Question

pros and cons of human impacts on the murray river

Answer 1

Answer:

Water is a commodity, and water rights can be freely traded in an open market. Proponents of the free market approach argue that it leads to the most efficient allocation of water resources, as it would for any other commodity. However, unlike some commodities, water is critical for human life, for many human activities, and for environmental resources. When such an essential commodity becomes scarce, as frequently happens in Australia, a land prone to sudden and dramatic droughts, severe problems can occur quickly. In Australia's Murray Darling Basin, the country's largest agricultural region, the government had historically controlled the distribution of water rights. However, under these controls, a selected few controlled a large share of the water. To resolve this problem of overallocation, a free market approach was put in place in the early 1990s.