The Economics of Agricultural Groundwater Management Institutions: The Case of California

2018 ◽  
Vol 04 (03) ◽  
pp. 1850003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis Sears ◽  
David Lim ◽  
C.-Y. Cynthia Lin Lawell
Keyword(s):  
Groundwater Management ◽  
Groundwater Resources ◽  
Critical Issue ◽  
Local Economies ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Conjunctive Management ◽  
Consumptive Use ◽  
Spatial Management ◽  
Management Policies ◽  
Management Institutions

The sustainable management of groundwater resources for use in agriculture is a critical issue in California and globally. Many of the world’s most productive agricultural basins depend on groundwater and have experienced declines in water table levels. The food consumers eat, the farmers who produce that food, and the local economies supporting that production are all affected by the availability of groundwater. Increasing competition for water from cities and environmental needs, as well as concerns about future climate variability and more frequent droughts, has caused policy-makers to look for ways to decrease the consumptive use of water. When designing groundwater management policies and institutions, it is important to consider any possible perverse consequences from the policy. In this paper, we discuss the economics of sustainable agricultural groundwater management institutions, including the possible perverse consequences of incentive-based agricultural groundwater conservation programs; the importance of dynamic management, conjunctive management, and spatial management; and property rights.

Spatial Groundwater Management: A Dynamic Game Framework and Application to California

2019 ◽  
Vol 05 (01) ◽  
pp. 1850019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis Sears ◽  
David Lim ◽  
C.-Y. Cynthia Lin Lawell
Keyword(s):  
Groundwater Management ◽  
Groundwater Resources ◽  
Cooperative Behavior ◽  
Dynamic Game ◽  
Adjustment Costs ◽  
Spatial Externalities ◽  
Markov Perfect ◽  
Management Policies ◽  
Input Prices

The design of policies and institutions to promote the sustainable management of groundwater resources for use in agriculture is both a long-term and short-term challenge in California and globally. When designing groundwater management policies, it is important to account for spatial externalities that may lead groundwater users to behave non-cooperatively. Spatial externalities arise because groundwater users face a common pool resource problem: because farmers are sharing the aquifer with other farmers, other farmers’ pumping affects their extraction cost and the amount of water they have available to pump. In this paper, we present a dynamic game framework for analyzing spatial groundwater management. In particular, we characterize the Markov perfect equilibrium resulting from non-cooperative behavior, and compare it with the socially optimal coordinated solution. In order to analyze the benefits from internalizing spatial externalities in California, we calibrate our dynamic game framework to California, and conduct a numerical analysis to calculate the deadweight loss arising from non-cooperative behavior. Results show that the inefficiencies arising from spatial externalities are driven by higher returns on crops, electricity input prices, whether the crop is an annual crop versus a perennial, the level of the groundwater stock, the climate of the region, and the adjustment costs of fallowing production. We find that the benefits from coordinated management in California are particularly high when crop prices are high.

scholarly journals Science Informed Policies for Managing Water

Hydrology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 66
Author(s):  
Daniel P. Loucks
Keyword(s):  
Water Management ◽  
Water Resource ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Water Resource Management ◽  
Information Policy ◽  
Management Policy ◽  
Multiple Impacts ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Science Policy Interface ◽  
Management Policies

Water resource management policies impact how water supplies are protected, collected, stored, treated, distributed, and allocated among multiple users and purposes. Water resource policies influence the decisions made regarding the siting, design, and operation of infrastructure needed to achieve the underlying goals of these policies. Water management policies vary by region depending on particular hydrologic, economic, environmental, and social conditions, but in all cases they will have multiple impacts affecting these conditions. Science can provide estimates of various economic, ecologic, environmental, and even social impacts of alternative policies, impacts that determine how effective any particular policy may be. These impact estimates can be used to compare and evaluate alternative policies in the search for identifying the best ones to implement. Among all scientists providing inputs to policy making processes are analysts who develop and apply models that provide these estimated impacts and, possibly, their probabilities of occurrence. However, just producing them is not a guarantee that they will be considered by policy makers. This paper reviews various aspects of the science-policy interface and factors that can influence what information policy makers need from scientists. This paper suggests some ways scientists and analysts can contribute to and inform those making water management policy decisions. Brief descriptions of some water management policy making examples illustrate some successes and failures of science informing and influencing policy.

