Water Trading
In Australia, all rights to use and control water are vested in the state. Users are then issued various conditional entitlements to use water and some of these entitlements can, in limited circumstances, be traded.
Entitlements vary state by state and according to the use, source, legal form, level of devolution, security and transferability among others. There has been a move across all states in recent years to move from older forms of water entitlement to more secure and transferable entitlements. Key parts of this move has been the separation of water entitlements from ties to particular parcels of land and the specification of entitlements with specific volumes and reliability.
Where an entitlement is able to be traded, the transaction may take several forms including temporary transfer of a seasonal water assignment, a permanent transfer of all or part of a water entitlement or a lease over a set period of years. All transfers require approval from the various regulatory bodies to ensure it complies with trading rules designed to meet environmental and in some cases socio-economic objectives. Such rules may include approving trades only within a set zone or the exchange rate of trades between zones to reflect water losses in delivery or differences in reliability.
Read more about this topic: Irrigation In Australia
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