The role of economics in integrated river basin management

River basin managementEconomic aspectsWater allocation

Shifting waterscapes: explaining basin closure in the Lower Krishna Basin, South India

River basins / Ecosystems / Protective irrigation / Irrigation programs / Water transfer / Water distribution / Water allocation / Groundwater depletion / Aquifers / Water scarcity / Water use / Drought / India / Lower Krishna Basin / Godavari Basin / Nagarjuna Sagar Project / Kolleru Lake

Formal water rights in rural Tanzania: Deepening the dichotomy?

Water rights / Water law / Water scarcity / Water use / Water users’ associations / Irrigation water / Cost recovery

Impacts of global change on the Nile basin: Options for hydropolitical reform in Egypt and Ethiopia

This paper analyzes drivers of global change and their impacts on the current and future availability and accessibility of water resources in the Nile Basin. Drivers include changes in demography, climate, the socioeconomy, and politics, all of which are likely to increase the demand for freshwater and thus competition over its use across riparian countries. As a result of historic bilateral agreements, Egypt, as the most downstream country, uses the lion's share of the Nile's waters, which makes reallocation particularly difficult. Egypt is nearly totally dependent on water from upstream countries but considers any change of the status quo a threat to its national (water) security. Ninety-six percent of Egypt's water originates outside its territory—86 percent in Ethiopia. This paper assesses the special upstream–downstream relationship in the Nile Basin and the potential for change as a result of global change. It hypothesizes that under global change, not only will water availability in the Nile Basin change but so will the current hydropolitical situation in the basin. In any case, meeting the challenges in the Nile Basin depends on cooperation among countries and regulation of competing interests and demands. Avenues for hydropolitical reform, including the Nile Basin Initiative, and the role of China and other donors or investors are discussed. The findings—that global change might well bring down the old hydropolitical regime—are confirmed by recent developments, in particular, the signing by five upstream countries of a new framework agreement for management and development of the Nile Basin.Nile Basin, hydropolitics, Cooperation, Conflict, global change, Reform,

The river sharing problem: A review of the technical literature for policy economists

Water is essential for life. However, the basic problem of water resource allocation has been that water tends to be over-allocated. Demand for water exceeds the available supply. Essentially, the water economy is bankrupt. Bankruptcy problems have been almost exhaustively studied in the literature on economic theory-primarily from the perspective of cooperative game theory. The main concern of this literature has been how to fairly divide up the assets of a bankrupt entity. In water resource economics cooperative game theory has often been employed as a means of analyzing water resource allocation. It was only recently that the problem of directional flow was incorporated into such analyses. This has come to be known as the “river sharing problem” in the theoretical literature. Accounting for the direction of flow in water resource allocation problems has profound implications for policies that wish to facilitate both fair and efficient water allocations. This is the case whether proposed policies are interventionist or market based in nature. There is now a considerable literature on the allocation and distribution of water resources characterized by unidirectional flow. In this paper I critically review and appraise this literature with a view to making it more accessible to applied and policy economists. A key feature of the paper is that the connection between the bankruptcy literature, which has recently also realized the importance of flow, and the river sharing literature is discussed. The current state of the art in game theoretic models of water resource allocation with directional flow is discussed and implications and consequences for water resource policy highlightedRiver sharing problem, Bankruptcy, Cooperative game theory, Water resouyrce allocation, distributive justice

Water Conflict and Cooperation in Central Asia

human development, water, sanitation

International water resources allocation and conflicts - the case of the Euphrates and the Tigris

The Mesopotamia region, within the boundaries of Turkey, Iraq, and Syria, is populated by different ethnic, national, and religious groups (Turks, Arabs, Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites), which have long fought over the control of its fertile lands. Since the early 1970's, there has been an increase in tension among these three countries, primarily related to the sharing of the waters of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. In particular, Turkey's development of Southeastern Anatolia, with water needed for agricultural and energy production projects, has been viewed as a threat to the well-being of Syria and Iraq. This water problem is likely to be exacerbated in the future, when water demand grows in both quantity and quality due to high population growth and urban development. This paper presents a water allocation optimization model, that represents, in network form, the system made of the two rivers and their various consumption (agriculture, urban centers, hydropower plants) and transshipment nodes, including the possibility of transferring water from the Euphrates to the Tigris. The basic model maximizes the aggregate net benefits of the three countries, including the gross benefits from water uses in agriculture, urban functions, and hydroelectricity, minus the costs of water conveyance. The model is formulated as a linear program, and accounts for both evaporation and return flows from consumptive uses. In view of the uncertainty surrounding the values of several parameters (e.g., agricultural benefit derived from using a gallon of water), the model is first used to carry systematic sensitivity analyses to identify the critical parameters. Next, the model is used to generate the net benefit Pareto surface, using multi-objective programming techniques. The systematic analysis of this surface provide information about the benefit trade-offs between any two countries. Finally, cooperative game theory concepts (core, Shapley value, nucleolus) are used to identify stable water allocations, where all three countries find it beneficial to cooperate. These various analyses are carried out under different scenarios related to future energy prices, agricultural production efficiency, and total water availability. The policy implications of the results are discussed, and areas for further research are outlined.