Estimating Temporary Water Trading Impacts through Integrated Modelling

The impacts of such water transfers are expected to vary temporally and spatially. The aim of this paper is to specify a method to assess these impacts. Although water trading and its impacts have been discussed qualitatively in the literature; there are limited qualitative models available. In the past economists primarily modeled water trading without considering biophysical and systemic constraints. On the whole, these approaches overlook the important fact that the physical transfer of water does not occur at the same time as the economic (or “paper”) trade. However, integrated modelling frameworks are suitable for representing the complex interactions between economic drivers and the biophysical processes underlying water markets.