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Annual Review of Resource Economics

Volume 16, 2024

Groundwater Institutions in the Face of Global Climate Change

Abstract

We review the literature on the performance of groundwater institutions, including command-and-control (CAC) approaches, market-based institutions (MBIs), and voluntary approaches, and evaluate how they will perform as agriculture adapts to climate change. Both CAC approaches and MBIs lead to uneven distributional impacts on farmers, and voluntary approaches have not been successful in reducing water withdrawal on a large scale. A polycentric approach of regulation plus local management might perform well. Climate change will increase the irrigation demand for groundwater and demand flexible and properly scoped institutions that attend to local conditions.

Keyword(s): adaptation, climate change, groundwater institutions, irrigation, JEL Q15, JEL Q25, JEL Q54
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/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-resource-101623-100909
2024-10-07
2025-05-01
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/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-resource-101623-100909
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Groundwater Institutions in the Face of Global Climate Change
Annual Review of Resource Economics 16, 125 (2024); https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-resource-101623-100909
/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-resource-101623-100909
/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-resource-101623-100909
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