IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jinter/v15y2004i3-4p323-339.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Regulating Water Use in Commercial Forestry in South Africa: Concerns, Issues and Visions

Author

Listed:
  • D.D. Tewari

    (Professor, School of Economics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa. E-mail: Tewari@ukzn.ac.za. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the conference on Decision Support Systems for Water Resources Management at Snowbird, Utah, USA, 27–30 June 2001.)

Abstract

Commercial forestry in South Africa generates a considerable amount of foreign exchange and employment. It is hence considered as one engine of growth of the economy and has enjoyed a special status in the past. However, the success of the industry is based on its use of water. The industry uses some 8% of utilizable available water in the country but does not pay for it. The National Water Act of 1998 treats water as a strategic resource and demands that it should be priced. This has sparked a debate on the issue of water use and pricing in the commercial forestry sector. Should the industry pay for water or rainfall as it reduces run-off to the disadvantage of downstream users? This article explores the historical debate on water use regulation and its effectiveness and discusses the current attempts to address the issue of efficient water use in the commercial forestry industry.

Suggested Citation

  • D.D. Tewari, 2004. "Regulating Water Use in Commercial Forestry in South Africa: Concerns, Issues and Visions," Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics, , vol. 15(3-4), pages 323-339, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jinter:v:15:y:2004:i:3-4:p:323-339
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://jie.sagepub.com/content/15/3-4/323.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jinter:v:15:y:2004:i:3-4:p:323-339. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.