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European workshop: "Water markets: A response to water scarcity and drought in Europe?"
In Europe, several river basins face high level of water stress, inparticular in dry and irrigation-intensive river basins in Southern Europe and hot-spotsaround urban centers. In the future, it is likely that predicted climate change will exacerbatethis situation. In that context, several European Member States are progressively developingand implementing water demand management policies.
In the urban sector, economicinstruments, such as tariffs and taxes, are increasingly used to incentivize waterconservation practices. In agriculture, the most common approach consists in rationingwater use through the establishment of a system of quotas, which are often defined basedon historical water uses. This administrative allocation mechanism has been criticized bysome economists who consider it as economically inefficient. They suggest that waterquotas should become tradable in order to allow water to be reallocated from low to highadded value uses. Such water markets already exist in countries like Australia, Chile, USAand, since 1999, Spain.
In its “Blue Print to safeguard Europe’s water resources” (2012),the European Commission suggested that water trading could beincluded in water managers’ tool box. For many countries where water iscurrently considered as a public trust and its allocation ruled by administrative procedures,making water quotas tradable would be considered by stakeholders and the society as awhole as a real shift in paradigm. The water trading perspective raises a number ofquestions related to the expected economic gains; the social and territorial impacts; the costof establishing such a system; the most appropriate institutional set-up; and the social andpolitical acceptability of this instrument. It also calls for a comparison with alternativeapproaches relying on cooperative and contractual mechanisms.
This seminar will address these issues by creating a dialoguebetween researchers, policy makers and water managers comingfrom various European countries. It will be organized by Onema and the Frenchgeological survey (BRGM).
Case studies conducted in France, Italy and Spain will be presentedand used as a basis for discussion during round tables. Participation is limited to 60 personsin order to create the conditions required for high quality debate. The outcomes of theworkshop will be summarized in a short publication edited by ONEMA.
| Contact information |
Jean-Daniel Rinaudo Responsable du Programme Scientifique Economie des milieux et des risques Direction de l’Eau, Environnement et Ecotechnologies 1039 rue de Pinville - 34000 Montpellier - France
(email: jd.rinaudo@brgm.fr) Phone: +33 4 67 15 79 90 / 85 |
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| Event type | Seminar |
| File link |
http://seminar-water-markets.oieau.fr/ |
| File link copy |
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| Source | OIEAU |
| Subject(s) | AGRICULTURE , ENERGY , FINANCE-ECONOMY , HYDRAULICS - HYDROLOGY , INDUSTRY , INFORMATION - COMPUTER SCIENCES , METHTODOLOGY - STATISTICS - DECISION AID , NATURAL MEDIUM , POLICY-WATER POLICY AND WATER MANAGEMENT , RISKS AND CLIMATOLOGY , WATER DEMAND |
| Relation | http://www.emwis.org/topics/WaterScarcity |
| Geographical coverage | France |
| Address | Hôtel Kyriad Bercy Village 17, rue Baron Leroy, PARIS-12 |
| Organizer | BRGM and ONEMA |
| Target audience | Euro |
| Period | 11/02/2014 |
| Status | Confirmed |
| Working language(s) | ENGLISH , FRENCH |
