Amid historic drought and changing rainfall patterns, a groundwater market in the California desert could serve as a template for the future of water management.
Amid historic drought and changing rainfall patterns, a groundwater market in the California desert could serve as a template for the future of water management.
When landowners overlying the Mojave groundwater system switched from open-access management to a cap-and-trade system, it helped stabilize their groundwater resources. Researchers at UC Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and the Public Policy Institute of California were curious about the market’s other impacts. Their new study reveals that the switch also increased the values of properties within the groundwater market, even though the system restricted the amount of groundwater that landowners could pump. These benefits were over 10 times the initial cost of establishing the market.
These promising findings, published in the prestigious Journal of Political Economy(link is external), come as many other communities begin to develop their own management strategies under California’s new Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.
Read more at: University of California - Santa Barbara
