Water management in the 21st century : the allocation imperative

This book is about choices in water management and touches on the issue of water as a resource, as well as on how man is using it. Mostly the discussion deals with the question of how we can use water more efficiently and equably. The bias in the discussion presented in this book is towards moving the decision-making process on water allocation into the market-place and, conversely, taking it as much as is possible out of the political sphere. Hence, this book treats water as an economic commodity. This implies an increase in the participation of the private sector in water management. In this book the underlying premise is that water is not scarce in an absolute sense. But rather, we face an unavoidable challenge to radically improve the management of the allocation of water among users.

Chapter 1 deals explicitly with the question of water scarcity. Chapter 2 examines in a brief historic survey, the nature of the institutions which different societies have developed to manage water, spanning the last five decades. Chapter 3 analyses the ways and means for establishing and operating effective water markets and describes the experience of those few places where water marketing has been used as the method of water allocation. Chapter 4 explores, in some detail, the alternatives for increasing private participation in water management, in particular for the incorporation of the private sector in the ownership and administration of water-related public utilities. Finally, Chapter 5 discusses the repercussions of greater private participation on the public sector.
The focus of this book is on the issue of how to more efficiently allocate water through changing water management institutions.