Water Resources Allocation and Agriculture: Transitioning from Open to Regulated Access

The book brings together a range of leading scholars and practitioners to compile an international account of water allocation policies supporting a transition to sustainable water use in regions where agriculture is the dominant water use. In Section 1, the collection canvasses five key cross-cutting issues shaping the challenge of sustainable water allocation policy, such as legal and economic perspectives, the role of politics, the setting of environmental flows, and the importance of indigenous rights. Section 2 presents 13 national, state and transboundary case studies of water allocation policy, covering cases from Europe, the Americas, Central Asia, the Middle East and the Pacific region. These case studies highlight novel and innovative elements of water allocation regimes, which respond to the cross-cutting issues addressed in Section 1, as well as local challenges and social and environmental imperatives. The book provides a comprehensive account of water allocation in a range of international settings and provides a reference point for practitioners and scholars worldwide wishing to draw on the latest advances on how to design and implement sustainable water allocation systems.

About the Editors
Contributors
Foreword
Acknowledgements

Chapter 1
Introduction
Josselin Rouillard, Christina Babbitt, Edward Challies and Jean-Daniel Rinaudo

Chapter 2
The politics of groundwater allocation and the transition from open access
William Blomquist and Christina Babbitt

Chapter 3
Allocations and legal trends in the 21st century
Rebecca L. Nelson

Chapter 4
Indigenous water and Mother Earth
Margot A. Hurlbert

Chapter 5
Allocations and environmental flows
Eric D. Stein, Michael E. McClain, Ashmita Sengupta, Theodore E. Grantham, Julie K. H. Zimmerman and Sarah M. Yarnell

Chapter 6
Economics and water allocation reform
C. Dionisio Pérez-Blanco

Chapter 7
England and Wales: countering ‘unsustainable abstraction’ with the catchment based approach
David Benson, Hadrian Cook, M. Yasir Ak and Burcin Demirbilek

Chapter 8
Water allocation in Spain. Legal framework, instruments and emerging debates
Carles Sanchis-Ibor, Manuel Pulido-Velazquez, Juan Valero de Palma and Marta García-Mollá

Chapter 9
Managing a common resource in agriculture: an overview of the French nested water allocation system
Josselin Rouillard and Jean-Daniel Rinaudo

Chapter 10
Turkey’s water allocation regime under institutional change
M. Yasir Ak, Burcin Demirbilek and David Benson

Chapter 11
Water allocation in Aotearoa New Zealand: societal values and ecological bottom lines        
Edward Challies, Stephen Fragaszy and Josselin Rouillard

Chapter 12
Groundwater allocation in New South Wales, Australia
Joseph H. A. Guillaume, Alvar Closas and Andrew McCallum

Chapter 13
Water allocation in Brazil: main strategies, learning and challenges
Guilherme F. Marques

Chapter 14
What are we allocating and who decides? Democratising understanding of groundwater and decisions for judicious allocations in India
Uma Aslekar, Dhaval Joshi and Himanshu Kulkarni

Chapter 15
Legal frameworks for agricultural water use in Canada: a comparative study of Alberta and Québec
Hugo Tremblay

Chapter 16
Idaho’s Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer: cooperative water policy change for Idaho’s groundwater farmers
Katrina Running

Chapter 17
Polycentric governance in Nebraska, U.S., for ground and surface water
Theresa Jedd, Anthony Schutz and Mark Burbach

Chapter 18
Transboundary water allocation in the Amudarya Basin of Central Asia
Dinara Ziganshina

Chapter 19
Current challenges in the Rio Grande/Río Bravo Basin: old disputes in a new century
Regina M. Buono and Gabriel Eckstein

Chapter 20
Transitioning away from open access: lessons learnt from a comparative analysis of water allocation regimes worldwide
Josselin Rouillard, Christina Babbitt, Edward Challies and Jean-Daniel Rinaudo

Index