Agricultural Water Allocation Under Cyclical Scarcity: The Role of Priority Water Rights

Water is becoming an increasingly scarce resource worldwide, suggesting that water rationing methods should be revised to improve water allocation efficiency, especially during cyclical scarcity events (droughts). The proportional rule is the most widely used rationing method to allocate water in cases of water scarcity. However, this method fails to achieve Pareto-efficient allocation arrangements. Economic theory and international experience demonstrate that implementing security-differentiated water rights could improve allocative efficiency during cyclical scarcity periods. Moreover, it has been proven that this kind of priority rights regime is an efficient instrument to share risks related to water supply reliability, and can thus be considered as an adaptation measure to climate change. This evidence has enabled the development of an operational proposal for the implementation of security-differentiated water rights in the irrigation sector in Spain, as an alternative to the current rights based on the proportional rule. This proposal draws on the Australian case study, which is the most successful experience worldwide. Nevertheless, the insights obtained from the analysis performed and the proposal for reforming the water rights regime are applicable to any country with a mature water economy

Priority Water Rights for Irrigation at the River Basin Level. Do They Improve Economic Efficiency During Drought Periods?

This paper assesses the potential efficiency gains of reforming the water rights regime in the Spanish agricultural sector by replacing current allocation procedures based on the proportional rule with a priority allocation procedure based on two tiers of security-differentiated water rights. This assessment is useful for evaluating whether said change in water rights can be considered a suitable policy instrument to improve water management during droughts events. For this purpose, a mathematical programming model is built to simulate the performance of the proposed reform. The empirical analysis is implemented at the basin scale, where water rights holders are highly heterogeneous, considering different climate scenarios accounting for changes in water supply reliability. The Guadalquivir River Basin (GRB) in southern Spain is used as a case study. The results obtained show that this change in the water allocation regime would yield only modest economic efficiency gains under the current climate scenario. However, it is also evidenced that this policy instrument could play a more relevant role as an efficiency enhancer in a climate change scenario, given that more frequent and intense drought episodes are expected. Moreover, priority rights represent an interesting risk management instrument for farmers, allowing the most vulnerable farmers to reduce income volatility. These findings suggest that the combined implementation of the proposed shift in the allocation regime with spot or allocation water markets would lead to successful outcomes, significantly improving drought management in the irrigation sector

Priority water rights. Are they useful for improving water-use efficiency at the irrigation district level?

This paper examines the effectiveness of reforming water rights regimes in the agricultural sector by replacing allocation procedures based on the proportional rule with the implementation of a priority rule that establishes security-differentiated water rights. The main objective is to assess whether this change improves the economic efficiency of water allocation at the irrigation district level, particularly during cyclical scarcity events. To this end, a Positive Mathematical Programming model is built to simulate the performance of the proposed reform in an irrigation district in southern Spain. The results show that the efficiency gains brought about by this change are very small, which casts doubt on its ability to improve water-use efficiency in the agricultural sector at the local level (i.e., irrigation district) under current local climate and water availability conditions. In any case, further research is needed to assess the suitability of this change in allocations rules at basin scale with greater farm heterogeneity, especially given the likelihood of more frequent, more intense droughts due to climate change

Self-financed water bank for resource reallocation to the environment and within the agricultural sector

In closed river basins, economic activities commonly threaten instream flows, especially during drought episodes. In such situations, a suitable policy option is to recover water for the environment by purchasing water allocations from farmers through a water bank. However, the purchase of temporary water rights strongly depends on the public budget available for this purpose. We propose a self-financed water bank with the twofold objective of reallocating water within the agricultural sector and recovering a share of the purchased water for the environment. The main feature of this water bank is that it will operate in a monopsony-monopoly setting, using its market power to recover water for environmental purposes, and working with a balanced budget (expenditure on purchases will equal revenues from sales). A mathematical programming model is developed to simulate the potential performance of the proposed water bank in the Guadalquivir River Basin (southern Spain), considering society’s demand for environmental water and different water scarcity scenarios. Results show that a maximum of between 5.8% and 10.4% of total water availability can be recovered for the environment, depending on the severity of the drought, while total economic efficiency is increased, yielding a beneficial result for farmers and society

Optimizing Phase Settings of High-Frequency Voltage Regulators for Power Delivery Applications

Every new computer server introduced to the market aims at delivering the best tradeoff between performance and power consumption. This goal is crucial in the case of servers for cloud computing hardware infrastructure. In this context, power delivery (PD) experts are adopting higher frequency switching voltage regulators (VR) to reduce platform’s cost as well as total cost of ownership (TCO). Because of this fact, the real estate of components, such as voltage regulators and output inductors, is shrinking as VR frequency increases. As a consequence, achieving the best performance of the VR implies looking into phase shedding schemes, as well as EM coupled inductor design, among other techniques, to mitigate power losses. This paper focuses on the study of the best angle arrangement possible for high frequency VR applications, by exploring angle settings under light load scenarios, aiming to minimize VR’s power loss and output’s voltage ripple

Derechos prioritarios de agua: ¿son una opción adecuada para la asignación de agua durante periodos de sequía?

