Governance // Water Markets and the Food-Energy-Water Nexus in Australia
By Michael Valli and Alexandra M. Girard. Australia has abundant energy resources and productive agricultural land. Energy and food production, however, depend on water resources, which are scarce and variable on this dry continent. Water is the critical limiting factor to socio-economic development; and where water flows, power and prosperity follow. While water scarcity becomes increasingly problematic around the world, Australians have developed a unique governance framework for allocating water resources.
Decades of policy reform established a market-based model, which created privately owned tradable water rights independent from land rights, while capping water extraction at a level consistent with environmental sustainability. This policy framework – the National Water Initiative – has been praised worldwide as a successful model for resource governance that should be emulated globally.
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Published
January 2018
In
Food, Energy and Water Sustainability. Emergent Governance Strategies. Ed. by Laura M. Pereira, Caitlin A. McElroy, Alexandra Littaye and Alexandra M. Girard, Routledge: 2018, p. 111-132.