“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...

Notwithstanding the neoclassical predilection for markets as a means of allocating scarce resources, it remains the case that state-devised attenuation of behaviour is the norm for many resource allocation decisions. This is particularly apparent in the case of water in urban areas in Australia,...

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...

The degradation of the natural resource base that derives from unsustainable farm practices is of major concern in Australia. Confronted with mounting evidence of the extent of this degradation, governments have employed a variety of policy instruments to induce change amongst the farming...

In most urban cities across Australia, water restrictions remain the dominant policy mechanism to restrict urban water consumption. The extensive adoption of water restrictions over several years means that Australian urban water prices have consistently not reflected the opportunity cost of...