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Artificial shortage of surface water: how can water demand management mitigate the scarcity problem?
Author(s) -
Slavíková Lenka,
Vojáček Ondřej,
Smejkal Tomáš
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
water and environment journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.437
H-Index - 37
eISSN - 1747-6593
pISSN - 1747-6585
DOI - 10.1111/wej.12217
Subject(s) - water scarcity , scarcity , economic shortage , surface water , payment , water resources , resource (disambiguation) , natural resource economics , abstraction , business , environmental economics , water resource management , environmental resource management , environmental science , computer science , environmental engineering , economics , ecology , microeconomics , computer network , linguistics , philosophy , finance , epistemology , government (linguistics) , biology
Water demand management stresses the crucial roles of water user motivations in balancing actual water availability and competing human needs. This paper shows how the absence of such motivations influences artificial water scarcity, even in resource‐abundant countries, and how slight modifications to economic instruments (surface water charges in particular) might solve the problem. Data from the Czech Republic are used to illustrate the rationale behind the artificial scarcity problem and its solution. A model with feedback based on historical surface water abstraction data is built to simulate the impacts of different payment modification scenarios.