scholarly journals 人工智能批判的話語悖論

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-137
Author(s):  
Fen LIN
Keyword(s):  
New Technologies ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Critical Issue ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Medical Accident ◽  
The Relationship

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract in English only.In the dominant discourse of the "human–machine relationship," people and machines are the subjects, with a mutually shaping influence. However, this framework neglects the crux of the current critical analysis of AI. It reduces the problems with new technology to the relationship between people and machines, ignoring the re-shaping of the relationship between "people and people" in the era of new technology. This simplification may mislead policy and legal regulations for new technologies. Why would a robot killing cause more panic than a murder committed by a human? Why is a robot's misdiagnosis more troubling than a doctor's? Why do patients assume that machines make more accurate diagnoses than doctors? When a medical accident occurs, who is responsible for the mistakes of an intelligent medical system? In the framework of traditional professionalism, the relationship between doctors and patients, whether trusted or not, is based on the premise that doctors have specialized knowledge that patients do not possess. Therefore, the authority of a doctor is the authority of knowledge. In the age of intelligence, do machines provide information or knowledge? Can this strengthen or weaken the authority of doctors? It is likely that in the age of intelligence, the professionalism, authority and trustworthiness of doctors require a new knowledge base. Therefore, the de-skilling of doctors is not an issue of individual doctors, but demands an update of the knowledge of the entire industry. Recognizing this, policy makers must not focus solely on the use of machines, but take a wider perspective, considering how to promote the development of doctors and coordinate the relationship between doctors with different levels of knowledge development. We often ask, "In the era of intelligence, what defines a human?" This philosophical thinking should be directed toward not only the difference between machines and people as individuals, but also how the relationship between human beings, i.e., the social nature of humans, evolves in different technological environments. In short, this commentary stresses that a "good" machine or an "evil" machine—beyond the sci-fi romance of such discourse—reflects the evolution of the relationships between people. In today's smart age, the critical issue is not the relationship between people and machines. It is how people adjust their relationships with other people as machines become necessary tools in life. In the era of intelligence, therefore, our legislation, policy and ethical discussion should resume their focus on evolutionary relationships between people.DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 41 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.

Workshop 7a (synthesis): sustainable groundwater management

2005 ◽  
Vol 51 (8) ◽  
pp. 163-164
Author(s):  
A. Shady ◽  
O. Varis ◽  
C. Tortajada
Keyword(s):  
Groundwater Management ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Hydrological Cycle ◽  
Groundwater Resources ◽  
Sustainable Groundwater Management ◽  
The World

Groundwater, the hidden part of the hydrological cycle, is often overlooked in the freshwater discourse, partly because the damage and changes that human activities cause are not immediately visible. Increasingly across the world, groundwater resources are strained with serious consequences.

A new approach to the Scoreboard

2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 659-688
Author(s):  
Cosimo Magazzino ◽  
Francesco Felici ◽  
Vanja Bozic
Keyword(s):  
European Commission ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Critical Issue ◽  
Added Value ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Relationship

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the information content of the variables that can help detecting external and internal imbalances in an early stage. The starting point is the Scoreboard, where nine indicators are chosen in order to increase macroeconomic surveillance of all member states. Design/methodology/approach – This paper provides an overview of the variables that could be informative for imbalances by focusing on EU-27 countries over the period 1960-2010. The number of chosen variables is 28, and they are aggregated in six macro-areas. Therefore, once an imbalance is observed in any of those areas, it is possible to detect in a simple way which specific variable is determining such outcome. Findings – In general, this approach provides reliable signal to the policy-makers about the indicators that can drive imbalances within the area, shedding light on the relationship among the variables included in the analysis, too. Research limitations/implications – In fact, the empirical results underline some well-known critical issue for several countries, and is largely in line with results obtained in a variety of EC and OECD studies. Originality/value – The main added value of the approach adopted in this paper is the introduction of more variables than those initially proposed by the European Commission in the construction of the Scoreboard. This provides more information about the macroeconomic situation in each country, preserving, however, the simplicity of the analysis as the variables are aggregated by homogeneous areas.

