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"A.D. McDermott, director." ; Cover title. ; Mode of access: Internet.

In 2015, California entered a record breaking fourth year of drought. In April, responding to continuing drought emergency conditions, Governor Brown issued an Executive Order that directed the State Water Board to take a variety of actions to conserve water. The Executive Order was soon followed by an emergency regulation adopted by the State Water Board that required a 25 percent reduction in potable water use: the first mandatory statewide urban conservation requirement in U.S. history. Economic literature and practical evidence have demonstrated the effectiveness of tiered pricing in achieving water conservation. A ruling by a California Appellate court on the legality of tiered water rates in San Juan Capistrano showed that a California constitutional amendment, Proposition 218, posed potential barriers to a robust conservation-based, tiered pricing approach. Proposition 218, approved in 1996, limited the ability of local government agencies to raise rates without a direct nexus between the fees and the increased cost. Studies assessed the advantage of pricing approaches over non-pricing approaches to achieve conservation goals and identified potential strategies to set water rates consistent with Proposition 218 that helped achieve conservation targets. Strategies were developed based on a review of rate-setting best management practices and their efficacy in three Southern California water agencies. The strategies included setting rates based on the cost of different sources of supply, isolating various costs involved in water supply, incorporating conservation cost into rates, and including fixed cost as a higher percentage of the rate. Water supply scarcity continues to challenge California, but effective rate-setting approaches encourage conservation and comply with current legal requirements.

A total of 177 residents in two Mexican cities responded to an instrument assessing (a) personal normative beliefs about water conservation, (b) beliefs about the efficacy of water conservation laws, (c) the tendency to break social norms (antisocial behavior), and (d) privatewater conservation behavior (self-reported). The data were processed within a structural equation model that specified the above effects. Results showed that personal normative beliefs had a positive effect on water conservation, whereas antisocial behavior inhibited that conservation, and beliefs in the inefficacy of water conservation laws produced no effect on water conservation practices. Significant and negative covariances between antisocial behavior and normative beliefs and between antisocial behavior and beliefs in the inefficacy of water consumption laws resulted. Conversely, normative beliefs and beliefs in the inefficacy of water laws covaried positively.

This paper evaluates the regionalization of soil and water conservation in China, decades after its widespread implementation across the country. The authors mainly address two questions. First, to what extent could achievements in soil erosion and water management be attributed to regionalization? Statistics and cases show that enhancement of research on soil erosion and ecology, popularization of technologies and mathematical methods and more complete databases are the main improvements to theoretical research ; the distribution of region-specific measures and monitoring sites and the development of a responsibility system are the main impacts on practice. Second, is there any weakness to regionalization? Econometric and management methods are currently not well integrated into the process of regionalization ; indicators used for division lack standardization, thus weakening the accuracy of regionalization ; also, there are limits to its implementation. Using scenario analysis, the authors discuss the possibility of involving economics and management science in the process of regionalization and the approach to combine qualitative analysis with quantitative analysis, while also arguing the importance of establishing an effective cooperation mechanism between different government departments and between government and actors. For government, the evaluation could be helpful to recognize the success, strengths and weaknesses of regionalization of soil and water in China and hence to take further steps to formulate region-specific policies dealing with complex environmental and economic problems in different regions.

Urban water conservation is typically achieved through prescriptive regulations, including the rationing of water for particular uses and requirements for the installation of particular technologies. A significant shift has occurred in pollution control regulations toward market-based policies in recent decades. We offer an analysis of the relative merits of market-based and prescriptive approaches to water conservation, where prices have rarely been used to allocate scarce supplies. The analysis emphasizes the emerging theoretical and empirical evidence that using prices to manage water demand is more cost-effective than implementing non-price conservation programs, similar to results for pollution control in earlier decades. Price-based approaches also have advantages in terms of monitoring and enforcement. In terms of predictability and equity, neither policy instrument has an inherent advantage over the other. As in any policy context, political considerations are important.