Cost-effectiveness of groundwater conservation measures: A multi-level analysis with policy implications

Abstract

Keywords:Groundwater resources Irrigation Wetlands conservation Multi-scale economic modeling Water policies Cost-effectiveness analysisGroundwater in Spain, as in other arid and semiarid countries worldwide, has been widely used in the expansión of irrigated agriculture. In the Spanish Mancha Occidental aquifer, the excessive, and sometimes ¡Ilegal, water abstraction for irrigation has promoted outstanding socioeconomic development in the área, but it has also resulted in exploitation of the aquifer and degradation of valuable wetlands. Water policies implemented in the región ha ve not yet managed to restore the aquifer and face strong social opposition. This paper uses a multi-scale modeling approach to explore the environmental and socio-economic impacts of alternative water conservation measures at the farm and basin levéis. It also analyzes their comparative cost-effectiveness to help policy makers identify the least costly policy option for achieving the goal of the Mancha Occidental aquifer's sustainability. To conduct this analysis, a Mathematical Programming Model has been developed to simúlate: the closing-up and taxed-legalization of unlicensed wells, uniform volumetric and block-rate water prices, water quotas, and water markets. Aggregate results show that net social costs are not substantially different across policy option, so none of the considered policy options will be clearly more cost-effective than the others. However, there are significant differences between prívate and public costs (at the farm and sub-basin levéis), which will be critical for determining the application in practice of these policies. Results show that controlling ¡Ilegal water mining (through the legalization of unlicensed wells) is necessary, but is not sufficient to recover the aquifer. Rather, effective water management in this área will require the implementation of other water management policies as well. Among them, uniform volumetric and block-rate water pricing policies will entail the lowest net social cost, but will produce important income losses in the smallest and most water-intensive farms, which might put at risk the viability of these farms and the social acceptance of the policies. Further investigations on social costs, policy enforcement capacity and public participation in water management are highly recommended.

Integrated assessment of policy interventions for promoting sustainable irrigation in semi-arid environments: A hydro-economic modeling approach

“…As seen in Table 7, the marginal opportunity cost of irrigation water is almost two times higher that the unit cost of water, currently fixed at 0.02 €/m^. Similar results have been obtained by Blanco-Gutiérrez et al (2011) and Garrido and Calatrava (2010), which demónstrate that current water prices in Spain, basically designed to cover the financial cost of irrigation water sen/ices, should be doubled for fuUy recovering the environmental and resource costs, as required by the EU WFD (Art, 9).…”

A stakeholder-based assessment of barriers to climate change adaptation in a water-scarce basin in Spain

“…However, beyond this, there also exist an array of barriers that have constrained the implementation of adaptation actions, as widely discussed in the literature (e.g. Moser and Ekstrom 2010;Eisenack and Stecker 2012;Biesbroek et al 2013). There is an increasingly rich body of literature that identifies and lists barriers to adaptation.…”

Combined use of groundwater simulation and multi-criteria analysis within a spatial decision-making framework for optimal allocation of irrigation water

“…regarding water management) and economic decisions, a lower level (LAU-2) was also involved in the analysis: that of the seven municipal districts, which are located within the boundaries of the watershed: Nea Moudania, Agios Panteleimon, Dionysiou, Zografou, Portaria, Simantra and Flogita (Figure 1). In a more general sense, the adoption of such a multi-scale modeling approach has been demonstrated to be more realistic and highly recommended (Blanco-Gutiérrez et al, 2011).…”

“…a water use quota), the study adds also to the rapidly expanding scientific area of irrigation water economics (Arcas et al, 2010), by focusing on groundwater management, a recently recognized important and interesting area for the application of the tools of economic theory and econometrics (Koundouri, 2004). Indeed, relevant current research is steadily looking, in a very detailed way, at various economic consequences that groundwater conservation policy options produce, either upon the individuals or the society as a whole, and at multiple spatial scales (Blanco-Gutiérrez et al, 2011).…”