www.environmentprobe.org/enviroprobe/index.cfm?DSP=cont -
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Published on: 10/6/2008
Last Visited: 10/6/2008
Elizabeth Brubaker is the author of another water-reform tome, Liquid Assets, and the executive director of Environment Probe, a Toronto-based think-tank dedicated to market-oriented solutions to environmental problems.In a series of speeches to audiences in Calgary and Edmonton last October, she outlined this new manifesto for water, centred on making water rights tradable.
Under the current system of water allocation, there is virtually no incentive for users to conserve, Brubaker argues."It's a very old system, a system that worked better 100 years ago when water was plentiful than it does now when water is scarce," she says.First, it is a system of prior allocation.That means that in a shortage situation the oldest licences - not necessarily the uses that generate the greatest public benefit - may take all of their allocation before the holders of licences granted later use a drop.Equally problematic is the use-it-or-lose-it nature of the licences, whereby licencees risk losing part of their allocation if they leave water in the river."So of course everybody has an incentive to use the entire allocation, which is the opposite of having an incentive to conserve," Brubaker says.Finally, the cost of the licence - and the water to the end user, as a rule - is based on the cost of delivering the water.
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Brubaker cites a number of hindrances to freer trade in water.First, the incumbent licences tend to be held by collectives such as irrigation districts rather than individual users who are in a better position to invest in water-saving technology, switch to higher-value or water-saving crops or shift to more appropriate land uses.Second, licencees risk a take-back of 10% of their water allocation by Alberta Environment for conservation purposes every time a licence is transferred, a disincentive for trading.Third, there is also no marketplace - not even an Internet bulletin board - for buyers and sellers to seek each other out or for the value of recent trades to be posted.
But most importantly, the government has not introduced water pricing.It provides users with the water too cheaply to cause them to trade, Brubaker says.
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Brubaker also emphasizes that what she is talking about is not the privatization of water.By law, the provincial government owns the water and simply grants landowners, municipalities and industrial users the right to use it.That would not change.What she is talking about is putting a price on water.Some critics contend that water is a human right and too valuable a resource to put a price on."It's too important not to price it," she counters.
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