Rethinking Environmental Water Allocations: Demand Management of Environmental

England is commonly perceived as a wet country, but annual internal renewable water resources per capita across all regions are less than the equivalent figures for France, Italy, Spain and Portugal. Water scarcity is an issue and there is a need for water re- source managers to address growing concerns for parity across all water use sectors in terms of their water rights, responsibilities and performance objectives. In this paper we examine, in particular, tradeoffs between environmental allocations and agricul- tural demands in the Anglian Region.

Farmers understand and generally accept the need for water allocations to satisfy en- vironmental protection objectives, however they detect unfairness in the way that re- sources are managed during drought periods. This has resulted in many incidents when their water rights have been temporarily suspended, often with little or no prior warn- ing. The effect has been to create tension amongst water users and to foster perceptions of uncertainty about access to water for irrigation.

In a recent initiative the UK Environment Agency has implemented a more transpar- ent system for managing water resources at a catchment level. Associated with this initiative, there has been an effort to establish more consistent and scientifically rigor- ous methods for determining environmental allocations. Yet despite this transparency, during droughts environmental water needs will be determined using a precautionary principle and prior to determining needs of other sectors. The question however re- mains should the environment receive fixed and preferential water rights and does this contribute to Swise and efficientS use of available water resources? ´

1 The adoption of principles underlying the EU Water Framework Directive should im- prove allocation of available resources during periods of water scarcity. We will exam- ine the problems that arise in representative catchments within the Anglian Region if the environment receives a fixed and preferential allocation. We consider the need for greater flexibility in interpreting the environmental requirement. We explore the need for an approach that recognises the nature of the trade offs between users (including the environment). We examine the application to the environment of the concepts of Swater productivityS, Ssupply managementS and Sdemand managementS. ´ ´ ´

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