Economic tools for water resource management

For a long time, water policy in France gave priority to the building of major supply facilities and to the co-financing of investments for the preservation of water quality and the securing of supplies. Since the end of the 1980s, the recurrent episodes of drought and associated restrictions on use have brought the debate on the management of water demand to the fore, with particular focus on economic tools such as prices and taxes on water abstraction. While in the past, the sensitivity of the actors to the level and nature of management tools was very low, research works have since showed the major role of economic tools in the management of water demand. Beyond the identification of the elasticity of demand to price and income, new research has covered the modes of access of households to drinking water, in particular through the arbitration between several sources, as well as the policies for the social pricing scheme for drinking water. We present here an overview of the results on the role of economic tools in the management of the residential uses of water.