Urban water supply in Australia: the option of diverting water from irrigation

John Quiggin

No 149857, Risk and Sustainable Management Group Working Papers from University of Queensland, School of Economics

Abstract: Most urban areas in Australia are facing the prospect of increasing scarcity of water. Further pressure arises from evidence that existing levels of water use in many catchments are environmentally unsustainable. One option, feasible for some but not all Australian cities is the diversion to urban areas of water currently used for irrigated agriculture. Such diversions are currently constrained by a range of government policies. However, plans for the creation of a national water market raise the possibility that water rights may be purchased from irrigators and used to increase the supply of water for residential use. A number of policy concerns, notably relating to stranded assets and environmental externalities must be addressed in the consideration of such purchases.

Keywords: Environmental; Economics; and; Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 63
Date: 2006
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/149857/files/WPM06_3.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Urban water supply in Australia: the option of diverting water from irrigation (2006)
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:ags:uqsers:149857

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.149857

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Risk and Sustainable Management Group Working Papers from University of Queensland, School of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().