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Advancing Water Trade: A Preliminary Investigation of Urban‐Irrigation Options Contracts in the Ovens Basin, Victoria, Australia *
Author(s) -
Leroux Anke,
Crase Lin
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
economic papers: a journal of applied economics and policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.245
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1759-3441
pISSN - 0812-0439
DOI - 10.1111/j.1759-3441.2010.00070.x
Subject(s) - work (physics) , water scarcity , upstream (networking) , water trading , scarcity , agriculture , business , software deployment , irrigation , natural resource economics , water use , water resources , water resource management , environmental planning , water conservation , environmental science , economics , geography , engineering , ecology , mechanical engineering , archaeology , microeconomics , biology , telecommunications , software engineering
Climate change predictions include forecasts of higher variability in rainfall and river flows leading to greater uncertainty about future availability of water across urban and agricultural sectors. Under conditions of water scarcity, it makes economic sense to facilitate the transfer of water from low‐ to high‐value users. This paper provides insights into the merits of water options contracts as a vehicle for facilitating trade and represents an alternative to the politically contentious permanent sale of water by agriculturalists. In addition, we provide some indicative results from an analysis of the feasibility of options contracts in an inter‐sectoral setting by considering their deployment to remove urban/industrial water restrictions. A case study of the urban community of Wangaratta and upstream agricultural interests has been selected. The objective is to identify the conditions under which option contracts might work and to highlight the important contract design features that need to be considered.