Introduction
Water is essential for living organisms in general and human civilizations in particular. It has versatile uses such as drinking, cleaning, agriculture, industrial use, etc. Due to its multiple uses and essentiality to human activities, water as a resource requires special attention. Allocation of water for different uses requires extensive consideration. The allocation of water can be done either through market mechanisms or in a planned manner. India has generally adopted a planned approach to water planning with the existence of only a few market mechanisms. On the other hand, the model adopted in the Murray-Darling basin is a market-based one and a fairly successful one. An assessment is required of how the model in the Murray-Darling basin is working and if Indian states can learn anything from the model.
Problem Specification
Murray Darling Basin (MDB) has been considered one of the success stories of regulatory reform in the market-based allocation of water rights. On the other hand, Maharashtra being the first state to reform the water sector with a market-based approach, is still in a nascent state to achieve the desired outcomes of the reform. So, we will be analyzing the regulatory instruments used in MDB for water allocation through market mechanisms and try to find some lessons that can be implemented in our case, e.g., Maharashtra. So the question here is, “What are the lessons that can be learned for Maharashtra from the market-based model of the Murray-Darling basin?”
Context of the Regulation
The Murray Darling Basin (MDB) is a sizable region encompassing all or a portion of four Australian states and one territory. Along with the River Murray, it is home to Australia's greatest interior river system. Resources in the Basin enable significant agriculture, which provides 30% of Australia's food supply. The MDB has a number of natural resources of international significance, including 16 wetlands recognized under the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Significance and 1 World Heritage Site (MDBA, 2010). The MDB's hydrology is characterized by significant fluctuation, aridity, and extended periods of drought. The "Millennium" drought, which plagued Australia from 2002 to 2007, significantly harmed Basin resources' economic and ecological conditions. Some of Australia's most significant reforms in water policy were brought about by the Millennium drought, and they are discussed in more depth below (Wheeler, 2014).
Water management in the MDB has historically been allocated through administrative or political processes and was strongly linked to goals for national development centered on productivity and growth (Bell & Quiggin, 2008). There is currently optimism that Australian water allocation is moving toward sustainability. This shift has been supported by a wide range of policy instruments, including political and economical ways to achieve environmental goals. In particular, the use of water markets to ensure water for the environment is a novel policy innovation (discussed further in the next section). This is accomplished by the government purchasing water rights from sellers who are willing to sell it, and managing the purchase to produce ecological consequences in the MDB. The Australian government's dedication to using market mechanisms to accomplish environmental goals is unmatched worldwide (Garrick et al., 2011).
As a result, understanding how Australia's water policy has evolved through time and the governance structures that have resulted up until this point offers crucial insights into the causes and motivators of good water governance and policy success.
The Regulatory Reform
In the 1980s, it was becoming evident that surface water and groundwater systems were either fully or excessively allocated. The increasing water scarcity thereby created a need to develop market mechanisms in Australia’s Murray-Darling basin. A number of reforms were carried out in the 1990s and 2000s. The fundamental reform was the adoption of a cap and trade system in the major trading regions of the Murray-Darling Basin (DAWR, 2019). Under this system, water users own a right over a part of the available water supply from a specific water resource such as a river. The users can also trade these shares with other users. This water is traded in markets: within a single catchment or (if possible) between catchments. This trading of water has encouraged efficient usage of water.
Allocations and entitlements are the two main categories of rights that are exchanged in water markets. When compared to entitlements, which are continuing rights to a portion of water from a water resource, allocations are the amount of water allotted to an entitlement in a specific year. While trading in allocations includes a temporary transfer during an irrigation season, trading in entitlements entails the permanent transfer of water rights. One of Australia's most active water markets is the Murray-Darling Basin, which in 2016–17 accounted for 77 percent of entitlement trading and 97 percent of all trading in allocations (DAWR, 2019). The majority of trade is in controlled surface water. It encompasses the Australian Capital Territory, the four states of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia, as well as the Australian government.
The leading consumer and beneficiary of this system of water markets in Australia is the agricultural sector: accounting for around 70 percent of extractions (BoM, 2018). Overall, market mechanisms in the MDB have encouraged on-farm innovations, more effective risk management, and reallocation of water from low to higher-value consumptive uses (National Water Commission, 2010). The role of an effective regulatory framework in the success of water markets is crucial.
