IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/oxford/v36y2020i1p24-44..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The economics of water scarcity and variability

Author

Listed:
  • Richard Damania

Abstract

Does the availability or variability of water matter for the economy? Does it meaningfully impact the growth and development trajectory of a country? It may seem surprising that answers to these most basic of questions remain elusive. The aim of this paper is to summarize recent work on the economic impacts of water scarcity and variability. The paper finds that there is strong evidence that variations in rainfall and water availability have significant impacts on particular sectors, such as agriculture, human capital, and even conflict. But paradoxically evidence of impacts on economic growth and other measures of aggregate economic activity remains ambiguous. The paper explains reasons for this anomaly and explores the pathways through which water impacts the economy. The paper provides a synthesis of key developments in the literature, identifies methodological gaps, and suggests policy solutions.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard Damania, 2020. "The economics of water scarcity and variability," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 36(1), pages 24-44.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:oxford:v:36:y:2020:i:1:p:24-44.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/oxrep/grz027
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ria Ranjan Srivastava & Prabhat Kumar Singh, 2023. "Selection of factors affecting integrated municipal wastewater treatment and reuse network: an interpretive structural modelling (ISM) approach," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 25(9), pages 9137-9161, September.
    2. Kotz, Maximilian & Kuik, Friderike & Lis, Eliza & Nickel, Christiane, 2023. "The impact of global warming on inflation: averages, seasonality and extremes," Working Paper Series 2821, European Central Bank.
    3. Khan,Amjad Muhammad & Rodella,Aude-Sophie, 2021. "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall? : New Insights on Water Security and Fragility in the Sahel," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9805, The World Bank.
    4. Xu, Hang & Yang, Rui, 2022. "Does agricultural water conservation policy necessarily reduce agricultural water extraction? Evidence from China," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 274(C).
    5. Ghimire, Tinusha & Harou, Aurélie P. & Balasubramanya, Soumya, 2023. "Migration, gender labor division and food insecurity in Tajikistan," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:oxford:v:36:y:2020:i:1:p:24-44.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/oxrep .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.