Ben Groom

Resource Pricing and Poverty Alleviation: The Case of Block Tariffs for Water in Beijing

In recent years the arid North East of China, and in particular Beijing, has suffered sporadic shortages of water. The causes of these events are manifold and like most manifestations of scarcity, water scarcity has important demand and supply side elements. Although on the supply side drought events have contributed to water shortages in the past few years, it is the nature of water demand that presents perhaps the most important determinant of water scarcity in Beijing. On the one hand, as a downstream user, surface water supplies to Beijing have been reduced by increased demands, largely from agriculture, in upstream areas of the Chao River (Hou, 2001). On the other hand, unprecedented economic growth and rural-to-urban migration in China as a whole means that urban water demand has increased both as the populous increases and as households become wealthier

The Economics of Water Resource Allocation: Valuation Methods and Policy Implications

In this chapter a ‘watershed economics approach’ that could be applied in Cyprus is proposed which is composed of two important stages. In Stage I economic valuation techniques are used to establish the economic value of the competing demands for surface and groundwater, incorporating where necessary an analysis of water quality. The valuation exercise allows the objective balancing of demands based upon the equi-marginal principle to achieve economic efficiency. In Stage II a policy impact analysis is proposed which addresses issues of social equity and the value of water for environmental/ecological purposes. The analysis is undertaken within the confines of the watershed; the most natural unit for the analysis of water allocation and scarcity since it determines the hydrological links between competing users and thus the impacts of one user upon another. The methodology is encapsulated by a case study of the Kouris watershed in Cyprus.

Missing Markets and Redundant Reservoirs: Dams as a Consequence of Inefficient Groundwater Management Policies

The blocking of natural waterways has been argued to be one of the clearest cases of human-generated damages to natural systems and biodiversity. (World Commission on Dams, 2000). Is this damage potentially avoidable? And why are the world’s waterways flooded with dams? Of course, many of these structures are erected in the pursuit of clear development benefits (energy, irrigation) and represent examples of the trade-offs existing between the pursuit of developmental and environmental benefits (Krutilla and Fisher, 1967). Others however may be the result of inefficient water management practices, and hence entirely avoidable. It is this class of wasteful construction/obstruction projects that we wish to describe and to define here. It is our argument that dams may be one consequence of inefficient groundwater management practices — a response to the persistence of externalities between groundwater owners and conjunctive users.