In 1994, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) undertook reforms that significantly boosted water trade. It increased eightfold between 1993–1994 and 1994–1995 (Grafton et al., 2012). All statutory surface water rights were unbundled from land rights. A cap was also put in that limited surface water extractions to existing levels. This was done to prevent further over-extraction. As the pace of market reforms was slower than desired, a National Water Initiative (NWI) was signed by most state governments and the Australian government in 2004 (Grafton et al., 2014). It provided that each government would facilitate water markets and water trading, reduce transaction costs, and enable a mix of water products to develop and protect environmental flows (Waye & Son, 2010). After the passage of the Water Act of 2007, Murray-Darling Basin Authority was established with the aim of developing a Basin Plan setting sustainable diversion limits (SDLs) for surface and groundwater, protecting environmental interests, and improving the security of water entitlements (Grafton et al., 2014). It facilitates transparent water trade across the Murray–Darling system.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has been given monitoring, enforcement, advisory, and price-setting roles (in some circumstances) under the Water Act of 2007 for water market rules and water charge rules. The ACCC has been given powers to develop and enforce new market rules so that water infrastructure owners, irrigators, and other water users do not unreasonably interfere with the water trade (Waye & Son, 2010). Some of the rules have helped to increase trust in the market. For example, ACCC, through water charge rules, limited termination fees, or the fee imposed by Irrigation Infrastructure Operators on irrigators who terminate their access to all or a part of the infrastructure network, prevents the arbitrary setting of such fees (Grafton et al., 2014). A vital aspect of the framework is that the allocation of responsibilities is based on functional specialization. ACCC, for example, has expertise in competition and market power when compared to a water agency. MDB has expertise related to water planning.
Lessons learned from Murray Darling Basin
From 'Social' to 'Economic' good
The Murray-Darling Basin's water governance history since Australian Federation shows a lengthy history of attempts to distribute a "free" natural endowment in order to foster private economic possibilities and the resulting societal surplus (Gross, 2014).
Early colonial administrations in New South Wales and subsequently in Victoria introduced "water privileges" as early as the 1860s in response to disputes over water usage that resulted from soil degradation caused by mining operations. The Goldfields Act of 1861 granted rights to certain amounts of water for mining purposes in New South Wales, either through authorized diversions or from rivers (O'Gorman, 2012).
However, when exclusive rights were granted to one sector, other users, such as nomadic herders and Aboriginal people, were also denied access to those same rights. Water was no longer considered a public good with its associated characteristics of non-exclusivity in access and non-rivalry in usage. Instead, water evolved into a common-property resource, with government investment policies and legislation defining and regulating access. Water rights became a "tool for exerting political and social exclusion, as well as obtaining economic benefit" (O'Gorman, 2012). In contrast, river water was classified as a public utility and so subject to government restrictions. This pattern is still present today.
Using market-driven allocations to promote social cohesion
The main goal of Australian water policy reform has been the transition to water governance through market mechanisms. However, the procedure has been complex, lengthy, and contentious (Crase, Pagan & Dollery, 2004). With the introduction of restricted water sales in Victoria in the 1980s, water trading got underway. It grew with the implementation of the National Competition Policy in the early 1990s. Early simulations suggested that trading would reduce misuse, free up capital, reduce the danger of salting and waterlogging, and have the ability to align on-farm opportunity costs with the societal cost of water (Hall, Mallawaarachchi & Batterham, 1991).
The unbundling of water access rights and land rights increased trade demand and advantages (Mallawaarachchi, Auricht, Loch, Adamson, & Quiggin, 2020). The capacity to trade water became a crucial tool for structural change in the irrigation business, enabling irrigation to be used in sites other than the conventional ones and changing the agricultural mix to include higher-value crops.
Water trading has been facilitated by progressive reform, making it more advantageous for those involved in such transactions (Loch, Wheeler & Settre, 2018). Accordingly, managing water scarcity—particularly seasonal hazards and droughts—while also generating efficiency benefits in Australia's water markets, with an estimated annual turnover of $1 to 2 billion, has become crucial (Brooks & Harris, 2008). Recent studies of historical pricing trends indicate that the market for a water allocation is also taking on a more strategic role and moving toward the future, as market prices are becoming more and more dependent on assumptions about water supply in subsequent seasons (Hughes et al., 2016). However, it appears that only private advantages are covered by these expectations, leaving it up to the government to deal with any societal costs of the ensuing allocation choices.
