), corresponding to 192.3 USD per DALY and 6.88 USD per household.

This study aims to analyze the effects of local water market formation in a limited region of the Gavkhuni Basin, located in the center of Iran. An economic optimization mathematical model, called ‘inter-sectoral water exchanges programming’ (IWEP), is developed to address the study objectives. The proposed model seeks to maximize the net benefit of participating agents in the water market mechanism. This model can determine the scope of production activities and the monthly volume of water exchange through different technical methods of water transfer. Results demonstrate that the agriculture sector contributes to an increase in the productions of the agriculture industries and building industries through selling its surplus water. Although farm agents sell only 1% of their groundwater permits to industrial agents, the total net benefit of the agents is increased by more than 30%, compared to when the water market is not implemented. The shared aquifer method, based on common pool groundwater resources, is identified as a suitable technical method for water transfer in the groundwater markets. Finally, the socio-hydrological analysis of groundwater exchanges reveals that the inter-sectoral water market at the local scale can increase the region's employment rate by 45% and mitigate more pressure on the aquifer to meet water demands in the industry sector. These results clarify the efficient role of market-based groundwater allocation approach under water scarcity conditions.

The value and vulnerability of salt marshes has led to efforts to ensure their preservation, including the preservation of marsh transgression zones (uplands onto which marshes can migrate) and restrictions on shoreline armoring. Coastal armoring involves the placement of hardened structures such as revetments and bulkheads along the shoreline. These structures can prevent coastal marshes from migrating onto adjacent uplands as sea levels rise, thereby causing marsh loss over time. Hence, efficient targeting of efforts to ensure marsh sustainability requires an understanding of where and why coastal armoring is likely to occur. This article develops a random utility model that characterizes residential landowners’ shoreline armoring decisions for beachfront and non-beachfront residential property, focusing on whether armoring is influenced by features related to marsh migration. The model is illustrated using parcel-level data from Accomack County, Virginia with armoring observations on each parcel for two time periods, 2002 and 2013. Independent models for the two time periods suggest that landowners in the case study area do not tend to construct armoring in ways that impede marsh migration—all else equal armoring is less likely to occur in areas suitable for marsh migration. Rather, armoring appears to be motivated primarily by factors associated with shoreline erosion risk such as high wave energy.

Participatory Value Evaluation (PVE) is a new survey method which elicits citizens' preferences over the allocation of public budgets as well as their private income. In a PVE, citizens are asked to choose the best portfolio of projects given a governmental and a private budget constraint. First, this paper aligns PVE with the traditional Kaldor-Hicks welfare economics framework underlying many Cost-Benefit Analyses. Second, this paper positions PVE against other valuation methods. Third, this paper applies the PVE method to evaluate the impacts of projects mitigating flood risks in the Netherlands. This empirical application reveals that Dutch citizens indicate a preference for projects that combine strengthening dikes and give space to the river to flood safely, particularly when such projects positively influence biodiversity and recreational opportunities.

Water policy requires well established metrics for success. Precise metrics allow for quantifying progress and adjusting processes to produce the desired outcomes. We analyze the different schools of thought, nomenclatures and indicators developed for tracking water for human activities. After comparing a variety of terms related to water accounting used to serve the different purposes (environmental vs. ecological economics), we found that the different approaches to water tracking utilize identical terms to refer to distinctive concepts. The characterization of widely used terms such as 'water use' varies across different branches of literature. Different approaches to water measurement and its efficiency have an impact on water allocation. Our paper points out that the current definitions and methods for tracking water for human activities may offer contradictory advice over whether progress is being made towards desirable objectives, which may differ across stakeholders. This review aims at helping the transfer of academic results to empirical decision-making by discerning the differences among the variety of indicators available in the literature and their empirical implications. The ambiguity in the water terminology should be clarified before policy decisions can be useful in practice for guiding actions.

This paper investigates behavioral responses to a complicated and peculiar change in a municipality's water rate structure. In 2006, the City of Norman, Oklahoma Water Utility added a four-dollar fixed fee, reduced the number of block-rate tiers, and changed the rate structure from one that decreased and then increased across higher consumption block groups, to a strictly increasing rate structure. The changes in the volumetric rates were not uniform across the block rates. Customers at ultra-low volumes of consumption faced a one-penny reduction in their volumetric rate but experienced a large increase in total and average cost of water due to the addition of the relatively large fixed fee. In contrast, higher-volume users faced a less severe increase in the total and average charge per gallon consumed. To address the co-determination of average water charge and consumption choice, we estimate separate regressions for households grouped by pre-price change demand and the block group of last gallon consumed. Using detailed, monthly panel data for 23,408 residential water customers from 2002 to 2010 and a variety of model specifications, our results highlight heterogeneous responses across consumption groups. Ultra-low users responded to the price-regime change by increasing consumption whereas higher-volume users reduced consumption. Behavioral responses were found to be greater in the longer-run than shorter-run as expected.