The role of the commonwealth environmental water holder in annual water allocation markets

Tiho Ancev

Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 2015, vol. 59, issue 1, 133-153

Abstract: type="main" xml:id="ajar12054-abs-0001">

In recent years, the Government of Australia has bought back a significant amount of water entitlements in the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) through its Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder (CEWH) agency. This has been a welcome development, as it is an efficient way of securing water for the environment in the basin. However, the question of how to best manage water holdings held by the government is as yet unresolved. In particular, the question of whether and how should the CEWH engage in water markets is still grappling the government and academia alike. This paper addresses that question by evaluating total benefits to a range of water users, including the environment, under a variety of hydro-climatic conditions. This is approached through running simulations based on environmental benefit function that varies with prevailing hydro-climatic conditions. The findings indicate that the benefits are greater when CEWH actively participates in annual water allocation market and that such participation enables the CEWH to secure most water when it is needed the most by the environment. This suggests that policy should encourage the CEWH to further explore opportunities to engage with the water markets to the benefit of communities and the environment in the MDB.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/ajar.2015.59.issue-1 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Journal Article: The role of the commonwealth environmental water holder in annual water allocation markets (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ajarec:v:59:y:2015:i:1:p:133-153

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://ordering.onli ... 1111/(ISSN)1467-8489

Access Statistics for this article

Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics is currently edited by John Rolfe, Lin Crase and John Tisdell

More articles in Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics from Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().