Mitchell, G orcid.org/0000-0003-0093-4519 and McDonald, A (2015) Developing resilience to England's future droughts: time for cap and trade? Journal of environmental management, 149. pp. 97-107. ISSN 0301-4797
Abstract
Much of England is seriously water stressed and future droughts will present major challenges to the water industry if socially and economically damaging supply restrictions are to be avoided. Demand management is seen as a key mechanism for alleviating water stress, yet there are no truly effective incentives to encourage widespread adoption of the behavioural and technological demand management practices available. Water pricing could promote conservation, but on its own it is an inefficient tool for dealing with short term restriction in water supply. Raising prices over the short term in response to a drought is likely to be ineffectual in lowering demand sufficiently; conversely, maintaining high prices over the long term implies costs to the consumer which are needlessly high most of the time. We propose a system for developing resilience to drought in highly water stressed areas, based on a cap and trade (C&T) model. The system would represent a significant innovation in England's water market. However, international experience shows that C&T is successful in other sectors, and need not be overly complex. Here, we open the debate on how a C&T system might work in England.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2014, Elsevier. This is an author produced version of a paper published in Journal of environmental management. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | Demand management; Drought resilience; TWUC; Water resource trading; Water scarcity |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Geography (Leeds) > Centre for Spatial Analysis & Policy (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 16 Jul 2015 09:20 |
Last Modified: | 26 Apr 2019 14:33 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2014.10.012 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.jenvman.2014.10.012 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:88197 |