Is water trading policy an effective solution for water allocation in Voshmgir dam?

Abstract

The aim of this study is to assess the effectiveness of water trading policy as a solution for optimal use of water between farmers in Voshmgir dam, Iran. For assessment, four villages were selected and two water allocation programs under non-trading and trading systems were designed by two-stage stochastic programming technique and uncertainties expressed as intervals and probability distributions. The results obtained from the two programs were compared based on water volume which is released through trading and decrease in water deficiency as effectiveness indices. The results show that the water allocation under trading policy has changed so that it has led to released water and decrease in water deficiency by keeping the agricultural profit under non-trading, but irrigated area is decreased under trading. Generally, trading policy can lead to more effective allocation from the view of released water and decrease in water deficiency, but it can remove some farmers from agricultural activities by decreasing the irrigated area. As a result, trading policy can be effective in the short term especially in drought conditions due to insufficient water supply and can be unnecessary in normal and wet years in this case study.

Review of Mathematical Programming Applications in Water Resource Management Under Uncertainty

“…Water trading is shown to allow excess irrigation water to be reallocated, while maintaining agricultural revenues, provided trading costs are not too high. Jansouz et al [96] investigate the impact of water trading on the release of water from Voshmgir Dam, Iran. They show that water trading results in more effective water use with similar agricultural profit, but it reduces the land under irrigation and, hence, the number of farmers.…”

Concentration of water use permit and volume-based fees in Ceará, Brazil

“…In those sectors, the Pigou-Dalton effect (Atkinson & Brandolini, 2015) tends to manifest itself more explicitly, as in the case of human consumption, with CAGECE assuming increasingly concessions to municipal water treatment services, and in the industry, with the inauguration of the CSP steel and the MPX power plant in Pecém. This regressive effect has great potential also in the irrigation sector, especially as suggested by Hartmann (2010) and Jansouz et al (2017), when facing multi-annual periods of drought, where scarcity justifies, in the name of efficient use, the reallocation of water from small to large producers, in theory, more efficient in the use of water.…”

“…According to Braga et al (2009), permitting is an allocation instrument that aims to ensure the qualitative and quantitative control of water use, as well as the effective exercise of access rights. Permitting is conceived as an instrument of public regulation, compatible with the objectives socially established in the water plans, serving as a basis for the charging of fees (Braga et al, 2009), as well as the implementation of mechanisms based on the water market, which depends on a rigorous concession control system (Jansouz et al, 2017). However, the instrumental framework is a necessary condition for the development of good and adequate management of water resources but it is not a sufficient condition.…”

Bottom-up capping (BUC) policy under bargaining techniques for inter-sectoral groundwater trading: a case study from Iran

“…The centralized and decentralized optimization of water trading is the subject of various studies. The centralized optimization goal is to maximize the system's benefits through a top-down decision process (Li et al, 2014;Jansouz et al, 2017;Dou et al, 2019). But decentralized optimization models aim to simulate the behavior of water trading agents (Du et al, 2017;Aghaie et al, 2020).…”