Issues with Principal-Agent Interaction
Designing public policies frequently involves principal-agent issues. Information asymmetry, which is linked to both hidden knowledge and concealed behavior, can skew judgement, keeping people from making the best judgments and resulting in mistakes that cost the public money (Chambers, 2002).
Australian ministers in charge of natural resources have known since 1988 that increasing irrigation-related diversions must end. However, as Basin water use reached historic heights and rising requests were made for greater access to groundwater, the action was finally taken in 1994. Unfortunately, design flaws or errors in policy sequencing significantly reduced the bargaining power of Australian taxpayers, making it more difficult to implement corrective policies in the future (Mallawaarachchi, Auricht, Loch, Adamson, & Quiggin, 2020). When a limit on Basin groundwater extractions was set in 1994, the first omission happened. The NSW Government activated any unused "sleeper" or "dozer" licenses as a result of the judgment on quantitative restrictions. Fear of legal action was cited as the driving force (Kerin, 2017). However, the result was that these licensees, which were not previously tradable, saw a significant increase in value. Mishandling of this change gave certain people a chance to profit unexpectedly from scarcity rents while lessening the impact of the cap. Demand for diversions increased as a result of new opportunities for selling water that was now separated from the land. Governments further agreed to transfer the water rights to previous license holders, thereby allowing irrigators permanent capital transfers. The ideal strategy would have been to eliminate unneeded licenses first and then implement the Cap's quantitative constraints. When water markets eventually formed, it would have been feasible to conduct a resource audit to reallocate the current water licenses as a rights system, creating an equal foundation for efficiency improvements.
These two errors together have cost taxpayers billions of dollars in funds presently budgeted for taking away irrigation rights from landowners to restore water for environmental reasons. Benefits to the environment now come at the expense of conceivable reductions in other government programs or an increase in the national debt, which reflects the lost chance of using public monies provided by tax income.
Water Exchange
Marketization skeptics are particularly worried that trade may shift water from current, low-value usage to higher-value alternatives, which might have unforeseen and detrimental social or environmental effects.
The principal buyers and sellers of water rights in the MDB are irrigators, who collectively use about 70% of the water diverted in the Basin for non-environmental purposes and occupy roughly 2% of the surface area. Since the beginning, two different forms of market transactions have mostly governed water trade in the MDB. These include trading in which irrigators participate on both ends of the exchange and trading in which an irrigator does business with a government body that represents the interests of the environment. The trades consist of the purchasing and selling of two types of water rights, both of which are statutory rights: (1) water allocations, or the physical amounts of water allotted each irrigation season to holders of water entitlements, and (2) water entitlements, which are the underlying rights to an ongoing share of a consumptive pool in a water resource plan and which can vary in terms of reliability or the percentage of time an entitlement receives its nominal allocation (Grafton et al., 2014).
Even though the water allocation markets have been successfully established for 20 years, there has only been a very little amount of commerce between irrigators and sectors like mining, manufacturing, or energy generation. According to the ABS Water Account of Australia (2013), households used 11% of all the water used in Australia in 2011–12, followed by the water supply and sewerage services sector (13% of total consumption), mining (4%), manufacturing (3%) and electricity and gas supply (3%). Agriculture used 59% of all the water used in Australia in 2011–12, according to the report. The amount of water utilised by the mining, industrial, and electrical sectors has not significantly altered from 2008–2009. (Mallawaarachchi, Auricht, Loch, Adamson & Quiggin, 2020).
The only significant sales of water entitlements, aside from those made between irrigators, have been those made to governments, particularly the federal Australian government, with the aim of boosting environmental flows. In a series of reverse auctions between 2008 and 2012, the Australian government acquired from around 4500 interested sellers a long-term equivalent volume of surface water entitlements that was almost 10% of long-term average surface water extractions in the MDB (Wheeler and Cheesman 2013). According to research by Wheeler and Cheesman (2013), selling water entitlements had no effect on the productivity of 50% of farmers' farms, and 80% of those farmers were content with their decision to sell water in the future and would not make a different one.
Regulations that were put into effect on July 1st, 2014, by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission prohibit trade restrictions by individual market players. In the past, state governments controlled the distribution or exchange of rights and had the power to stop transactions they did not want to take place Wheeler & Cheesman, 2013).
