Water As a Social Opportunity by Davidson Seanna L.;Linton Jamie;Mabee Warren E.;

Author:Davidson, Seanna L.;Linton, Jamie;Mabee, Warren E.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press

3. The Challenge of the New Direction – The Case of Water

In response to over-allocation of water and associated environmental degradation, many river basins, such as the South Saskatchewan River Basin (SSRB) in Alberta (AE 2005) and the Murray-Darling Basin in Australia have been “closed” – meaning that no new applications for licenses to extract water are being accepted. With continued population and economic growth, coupled with increased demand to reduce water extraction to sustainable levels, our societies are faced with at least four interrelated challenges: i) how to meet new demand from existing and new consumptive users; ii) how to provide more water to the environment; iii) how to deal with the socioeconomic impact of achieving the first two challenges; and iv) how to involve the public in the planning process. This section focuses on the first three challenges, while the last is discussed in Section 5.

Meeting demand for both consumers and the environment can be addressed in two ways: i) governments can use “command and control” or regulatory measures to reallocate water rights; or ii) mechanisms can be created to apply market measures to water use. Certainly the regulatory reallocation of water can be accomplished, with sufficient political will (Bjornlund 2010). This will is often lacking, however, and hence the preference for market solutions. An argument for regulatory reallocation of water is that the resource belongs to society, which gave license holders the privilege of putting it to use and in turn delivering benefit back to society. Now that society’s interests have changed, however, water should be reallocated in accordance with today’s social values. A counterargument is that society has invested heavily in water infrastructure, providing water at little or no cost to irrigators in order to entice settlers to otherwise unattractive areas, ultimately increasing food production. In response, irrigators have invested their own money in putting the water to the use that corresponded with the social values of the time (food production), and that these investments will be largely lost if the water is taken away. In essence, regulatory reallocation asks irrigators to pay for the changes in social interests and values – is that fair?

This conflict has driven many jurisdictions to introduce market measures – securing water for the environment by buying water back from irrigators and other water users, as is currently done in Australia and the United States (Wheeler et al. 2013). However, valuing water is difficult; furthermore, the price set for water rights may indirectly dictate “how much” water should be reallocated to the environment. While there is generally strong agreement with the notion that the environment needs more water, there is far less agreement on how much water is needed, who should carry the burden of providing it, and what a fair price for the resource is (Whitford 2010; Bjornlund 2005; Bjornlund et al. 2011).

Changing access to water resources, either through regulatory means or via market forces, creates a new set of socio-economic challenges for resource users and their communities. If irrigators

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