Where water resources are scarce and water quality is diminishing, market–based instruments have better potential than government regulation alone to increase the efficiency of resource use, to reallocate water to other uses and to improve water quality in an efficient and equitable manner. The SSRB is a region in Southern Alberta known for water scarcity, growing competition for water and, an increasing threat of pollution by point and non-point sources. This research has addressed the perceptions of stakeholders about proposed system of water quality trading to supplement the existing system of government regulation and water trading. A survey was structured to examine stakeholders’ perceptions about (1) resource status; (2) their rights and responsibilities under current system of administration, and (3) their rights and responsibilities under the proposed system. Survey results revealed stakeholders concerns about the ability of both existing and proposed systems to secure their access to water if annual water supply continues to decrease. Despite concerns about increasing scarcity respondents did not perceive transferability of water licences as important due to lack of trading experience and existence of regulatory barriers that impede markets and discourage participation. Reluctance to explore markets could have been as well related to the high risk of losing the unused water. Under the proposed system stakeholders’ perceptions of their abilities to secure rights pertaining to water quality improved. However, obtained data were insufficient to judge with certainty the applicability of the proposed system in the region. Results were inconclusive to determine the extent and origin of non-point source pollution by agriculture. Also, research is needed to determine how elimination of potential institutional barriers, i.e. a risk to lose water and inability to maintain private licences to instream flow, would influence stakeholders’ perceptions about their rights and responsibilities under proposed system.

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Water trading and water markets have been listed by leading climate change organizations as a possible tool for climate change adaptation. Experience with water trading exists in many places in the world, and three of the most well-known and widely-studied markets for water rights are found in the Western United States, Chile, and Australia's Murray-Darling Basin. While the body of literature on the performance of these markets is extensive, few papers relate the experiences of these three countries to adaptation as of yet. This thesis seeks to report on the outcomes of water markets in three cases with special attention to the following adaptation questions: Can water markets be a tool to address increasing variability in water supply; and what are the necessary environmental, political, and historic conditions for a market to be successful in allocating water resources under situations of scarcity? The experiences of these three cases yield the following conclusions about the use of water markets in climate change adaptation: the degree of existing infrastructure for water storage and transportation must be considered in the implementation of markets; water markets must be continually revised to internalize local third party effects; transaction costs must be minimized if markets are to serve increased short-term variability in water supply; sustainable outcomes are most readily met when markets approximate “cap-and-trade” programs; and the involvement of local institutions in market design will support market activity and the achievement of localized adaptation goals.