In conclusion, except to boost environmental flows, the MDB's water markets have not led to the transfer of any sizable volumes of water from irrigators to non-farming "high value" uses. State governments, however, are legally authorized to forbid the trade of water from agriculture for what they would deem to be undesirable reasons, such as urban water consumption and environmental flows, and they have demonstrated a readiness to exercise this prerogative. Trade should be subject to a public interest test, just like any other good, but any trade limitations should have explicit justifications, a clear understanding of its intended purpose, and a cost-benefit analysis (Grafton, 2014).
Maharashtra
Context of Regulation
Maharashtra's geographic position means that it is prone to a variety of climate conditions. The state was separated into four meteorological subdivisions by the India Meteorological Department due to the state's diverse topographical and climatological features. The furthest western part of India's west coast is stretched north-south along with the meteorological subdivision Konkan and Goa.
Maharashtra is one of the states in India with the quickest rates of urbanization and population increase. Since a significant chunk of the state is located in the rain shadow region, droughts have been a persistent issue there (Udmale et al. 2014). Therefore, reducing water shortage through significant water storage projects has been one of the key motivations for State-led irrigation initiatives (such as dams). The bulk of the water-intensive sugarcane that grows in the semi-arid region of Western Maharashtra, despite water constraints and limited irrigation capacity, has always been heavily supported (and promoted) by the state (Purandare 2013).
The irrigation department was responsible for setting and collecting water tariffs, selecting allocation limits, and distributing water to various users prior to the MWRRA's formation in 2005. (industry, drinking water supply, and irrigation). With the MWRRA, a certain decoupling of responsibilities was anticipated. Although the department retained the role of the service provider, MWRRA initially intended to establish water allocations and water tariffs and regulate the standards of water distribution, such as ensuring that the people got the appropriate ration of water (Government of Maharashtra 2005). The institutional framework must change in order to accommodate this new role from one where the department had sole authority over security and water distribution to one where there was a relationship of obligation to the regulator and surveillance.
Regulation of Water Allocation under MWRRA Act in Maharashtra
“The allocation of a percentage of the water available under the Entitlements of each facility, in the drainage basin or 23 river basin shall be determined jointly by the River Basin Agencies and Water User Entities based upon the hydrology and other relevant parameters with regard to the specific basin. This allocation shall be utilized for the determination of the amount of water to be made available under each Entitlement for that specific year or runoff season; Quotas of water determined by the seasonal or annual allocation assigned to an entitlement shall be volumetric 24 usufructuary rights which may be transferred, bartered, bought or sold on an annual or seasonal basis within a market system as established and controlled by the rules of the Authority; Entitlements may be subject to review at intervals of not less than three years and then, only if warranted by concerns about, the sustainability of the level of allocation.”
Ground Water Regulations in Maharashtra
● “The state of Maharashtra will be responsible for the management of groundwater: The Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory Authority (MWRRA), in accordance with the act, will serve as the state's groundwater authority. The areas where the groundwater is overexploited will be managed and regulated by the State Groundwater Authority in cooperation with the District Level Authority in consultation with the Watershed Water Resources Committee (WWRC) at the watershed level in collaboration with the Panchayats or urban local bodies. The act also suggests a ban on water withdrawals from deep wells that are already in notified regions as well as a ban on the building of new wells there. Additionally, it suggests that a tax should be imposed on groundwater extraction from deep wells in non-notified areas and a ban on groundwater sales in designated areas.”
● “The act’s focus is also on managing the source and resource through increasing supply while reducing demand. The act considers surface water and groundwater together. It emphasizes the watershed as the fundamental unit for managing water resources and acknowledges the aquifer as the fundamental building block for comprehending groundwater exploitation. The purpose of the Act is to regulate water withdrawal in overexploited areas, and it is anticipated that the state water plan will include an integrated watershed development plan to determine how much water is in excess. It won't be viable to proceed with a big-scale recharge if there is not enough surplus surface water available.”
What new instruments can be implemented in Maharashtra?
