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E-book The Economics of Water : Rules and Institutions

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Penilaian

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Water is not only the beginning of all things, as the old Greeks had alreadyrealized, but without water, no life on earth is possible, and clean water is also aprecondition for any form of sustainable development. There is enough availablefreshwater on earth (about 91,000 km3) to supply every individual on earth (about7.5 billion in 2020) approx. 12,000l, more than enough to live decently. However, dueto natural and man-made idiosyncracies, clean freshwater and sanitation (which wedo not cover in-depth in this book) are scarce, and thus decisions need to be taken onthe production, treatment, and distribution of water, given underlying technical andsocioeconomic conditions. Water needs to be managed efficiently, both with respectto the growing scarcity of resources, as a natural endowment that is indispensablefor the survival of mankind, but also with respect to the variety of eco-servicesit delivers. In fact, water is a multifunctional resource that provides people withpotable water, secures landscapes in different climate zones and functions as a sinkof pollutants emanating from human activities. Thus, a comprehensive approach isrequired, including a technical understanding of the basic hydrological principles,different economic allocation rules, but also the institutional framing of the use of water. Problems of water supply and demand are not new; on the contrary, they existas long as life exists on earth. However, with rising population, environmental chal-lenges, climate change, and adverse local conditions, and often a lack of appropriateregulatory and institutional conditions, issues of water management have becomeglobal in the last century. This has lead—amongst other goals—to the MillenniumGoals of 2000, calling to halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population withoutsustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. Some, but not sufficientprogress was made on this path, so that the successor document, the United Nations’(2015) Agenda 2030, recalls and even enhances the request, to “ensure availabilityand sustainable management of water and sanitation for all” by 2030; this is theSustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6). But how to fulfill these requirements,given the challenges of water management?The application of economic concepts is sometimes criticized in the(noneconomist) water community, but we believe that economics can provide usefulinsights. In the practical world of water, “there is a sense that economic concepts areinadequate to the task at hand, a feeling that water has value in ways that economistsfail to account for, and a concern that this could impede the formulation of effec-tive approaches for solving the water crisis” (Hanemann 2006, 61). In other words,water is too important to be left to economists. Yet, on the other hand, there are hun-dreds (if not thousands) of water, environmental, resource, agricultural, and othereconomists out there that do excellent analytical and practical work on water issues,and most of them go beyond the pure neoclassical ivory tower analysis that is some-times full-mouthy criticized. To bridge the gap between different disciplines requiresan interdisciplinary approach that respects the complexity of water: It can be a pri-vate good and a public good, is extremely mobile, very capital intensive, chemicallycomplex, etc., after all, perhaps the most complex of all goods.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

628.1 MER t

Penerbit

Switzerland : Springer Nature., 2021

Deskripsi Fisik

312 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9783030484859

Klasifikasi

628.1

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Water Supply

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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