Although there has been a policy thrust towards making all Australians more cognisant of the relative scarcity of water resources, the approach adopted for urban dwellers differs markedly from that applied to irrigators. These differences are examined from a property-rights perspective focussing...

Water reform in NSW is being undertaken using an adaptive approach in recognition of the uncertainty and imperfect knowledge embodied in the riverine environment. However, the reform process also relies, in part, on the ability of markets for tradable water entitlements to develop and thereby...

The Australian National Water Initiative (NWI) builds on the foundations of earlier water reforms, attempts to correct earlier errors in both policy and its implementation, and seeks to better define some of the policy aims with the benefit of hindsight. However, despite the deliberate effort to...

“There is a water crisis today. But the crisis is not about having too little water to satisfy our needs. It is a crisis of managing water badly – such that billions of people and the environment suffer.” (World Water Vision 2000).The management of water resources is becoming increasingly...

Many economists and policy makers have begun to question the efficacy of water reforms that rely on markets as the principal mechanism for allocating the resource to its highest value use. One of the principal concerns in this regard has been the relative paucity of permanent trades despite ex...

The study examines the nature and performance of watershed development institutions in India. Improving productivity and incomes in rainfed areas, which have much poverty, is a major challenge in India, and a huge initiative through which this is pursued is Watershed Development (WSD) programs...

Lake Hume is a significant water storage located at the headwaters of the River Murray. It provides irrigation water, urban water supplies, flood mitigation and recreational benefits to a large and economically significant region. Water quality in Lake Hume has recently been the subject of...

The National Water Initiative and earlier water reforms have committed Australian governments to redressing environmental degradation caused by excessive extraction from rivers and groundwater systems. To date, the states, territories and commonwealth have identified a range of alternatives for...

The theoretical foundation of water market reforms presumes that such institutions will allow water to be traded from relatively low-value to higher-value uses and simultaneously accomplish many of the economic and environmental objectives ascribed to water resource managers. Numerous ex ante...