Diversity and distribution of copepods (Class: Maxillopoda, Subclass: Copepoda) in groundwater habitats across South-East Asia

2020 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 374
Author(s):  
Mark Louie D. Lopez ◽  
Rey Donne S. Papa
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Groundwater Resources ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Species Accumulation Curve ◽  
The Past ◽  
Accumulation Curve ◽  
The Status ◽  
Management Policies ◽  
High Possibility ◽  
Groundwater Wells

Copepods have successfully penetrated the groundwater realm through a series of morphological diversifications and adaptations. Research on this taxon has increased over the past decade because of its potential in revealing the status of groundwater environmental health and biodiversity. Despite efforts in documenting this group in other regions, groundwater copepods in South-East Asia remain barely studied. To date, only 47 species belonging to 22 genera from Harpacticoida, Cyclopoida and Calanoida have been documented from groundwater and groundwater-dependent habitats across the region. The steep species accumulation curve from 1980 up to the present indicates a high possibility of discovering more new species. Spatial distribution shows high local endemicity than regional scales, where some species considered to be rare and endemic were actually common in local habitats. Overall, the low number of records in the region is because of the lack of experts and limited accessibility to groundwater and dependent ecosystems, like aquifers and groundwater wells. A more intensive effort in documenting the diversity and distribution of groundwater copepods and building collaborations between experts in the region is highly needed. This information is important in drafting future conservation and management policies for the groundwater resources in the region.

scholarly journals The Heterogeneous Impacts of Groundwater Management Policies in the Republican River Basin of Colorado

2017 ◽  
Vol 53 (12) ◽  
pp. 10757-10778 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. A. Hrozencik ◽  
D. T. Manning ◽  
J. F. Suter ◽  
C. Goemans ◽  
R. T. Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Groundwater Management ◽  
River Basin ◽  
Republican River ◽  
Management Policies ◽  
Republican River Basin

Analysing the effectiveness of groundwater regulation: a comparative study of Turkey and California

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammed Yasir Ak ◽  
David Benson ◽  
Karen Scott
Keyword(s):  
Surface Water ◽  
Groundwater Management ◽  
River Basin ◽  
Groundwater Resources ◽  
Arid Zones ◽  
Groundwater Abstraction ◽  
Regulatory Requirements ◽  
Legislative Framework ◽  
Agricultural Use ◽  
Semi Arid

<p>Groundwater abstraction has increased significantly around the world in the last three decades, placing a strain on the sustainability of domestic and agricultural use plus negatively impacting the role groundwater plays in water storage in the absence of surface water. While the proportionality of surface water use has decreased as a result, groundwater has expanded its share of freshwater use. Groundwater management challenges are particularly acute in semi-arid zones due to low replenishment rates. Multiple regulatory innovations are consequently emerging in different countries to regulate groundwater usage but comparative analyses of their effectiveness are limited. In addressing this gap, our paper therefore compares the regulatory performance of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) in Turkey with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) in California, two semi-arid zones, as a basis for policy learning. Both legislative measures impose river basin planning to protect groundwater resources and should provide them with strong protection. In analysing the effectiveness of these measures, this paper firstly identifies the key regulatory requirements of each legislative framework regarding groundwater protection. Secondly, it compares the institutional arrangements for implementing them, using specific river basin case studies. Thirdly, it quantifies groundwater use trends in river basins to assess the effectiveness of the WFD and SGMA. Finally, it comparatively discusses outcomes to determine the factors influencing implementation effectiveness, in order to inform future regulatory design.</p>

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