5 Water Resources

• Not all groundwater abstraction gets monitored
• Water Supply Problems

  • Mismatch between geographic location of sources and of consumers
  • Climate variability
  • Different threats
  • Various benefits and economic values (fill in the generic graph)
• Mismatch between geographic location of sources and of consumers:

  • Mismatch between physical supply and demand
  • Transport, storage, and water quality improvement costs determine the economic supply
  • Water use: consumptive and non-consumptive
• Climate variability:

  • within the year (seasonal flows); year-to-year (El Nino cycles)
  • Dry and wet months; flooding
• Different threats

  • Climate change: long-term extreme events (droughts, 100+++ year rains)
  • Pollution: organic, inorganic, toxic and hazardous waste, water borne pathogens, habitat of harmful organisms
  • Over-abstraction, specially of ground water
• Fill the table with examples of water resources values

  A) drinking and cooking

  B) irrigation

  C) recreation like swimming

  D) support ecosystem and biodiversity

  E) soil fertility and productivity

  F) maintaining access for future use

  G) appreciation of water landscapes

  H) enjoying water forefront views and recreation

  I) supporting conservation efforts

  J) donating in sanitation projects

  K) leaving a legacy of clean water

  L) ensuring that water resources are preserved and sustain

  
• Efficient Allocation of Water

  • The allocation of water is essentially distributing a fixed, renewable supply among competing users.
  • Efficient allocation: Marginal net benefits are equal among users for the same use.
  • Marginal net benefits equal among various types of users
• Efficient Allocation of Water

  A) Marginal net benefits

  B) A

  C) B

  D) Efficient

  E) unfair

  F) regulatory body

  
• When does supply decline? Ground Water, depletable

  • When withdrawals >>> Recharge, eventual exhaustion.
  • Increasing cost of extraction.
  • Extraction now means marginal user cost, or opportunity cost imposed on future users deprived of currently extracted quantity.
  • Continue extracting despite increasing pumping cost, until MNB < Marginal Extraction Cost.
  • Or shift to next least expensive, other sources.
  • There are externalities to excessive groundwater extraction:
  • Ground subsidence
  • Others?
• Riparian rights: Water adjacent to land is appropriated by the landowner
• Prior appropriation doctrine: First arrival, first claim and served.
• State owned water : Usufruct rights = right to use to applicants
• Usufruct rights for: Irrigation, industrial use, others.

  • Limited time period
  • Technological specifications, specially with respect to disposal of wastewater
  • Water for aquatic habitat: aquaculture, limited area, time period and technology
  • Transferability = water markets can develop (Chile, Australia)
• Sources of Inefficiency

  • Water Markets and Water Prices: Market imperfections; incomplete markets
  • Lack of protection of upstream sources, instream conditions, and disposal of used or wastewater,
• Water Pricing Methods and Their Properties

  A) Volumetric

  B) Output

  C) Input

  D) Per Area

  E) Block Rate (Tiered)

  F) Two-part

  G) Water market

  
• Overview of the Various Variable Charge Rate Structure

  A) Uniform rate

  B) Declining block

  C) Inverted block rate

  D) Seasonal rate

  
• Costing Water: two approaches

  • Demand Side Approach
  • Supply-Side Approach

  IDEAL SITUATION: DO BOTH
• Costing Water: Demand Side Approach

  • discern real value of water to the beneficiaries - all types of uses
• Costing Water: Supply-Side Approach

  • financial cost of technological determinants of physical supply: hydrological, engineering, storage and purification
  • economic costs
  • environmental costs
• Demand-side approach: Payment for Ecosystem Services from a Watershed

  • USA NY State watershed PES experience
  • COSTA RICA: specific watershed payments and eco-markets
  • Colombia/Costa Rica/Nicaragua:
  • Regional integrated silvo-pastoral ecosystem management project
  • China: revision of Sloping Land Conversion Program
• Payments for Ecosystem Services: capturing benefits of environmental services from watershed protection

  A) Deforestation and use for pasture

  B) Conservation with payment for service

  
• Example: Arenal-Tempisque (Costa Rica) Watershed Stakeholders

  A) Dairy farmers

  B) Hydropower generating authority

  C) Farmers and fish-farmers

  D) Palo Verde

  E) Coastal fishermen

  
• Payment for Environmental Services from Integrated Silvo-pastoral Approaches to Ecosystem Management (Nicaragua, Colombia, Costa Rica)

  • Current land uses include a wide range of land use types (28), from well-preserved secondary forests to degraded pasturelands with minimal tree cover
  • Payment promotes land use changes from systems with low vegetative cover and minimal environmental attributes to more biologically diverse and productive systems.
  • Uses an aggregated index for Carbon and Biodiversity and measures changes in the index as basis for payment
  • Pays after the service is provided.
• Philippine Examples of PES (1 of 2)

  A) DOLE Foundation

  B) Cooperatives

  
• Philippine Examples of PES (2 of 2)

  A) Flood mitigation

  
• Bottlenecks of Full Cost Pricing of Water

  • Ethical and cultural objections
  • Equity and social justice
  • Leakage (non-revenue water)