Client: Victorian DPI
This project was undertaken in partnership with Frontier Economics. It explored the potential options and benefits of co-ordination and targeting strategies for infrastructure renewal and water entitlement buy-back schemes, with the aim of maximising the combined benefits of these two policy approaches.
Major irrigation renewal projects such as the Northern Victoria Irrigation Renewal Project were initiated several years ago with one aim being to recover water for environmental use. Subsequently, the risks of changing water availability due to climate change and entitlement buy-back programs emerged. This discussion paper examined the interactions between renewal and buy-back programs and a range of other water and environmental policy instruments. It identified a number of opportunities for targeting and co-ordinating these strategies, maximising overall benefits and avoiding inefficient investments which may become redundant as water availability changes in a highly uncertain future. The report also identified some of the practical issues in implementing co-ordinated actions and proposed a range of measures that could be used to effectively deliver improved outcomes.