1. Unbundling of Land and Water Rights
Moving away from the common property as a method of allocating water and toward systems of private property in water is necessary in order to promote markets in water and to maintain the profitability and operation of those markets. In doing so, "unbundling," which aims to precisely define both the entitlement to water and its separation into constituent elements, is one policy and legal approach. Unbundling will make water rights in Maharashtra easier to evaluate, manage, and sell. In a large state like Maharashtra, where the groundwater levels are very different in different parts of the state, the policy framework for unbundling requires a strong inclination toward the social allocation of water. As this is a highly political issue, the initiative will meet some great difficulty. The MWRRA as an independent regulator should take up the responsibility of efficient and inclusive allocation of groundwater rights so that every section of society, especially irrigators in the dry regions, doesn't get negatively affected by the market mechanism.
2. Water Exchanges
According to the MWRRA act, Maharastra has options for trading in the wholesale water market. However, there is no trading happening, and there is also no policy released by the regulator as of now on trading. In our discussion about the Murray darling basin, we have seen how water exchanges Act as the better instrument for efficient water allocation. it is also crucial to point out that the market mechanism through exchanges also helps in incentivizing conservation, and the economically weaker sections also game through trading.
Not only in the wholesale market but for efficient ecological, social, and economical allocation of water can be achieved through entitlement trading mechanism in the retail water market.
3. Allocation to fight the issue of Water Grabbing
The market mechanism of tradable rights has been utilized to transfer agricultural water to the industries in Maharashtra in an instance of water grabbing following reform. The dams, which allegedly supported agricultural development in the past, are now seen as crucial water sources for India's expanding corporate sector. Therefore, redistributing the water in the reservoirs has become a major political issue, particularly in the Indian state of Maharashtra (Wagle, Warghade & Sathe, 2012). In our view, this situation is an outcome of less participation of farmers in the water market. There is a higher chance of politicizing the wholesale water market. As individual irrigators don't participate in the market and utilize their water rights, they are more often than not negatively affected by the market.
From the lessons learned for MDB, we can see that despite having a number of issues, the tradable water rights to individuals have been a positive effect on equitable allocation, and the market is taking care of any externalities.
4. Regulatory Institutions
One of the reasons that the market mechanism was successful in the Murray-Darling basin was that regulatory institutions were based on functional specialization. For example, water planning was carried out by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, and the regulation of trading activities (to a great extent) was carried out by the competition authority of ACCC. This ensured that regulatory institutions had the required expertise. In the case of Maharashtra, the regulatory authority is the MWRRA which might not necessarily have the expertise to boost market mechanisms. Therefore, in the case of Maharashtra (or India), a separate authority might be vested with powers to regulate market mechanisms for the trading of water.
Conclusion
The goals of water policy will continue to be production-oriented because, since environmental products and services are now explicitly included in the consumption bundle, more effort will be put into creating them. In the new manufacturing environment, the State and Civil society will subsequently be in charge of managing social externalities related to water allocation.
One of the success stories of using market mechanisms for water allocation to create a fair and effective water management system is the Murray-Darling Basin. We learned two things from the history of water management in the MDB: first, the irrigators in the Basin heavily rely on water markets, which are widely acknowledged to be beneficial to their agricultural businesses. Second, water markets effectively represent the underlying worth of water for agriculture because they are responsive to changes in water supply and dynamics. Third, thanks to water trading, the expenditures incurred by farmers and their communities during the Millennium Drought were significantly reduced. Fourth, the most cost-effective strategy to decrease over-extraction in the MDB and a key goal of water policy in Australian governments is to sell voluntary water entitlements from irrigators to governments through reverse tenders. Fifth, water trading improved end-of-system flows in crucial rivers within the Basin during the Millennium Drought, which had a huge positive impact on the environment and the economy. Sixth, farmers now have a viable market-based adaptation strategy and a mechanism to respond to anticipated future increases in water variability thanks to water trading.
The total net gains from the MDB's water markets might not be applicable elsewhere. The need for an "emerging water market" framework is real, as it would help practitioners think through the advantages and disadvantages of adopting water markets as well as the institutional requirements in a state like Maharashtra. We have highlighted some of the regulatory tools utilized by the MDB that can be applied in Maharashtra with some changes to address the peculiarities of the state.
However, the fact that the MDB's economic, environmental, and social results have greatly improved thanks to effective water planning and management and water markets demonstrates that they are capable of doing so. The achievements of MDB water markets show that marketization may be structured to increase productivity, maintain access and usage equality and justice, and improve environmental effects.
*This article is written in collaboration with dear friends Swati Jha & Sunakshi Shankar.
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