Este trabajo examina la conveniencia de reformar la asignación de agua en el sector del regadío, reemplazando el actual sistema de asignación basado en la regla proporcional por la implementación de una regla de prioridad que establezca derechos de agua diferenciados por su grado de garantía de suministro. El objetivo principal consiste en evaluar si este cambio en los derechos de agua puede considerarse una alternativa razonable a los mercados de agua con el fin de mejorar la eficiencia económica de la asignación del agua durante situaciones de escasez coyuntural a nivel de comunidad de regantes. Para ello, se construye un modelo de programación matemática para poder simular el desempeño de la reforma propuesta en una comunidad de regantes del sur de España. Los resultados muestran que las ganancias de eficiencia provocadas por este cambio en el sistema de asignación son muy pequeñas. Por tanto, este instrumento de gestión de la demanda no puede considerarse como un sustitutivo adecuado de los mercados de agua

Banco público de agua para recuperar agua para el medioambiente en situación de sequía en contexto de monopolio-monopsonio

Los mercados de derechos temporales de agua (mercados de dotaciones) son instrumentos ampliamente utilizados para recuperar agua para el medioambiente durante los períodos de escasez coyuntural (sequías). Este documento propone un banco de agua que opera en un contexto de monopolio-monopsonio con el doble propósito de reasignar el agua entre los agricultores y adquirir agua para el medioambiente durante los períodos de sequía. El banco de agua propuesto sería una mejora en los procedimientos actuales para la compra pública de dotaciones de agua con fines ambientales. Este sería administrado por una agencia pública que buscaría maximizar la eficiencia económica generada en las compras y ventas de agua por los regantes y la eficiencia generada por la recuperación de las dotaciones de agua para el medioambiente. Una característica adicional e innovadora del análisis realizado es que considera las ineficiencias en la economía en su conjunto causadas por el gasto público en compras de dotaciones de agua, medido a través del coste marginal de los fondos públicos. El rendimiento potencial del banco de agua propuesto se simula mediante técnicas de programación matemática, tomando la cuenca del río Guadalquivir (sur de España) como caso de estudio. Los resultados evidencian que, en términos de eficiencia económica, el banco propuesto supera a los instrumentos actualmente en vigencia para comprar dotaciones de agua.Este trabajo ha sido financiado por el Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (MCIU), la Consejería de Economía y Conocimiento de la Junta de Andalucía y el Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) a través de los proyectos de investigación IRRIDROUGHT (RTI2018-095407-B-I00) y FINAGUA (UCO-1264548)

Narración fotográfica y diario multimodal de aprendizaje: enriquecimiento de creencias y valores en la formación inicial de educadores

Depto. de Estudios EducativosFac. de EducaciónFALSEsubmitte

Water Banks: What Have We Learnt from the International Experience?

In recent decades, the use of economic instruments has been promoted as a way to improve water demand management, required due to the difficulty of further supply increases. Against this backdrop, this paper analyses the potential of water banks as a type of water market that can provide institutional flexibility in the allocation of water resources among different users. Research has involved an extensive review of the literature, which has allowed us to identify different types of water banks that operate around the world, as well as an analysis of the experiences of water banks implemented to date, in order to assess the performance of this economic instrument in improving water management. This has provided evidence that water banks, if properly implemented, can be a useful tool for improving governance of water resources. Finally, the analysis has enabled us to propose a number of guidelines on how to improve the implementation of water banks in different countries around the worl

Alternative Post-Processing on a CMOS Chip to Fabricate a Planar Microelectrode Array

We present an alternative post-processing on a CMOS chip to release a planar microelectrode array (pMEA) integrated with its signal readout circuit, which can be used for monitoring the neuronal activity of vestibular ganglion neurons in newborn Wistar strain rats. This chip is fabricated through a 0.6 μm CMOS standard process and it has 12 pMEA through a 4 × 3 electrodes matrix. The alternative CMOS post-process includes the development of masks to protect the readout circuit and the power supply pads. A wet etching process eliminates the aluminum located on the surface of the p+-type silicon. This silicon is used as transducer for recording the neuronal activity and as interface between the readout circuit and neurons. The readout circuit is composed of an amplifier and tunable bandpass filter, which is placed on a 0.015 mm2 silicon area. The tunable bandpass filter has a bandwidth of 98 kHz and a common mode rejection ratio (CMRR) of 87 dB. These characteristics of the readout circuit are appropriate for neuronal recording applications