Chapters authored
Economic Instruments to Combat Eutrophication: A Survey
Eutrophication of aquatic ecosystems is a functional process triggered by excessive nutrient inputs into water courses. It causes disruption to ecosystems, with impacts on associated goods and services, which consequently might not be provided in a sustainable way. These impacts have served to politicize the issue in recent years. In this chapter, we present the main lessons learned from an international literature review on the economic aspects of eutrophication, first with the purpose of managing the problem in France and second in the context of a European research project. This study aims to help public decision-making in the reduction of this water pollution. By analyzing past experiences and the results of recent modeling work, it allows to avoid a number of pitfalls and focus on efficient solutions.
Part of the book: Water and Sustainability
Can Nonlinear Water Pricing Help to Mitigate Drought Effects in Temperate Countries?
The notion of drought is most often associated with the aridity of landscapes and vegetation. But a green landscape can hide a frequent imbalance between water availability and the quantity necessary to maintain rivers in a suitable state, to satisfy different water needs. This is the case, for example, in the French region called New Aquitaine. Regularly, \"drought\" crisis committees are set up there to limit water use through administrative constraints, which is technically difficult and costly for many, and with an overall unsatisfactory situation from rural areas to the coast. But in summer, water consumption is mainly due to irrigation. Some water resource managers have consequently set up an original non-linear water pricing system for irrigation to achieve several objectives: above all, to limit water consumption in order to respect a minimum flow rate in rivers, to anticipate water supply-demand imbalances before agricultural plantations are made, to allocate water to the users who value it best, to recover water supply costs, to be transparent and sufficiently simple in its application to be acceptable. In this chapter, we propose to describe one of such original pricing systems, as well as some of its main mathematical properties and its practical interests.
Part of the book: Drought