Avec le changement climatique, l'agriculture va devoir s'adapter à des sécheresses de plus en plus fréquentes et sévères. C'est le secteur le plus consommateur d'eau et celui à qui le plus d'efforts dans la réduction des prélèvements va être demandé. Les mécanismes d'allocation de l'eau existants (prix, marché, dispositifs de rationnement...) négligent souvent la forte variabilité de la disponibilité de la ressource. Or, la façon dont est partagée l'eau en cas de rareté influence le risque subi par les agriculteurs. Afin de réduire le coûts pour les agriculteurs et la société du risque sécheresse, il convient d'améliorer les outils de partage de l'eau et d'y intégrer des mécanismes de gestion du risque. C'est la question qui est étudiée dans cette thèse. Cette réflexion a été menée dans deux contextes très différents: la France, où le partage de l'eau est administré par les représentants de l'État en cas de sécheresse; l'Australie où des systèmes de marchés de l'eau ont été mis en place pour permettre les échanges d'eau entre agriculteurs. La thèse est composée de 3 articles (chapitres 2,3 et 5 en anglais) et d'éléments de cadrage (chapitres 1 et 4 en français). Le chapitre 1 présente la gestion de l'eau agricole en France. Les chapitres 2 et 3 étudient les interactions entre les règles utilisées pour le rationnement de l'eau d'irrigation en cas de sécheresse en France et les stratégies d'auto-assurance des agriculteurs. Nous étudions notamment le cas du stockage d'eau au niveau de l'exploitation, outil de gestion du risque de plus en plus mobilisé par les agriculteurs français. Le chapitre 2 modélise une situation où des agents ont la possibilité de substituer l'usage d'une ressource coûteuse mais sécurisée à l'usage de la ressource commune risquée. Nous déterminons la règle de partage optimale sous deux hypothèses distinctes: i) le planificateur définit simultanément la règle de partage et les choix de diversifications de façon à maximiser le bien être social; ii) le décideur utilise la règle de partage comme un instrument incitant les usagers à faire des choix de diversification optimaux d'un point de vue social. Le chapitre 3 est une expérience de laboratoire visant à comparer différentes règles de partage d'une ressource commune de taille incertaine quand les sujets peuvent choisir entre l'utilisation de cette ressource commune ou l'investissement dans une ressource sécurisée. Les règles sont évaluées sur leur aptitude à faciliter la coordination des agents autour du niveau optimal d'investissement dans la ressource sécurisée. La discussion des résultats de ces deux articles permet de proposer des recommandations aux administrations en charge de la mise en place des règles de partage de la ressource en cas de sécheresse, notamment dans le cadre de la réforme en cours en France (création des Organismes Uniques). Le chapitre 4 présente le fonctionnement des marchés de l'eau et le système de gestion des sécheresses en Australie. Le chapitre 5 étudie les gains de la mise en place de droits d'eau avec différents niveaux de sécurité, à l'aide d'une expérience de laboratoire capturant l'essence des marchés de l'eau australiens. Nous trouvons qu'un système avec deux niveaux de sécurité améliore l'efficacité allocative et le partage du risque mais seulement quand les coûts de transaction sont plus élevés sur le marché des allocations que sur le marché des droits d'eau. La mise en place de droits différenciés peut conduire à une diminution de la coût-efficacité du mécanisme en raison de l'augmentation des échanges sur le marché des droits d'eau et donc des coûts de transaction payés par les agriculteurs quand ceux-ci sont élevés sur le marché des droits. / With climate change, agriculture will have to adapt to face increasingly frequent and more severe droughts. Agriculture is the largest consumer of water and will face most of the water restrictions in the coming years. Existing water allocation mechanisms (pricing, water markets, rationing scheme) often fail to take into account the high variability of the resource, whereas those mechanisms have strong impacts on the risk born by agricultural water users. Water allocation schemes can contribute to reduce the cost of drought risk for farmers and society by integrating risk management mechanisms. We address this question in two different contexts: France, where water is managed by public authorities that are responsible for the rationing scheme and define the allocation of water between farmers in case of scarcity; Australia, where water markets have been implemented in order to allow water transfers between farmers. This Ph.D. dissertation is composed of 3 articles (chapter 2, 3 and 5 in English) and background information (chapter 1 and 4 in French). Chapter 1 describes the organization of irrigation water allocation in France. Chapters 2 and 3 analyze the interactions between the restrictions rules used in France to share the resource in crisis times and the self-insurance strategies of farmers. We investigate the particular example of on-farm storage, an increasingly widespread risk management tool used by French farmers. Chapter 2 models the decisions of agents heterogeneous in their risk tolerance that can substitute the use of a a secure private alternative to the use of a common pool resource of uncertain size. We find the optimal sharing rule under two assumptions concerning the regulator: i) the social planner defines simultaneously the sharing rule and the diversification choices in order to maximize social welfare; ii) the policy maker uses the sharing rule as an instrument to induce each agent to make the optimal diversification decision. Chapter 3 uses laboratory experiment to analyze how the sharing rule impacts the individual trade-off between relying on a free but uncertain resource and investing in a secure alternative resource. Rules are compared on the basis of their ability to facilitate coordination on the optimal investment in the secure resource. Chapter 4 presents how irrigation water is allocated between users in Australia in case of drought. Chapter 5 studies with a laboratory experiment, designed such as capturing the main characteristics of Australian water markets, whether offering different levels of security for water rights could potentially allow water users to manage the risks of supply uncertainty better. We find that a two security levels system improves both allocative efficiency and risk management, but only when transactions costs are higher in the market for water allocation than in the market for water rights. A system with different levels of security for water rights can be detrimental to cost-effectiveness by increasing the number of costly trades on the water rights market.

