Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Developing city water supplies by drying up farms: Contradictions raised in water institutions under stress

Developing city water supplies by drying up farms: Contradictions raised in water institutions... Constraints on the expansion of western water supply projects have turned the attention of urban water developers to market purchases of agricultural water supplies as a source of new water. The conventional wisdom of natural resource economics suggests that such shifts should have minimal impact on the agricultural area-of-origin, promote efficiency in water use, and provide an inexpensive and environmentally preferable alternative to building more dams and reservoirs. However the concentration of urban demand combines with water-extensive irrigation practices in western agriculture and a characteristically bipolar economic and social structure in western irrigation communities to create a potential for severe stress on rural economies and communities. The adaptation of supply-oriented western water institutions to market-oriented functions has not provided a decision-making context that accounts for costs imposed on rural communities; moreover, historically water-rich rural communities have not evolved a water policy infrastructure capable of responding to stress. Before the promise of low-cost water supply through the market mechanism can be realized, the structural contradictions inherited from the traditional water-management institutions must be faced and dealt with by both rural source regions and urban water importers. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Agriculture and Human Values Springer Journals

Developing city water supplies by drying up farms: Contradictions raised in water institutions under stress

Agriculture and Human Values , Volume 4 (4) – Apr 5, 2005

Loading next page...
 
/lp/springer-journals/developing-city-water-supplies-by-drying-up-farms-contradictions-ZoE0iAMrIt

References (21)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright
Subject
Philosophy; Ethics; Agricultural Economics; Veterinary Medicine/Veterinary Science; History, general; Evolutionary Biology
ISSN
0889-048X
eISSN
1572-8366
DOI
10.1007/BF01530500
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Constraints on the expansion of western water supply projects have turned the attention of urban water developers to market purchases of agricultural water supplies as a source of new water. The conventional wisdom of natural resource economics suggests that such shifts should have minimal impact on the agricultural area-of-origin, promote efficiency in water use, and provide an inexpensive and environmentally preferable alternative to building more dams and reservoirs. However the concentration of urban demand combines with water-extensive irrigation practices in western agriculture and a characteristically bipolar economic and social structure in western irrigation communities to create a potential for severe stress on rural economies and communities. The adaptation of supply-oriented western water institutions to market-oriented functions has not provided a decision-making context that accounts for costs imposed on rural communities; moreover, historically water-rich rural communities have not evolved a water policy infrastructure capable of responding to stress. Before the promise of low-cost water supply through the market mechanism can be realized, the structural contradictions inherited from the traditional water-management institutions must be faced and dealt with by both rural source regions and urban water importers.

Journal

Agriculture and Human ValuesSpringer Journals

Published: Apr 5, 2005

There are no references for this article.