Water Economics

Because of its critical role for human survival, debate exists over the extent to which water should be considered a commodity. Natural resource economics as a subset of neoclassical economics began to generate inertia in the middle of the twentieth century. As freshwater supplies become increasingly scarce, the role of economics in all aspects of water resource management intensifies. While the debate continues over whether water should be treated like other commodities, new pricing schemes are leading to changes to how and where water is being used across a variety of sectors, including for agricultural and domestic uses. Perhaps more importantly, in the face of rising global populations and commensurate increases in per capita water consumption, the creation of water pricing data has impacted the efforts to conserve freshwater supplies and to create minimum streamflows designed to provide ecosystem protection.

Agricultural economics · Agriculture · Commodity · Consumption (sociology) · Economics · Geography · Market economy · Natural resource · Natural resource economics · Per capita · Population · Social science · Variety (cybernetics) · Water conservation · Water pricing · Water resources · Water scarcity · Water use · Climate Change Policy and Economics · Ecology · Economic and Environmental Valuation · Water resources management and optimization