Water Economics in the Anthropocene

Water is often treated as a consumer good or a producer good; rarely is it seen as a scarce asset or natural capital. Significant differences emerge when water is treated as a reproducible commodity versus a nonrenewable asset, and this book will integrate both. Physical scarcity is compounded by economic scarcity when water is under- or mispriced; the authors construct real and shadow prices to reflect physical scarcity and environmental opportunity costs, and supply expansion is squared against demand management. Water cannot be treated in isolation of the energy or food systems, and this book develops a theoretical model to deal with the complex interrelationships among the three systems.

Atif Kubursi has been the President of ERL since 1973, is Professor Emeritus of Economics at McMaster University, and is the recipient of the Canadian Centennial Medal. He was senior visiting scholar at Cambridge (1974 – 75) and was a fellow of Middle East Institute of Policy at Harvard (1989 – 98). He served as Senior Development Officer at the UNIDO in Vienna (1981 – 82), as a Chief of the Economic Analysis Division (2002 – 03), and as Deputy Executive Secretary and Executive Secretary at ESCWA (2006 – 09). He consulted widely for the World Bank, UNDP, UNCTAD, UNEP, ECLAC, IMF, ILO, UNESCO and many governments around the world, including Egypt, Indonesia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Thailand, Malaysia, Jordan, Lebanon, Arab League, Arab Industrial Organization, Venezuela, and Canada. He specializes in the areas of the economic development and natural resources, particularly water, energy, and environmental economics. He has 12 books published and over 250 articles and chapters in books, conference proceedings, and technical reports. He served on the editorial board of Arab Studies Quarterly and Canadian Journal of Development.

Dr. Velma I. Grover has a vast experience in international development including international policy think-tank (United Nations University), consulting (UNESCO, Economic Research Forum, Egypt) and teaching at the university level (McMaster University and York University), thus developing a deep understanding of stakeholder issues and policy research, mainly in the areas of water and waste. She has worked internationally on different water issues, ranging from capacity building in integrated water resources management, impact of climate change on the water cycle, trans-boundary lake basin management, integrating the supply of safe drinking water and sanitation to health and the reduction of poverty, and introducing good governance in Asia, Africa and North America. She was also invited by Oxford University to organize a half day workshop called "The Looming Water Crisis as the Himalaya Glaciers Melt" at the Smith School World Forum on Enterprise and Environment at Oxford in July 2009. Velma has been visiting scholar at: Kalmar University (1999), the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment at Oxford (2008), and the School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University, Shanghai China (2009). She was also a Bryant Drake Visiting Professor at Kobe College, Japan (2013-14). She was selected by an international selection committee, chaired by Queen Noor of Jordan, to attend the first leadership workshop by the United Nations University in Jordan in 1997. Velma has authored/edited twelve books and has published numerous articles in journals. She is also an Adjunct at McMaster University and York University.