Controlling Groundwater Exploitation Through Economic Instruments: Current Practices, Challenges and Innovative Approaches

Abstract

Groundwater can be considered as a common-pool resource, is often overexploited and, as a result, there are growing management pressures. This chapter starts with a broad presentation of the range of economic instruments that can be used for groundwater management, considering current practices and innovative approaches inspired from the literature on Common Pool Resources management. It then goes on with a detailed presentation of groundwater allocation policies implemented in France, the High Plains aquifer in the USA, and Chile. The chapter concludes with a discussion of social and political difficulties associated with implementing economic instruments for groundwater management. IntroductionAs detailed in Chap. 2 and elsewhere in this book, groundwater abstraction has increased considerably over the last few decades for both agricultural and urban uses. In many parts of the world, government agencies have not paid sufficient

Groundwater Management Lessons from Chile

“…The 1967 code (Gobierno de Chile, 1969), on the other hand, established that water rights were administrative rights that could expire (Hearne and Donoso, 2005). Finally, the Water Code of 1981 (Gobierno de Chile, 1981) maintained water as a national property for public use, granting private tradable water rights and reduced the participation of the State (Montginoul et al, 2016;Vergara and Rivera, 2018); the user is the owner of the 525 right in perpetuity, ownership that is protected constitutionally (Vergara and Rivera, 2018;Vergara et al, 2011). Additionally, WR are not sector specific and can be transferred between sectors as well as within economic sectors.…”

“…Although private WR existed in Chile prior to 1981, the previous water codes restricted the creation and operation of efficient water markets (Hearne and Donoso, 2005). Thus, the WC81 was designed to protect traditional and customary WR and to foster economically beneficial reallocation through market transfers (Montginoul et al, 2016).…”

Exploring the Potential of Groundwater Markets in Agriculture: Results of a Participatory Evaluation in Five French Case Studies

“…France has taken a firm step towards integrated water-resource management with its 1992 Water Law (Rinaudo, forthcoming), which introduced metering and licencing for water abstraction. The 2006 Water Law strengthened the legal framework for quantitative water-management issues (Rinaudo and Hérivaux, 2014;Montginoul et al, 2016). Hereafter, we describe the background to French groundwater policy, presenting the proposed cap and trade scenario and how it can be adapted to individual cases.…”

Out of Sight, Not Out of Mind: Developments in Economic Models of Groundwater Management

“…However, in practice there may be several obstacles in the implementation of full-fledged groundwater pricing. Montginoul et al (2016) point out that lack of information is a major issue in several groundwater areas. In particular, the most complete schemes require full metering ("who uses how much water in which place at different periods of the year", pg.…”