Achieving sustainable development goals from a water perspective: clean water pricing policy reform and consumers’ welfare in Algeria

The water pivot: transforming unsustainable consumption to valuing water as a resource for life

“…The price elasticity, namely the price difference needed to elicit change in consumption, is variable based on the timescale under consideration for impact (Scheierling et al, 2006) and the sector, along with the ability to pay increased prices (Olmstead and Stavins, 2009;Berbel and Expósito, 2020), or cope with interruptions in supply (Brown et al, 2019). Therefore the success of price measures is mixed and highly dependent on the price elasticity of water use (Shi et al, 2014;Kertous et al, 2022). At the domestic scale, water use is generally considered to be inelastic (Olmstead et al, 2003;Luby et al, 2018), and therefore to effectively influence water consumption different factors become significant for different users and cultural contexts.…”

“…If the difference in shadow price compared to the current price is too great this can have inequitable and unjust economic and societal impacts. There is a risk of inter-sectoral inequity when applied at the organization level (Shi et al, 2014) and community level inequity (Ntengwe, 2004;Olmstead and Stavins, 2009;Heino and Takala, 2015;Luby et al, 2018;Kertous et al, 2022) if the pricing structure is established without justice principles at the forefront. Furthermore there are additional restrictions in the implementation of changes to water pricing due to institutional rigidity within the political economy and governance systems (Mumssen et al, 2018).…”