This submission reviews the two successful examples of water markets, one in the developed world, the Murray Darling Basin in Australia and other in the developing world, the Limari Basin case in Chile respectively. Of central importance, we find the commodification of a natural resource, water, through a process of the progressing neoliberal agenda. As regards the outcome of this process in these two cases / while on the one hand the water markets have contributed to a more efficient allocation of water resources from less efficient to more efficient uses, on the other hand, problems related to environmental degradation in the former case and the social inequity in the latter have been unable to be solved.

Tanker water markets (TWM) supply water services in many urban areas, including those unconnected to public infrastructures. Notwithstanding, they have been associated with outcomes in conflict with sustainability goals of water policy, e.g., through inequitable and unaffordable supply or by contributing to groundwater overexploitation. So far, the literature dedicated to TWM has primarily conducted case studies embedded in diverse local contexts, which impedes the comparison and transfer of insights. In this article, we systematically summarize existing empirical knowledge on TWM and assess to what extent normative claims about the impacts of TWM on sustainability goals are supported by evidence. We use the concept of sustainable access, which combines notions of what constitutes access to water and what characterizes sustainable supply of services. The available evidence suggests that TWM have two key functions in urban water systems: (1) They provide services at otherwise unavailable levels, particularly with respect to the temporal availability and spatial accessibility of the service, and (2) they extend access to areas without or with low-quality network supply, typically low-income communities on the fringe of cities. From the perspective of sustainable access, we find that TWM can provide high service levels and thus fill a specific gap in the landscape of urban water services. Due to comparatively high prices, however, it is unlikely that these services are affordable for all. The combination of heterogeneous access to cheaper (subsidized) piped water and marginal pricing in TWM results in allocation outcomes that are not coherent with existing notions of equitable access to water. However, there is little convincing evidence that TWM necessarily result in unsustainable water use. The literature indicates that urban water governance in the studied areas is frequently characterized by a lack of effective institutions, which impedes the regulation or formalization of TWM.

Cette thèse s’attache à contribuer aux débats actuels quant aux possibles avantages des marchés de l’eau. De par les changements économiques et une croissante instabilité climatique, bon nombre de régions arides à travers le monde doivent reconsidérer leur stratégie de gestion de leurs ressources hydrologiques. Une préférence substantielle envers des mécanismes de réallocation plus flexible telle que les marchés de l’eau y est portée pour limiter le stress hydrique. Bien qu’efficients en théorie, ces instruments sont aussi très coûteux, autant dans leurs mises en place que dans leur maintenance, à cause principalement des possibles externalités que des transferts d’eau peuvent induire. Ces coûts de transaction limitent l’efficacité des marchés de l’eau en comparaison à une situation de concurrence pure et parfaite et peuvent être plus dommageables qu’une gestion centralisée. Ainsi, toutes analyses d’une décentralisation de la gestion des ressources en eau doivent prendre en compte ces coûts de transaction. A ce titre, le travail présenté ici étudie les causes sous-jacentes à ces coûts de transactions et adapte un outil déjà largement utilisé dans le cadre du commerce international : les équations de gravité. L’application de ce modèle aux marchés de l’eau en Californie permet de mettre en évidence et de mesurer l’importance de ces coûts de transactions dans le développement de tels instruments de gestion de l’eau. / This dissertation aims at contributing to the ongoing debate about the potential effectiveness of water markets. With the ongoing economic changes and the growing versatility of water resources due to climate changes, many arid regions around the world need to reconsider their strategy of managing their hydrological resources. Interests among policy makers are leaning toward flexible reallocation mechanisms such as water markets to cope with water shortages. While efficient in theory, such instruments are also very costly to establish and to maintain because of the potential externalities that transferring water may cause. These so-called transaction costs limit the effectiveness of water markets in comparison to the situation of perfect competition and can induce a more detrimental outcome than a centralized management. Therefore, any decentralized solutions to manage the scarce water resources must account for the transaction costs of running such alternatives. In that respect, this work focuses on studying the underlying causes of these transaction costs and adapts a tool widely used in the international trade economics: the gravity equations. Through that way, importance of these transaction costs for the development of effective water markets is reasserted. More importantly, a theoretical and empirical model is developed to measure the magnitude of the different frictions in reallocating water through decentralized managements in the case of California.