Water conservation policy effectiveness depends on farmer economics
Published on by Water Network Research, Official research team of The Water Network in Academic
The paper, "Will farmers save water? A theoretical analysis of groundwater conservation policies," was recently published in the Water Resources and Economics journal and provides a look at the alternatives being offered and their potential to conserve water
he study was conducted by Park; Dr. Tong Wang, former AgriLife Research post-doctoral researcher now in the South Dakota State department of economics, Brookings, South Dakota; and Dr. Hailong Jin, in the Black Hills State University College of Business and Natural Sciences, Spearfish, South Dakota. Funding was provided through the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service Ogallala Aquifer Program.
Using the Ogallala Aquifer as an example, their paper analyzes whether current and potential groundwater conservation policies across the Southern Great Plains provide profit-driven farmers with incentives to save water.
"We wanted to focus on the incentives provided by selected policy tools to ensure water savings on the farmer's side and achieve the sustainability goal," Park said.
He said their theoretical study of the impacts of different policy options on groundwater conservation potential was conducted after previous studies determined voluntary and incentive-based water conservation programs may have "unintended or even perverse consequences."
"Very few attempts had been made to analyze the effectiveness of different policy alternatives in incentivizing an individual farmer to actually save water," Park said. "We also wanted to look at the effectiveness of the alternatives based on regional characteristics such as groundwater depth, satiation thickness and feasible crop patterns."
He said a majority of existing literature modeled the future depletion rate of the Ogallala Aquifer from the perspective of a regulatory agency that can allocate water use effectively and in an efficient manner.
Source: Phys.Org
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