Debt-for-nature swaps have been successfully applied in an international context to achieve nature conservation objectives in developing countries. The swap involves alleviating a country’s external debt burden in exchange for that country investing the equivalent amount of resources into...

In the past decade, market based instruments (MBIs) have become more frequently applied for natural resource and environmental management purposes. MBIs comprise a range of instruments used to provide economic incentives/disincentives (e.g. by altering market prices, setting a cap or altering...

This paper reports on an analysis of irrigator water demand and profit changes across varying annual water availability, crop water requirements, and river salinity conditions for irrigation along the South Australian portion of the Lower Murray. The paper also investigates the validity of the...

Lake Hume is a significant water storage located at the headwaters of the River Murray. It provides irrigation water, urban water supplies, flood mitigation and recreational benefits to a large and economically significant region. Water quality in Lake Hume has recently been the subject of...

This paper describes an integrated approach developed to model the physical and related social welfare impacts of alternative water allocations in the Dak Lak plateau, Viet Nam. A physically based, distributed and integrated model of the plateau’s surface and groundwater resources has been...

This paper explores the likely impact of emissions trading design on transaction costs. Transaction costs include both the costs for the private sector to comply with the scheme rules and the costs of scheme administration. In economic theory transaction costs are often assumed to be zero. But...

Water resource management is a complex process, which requires suitable policy tools that are able to meet objectives of economic efficiency, social equity and environmental sustainability. Meanwhile, irrigation industry has to change its habitual behaviour in managing water when faced with...

In South Australia, commercial and recreational fishers compete to catch Snapper from a single stock. To distribute this resource appropriately, the widely accepted conceptual framework for optimizing the net benefits from resource allocation is applied. That is, by finding the point at which...

A rising saline aquifer in the Coleambally Irrigation Area constitutes a common pool resource, characterised by costly exclusion and rival utilisation for regional irrigators. The approach outlined in general terms in this paper is the application of formal, empirical techniques to guide the...

Australian governments have agreed to develop and implement policies to promote more efficient use of water resources and improved water quality. Policy objectives may include incentives for investment in efficient irrigation technologies. However, the presence of large, sunk investment and the...