Existing Valuations for Water-Related Externalities – Sorted by Externality Type : data [Dataset]

Full description

The dataset is a compendium of existing economic valuations of externalities relevant to water service options. Policy and decision makers often need to compare the costs and benefits of water service options across the entire life cycle. If a comprehensive assessment based on long-term and community impacts is sought, then a consideration of "externalities" becomes vital. Externalities are positive and negative effects that are not taken into account directly in market-place transactions; they typically involve welfare effects on others not involved in the transaction, often effect long-term or unknown outcomes upon community well-being, and are part of complex cause-effect chains (for example, the positive recreational gardening impacts of residential rainwater tanks). The dataset includes economic value estimates for externality types including greenhouse gas emissions, energy use, water quality, nutrients, production, recreation, amenity (including visual impacts), health, ecosystems and biodiversity. The compendium includes information about a range of studies conducted in 1981-2009 in various locations. Valuation techniques include damage cost modelling, proposed carbon prices, contingent valuation (CV), hedonic prices, avertive expenditure, choice modelling, market data, Value of a Statistical Life (VSL), cost of illness and travel costs. The resulting compendium of value estimates will be of widespread use to practitioners concerned with sustainable water management (and, indeed, for strategic resource management purposes in general). The compendium can be used in many ways including the sourcing of estimates for social cost-benefit analysis and other decision-making or policy formation processes where a full range of externalities are considered. However, specific data limitations may affect the efficacy of the compendium; these are outlined in the associated report. This activity is a sub-project of the UWSRA project on Evaluation Methods for Evidence-based Total Water Cycle Management and Planning. The South East Queensland Regional Plan required the development of sub-regional and local government Total Water Cycle Management (TWCM) plans by July 2012. These had to consider the capture and use of local water supply sources as well as potential environmental implications. Robust and rigorous evaluation of the costs and benefits of these plans to support decision making is a challenge. Because the urban water cycle interacts in many ways with related flows of nutrients, energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, there are wide repercussions of water cycle management. The aim of the overall project is to provide guidance on selected systems analysis methods for the quantitative assessment of water supply options. The sub-project investigated how a wide range of environmental impacts of options could be quantified and normalised, and collated reporting from the international literature on the value of externalities (positive and negative effects that are not taken into account directly in market-place transactions).