Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-2012
Publication Title
Water Resources Management
Abstract
Governments are increasingly reliant on the reacquisition of water rights as a mechanism for recovering overexploited basins. Yet, serious concerns have recently been raised about the efficacy and operational dimensions of existing programs. Water buyback is typically implemented as the purchase of a fixed quantity of water rights from the agricultural sector at the price set by the Water Authority. This paper seeks to analyze whether the use of water buyback in its current form represents a sensible means of recovering overexploited basins. The results—which are particularly relevant to contexts characterised by poor enforcement regimes and widespread illegal water use—highlight the need for greater scrutiny of current programs and call for additional work to improve the design of reacquisition policies in the context of water resource management.
Keywords
Water buyback, Water rights, Illegal water use, Enforcement
Volume
26
Issue
10
First Page
2799
Last Page
2816
DOI
dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11269-012-0047-8
ISSN
1573-1650
Rights
©2012 the authors
Recommended Citation
Marchiori, Carmen; Sayre, Susan Stratton; and Simon, Leo K., "On the Implementation and Performance of Water Rights Buyback Schemes" (2012). Economics: Faculty Publications, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
https://scholarworks.smith.edu/eco_facpubs/4
Comments
Peer reviewed accepted manuscript.