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Economic Requirements and Instruments for Sustainable Urban Water Management – Comparative Review

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Urban Water Management for Future Cities

Part of the book series: Future City ((FUCI,volume 12))

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Abstract

Sustainable water management is still one of the major challenges of our times, and economic instruments may significantly contribute to a transition towards sustainability in water management. This chapter provides an overview on the current state of the implementation of sustainable water management in Germany. After introducing environmental policy instruments with a special focus on water pricing, the chapter gives an overview of topical challenges in Germany by looking in particular at the design of key policy instruments and the related need for reforms. The following points will be taken into consideration: contradictory requirements of water pricing, deficiencies of current tariffs against the background of changing demand structures, the role of environmental regulatory charges and the importance of a pending urban water sector transition. It will be shown that Germany’s water management is far from being completely “sustainable” – despite all the successes achieved to date.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Leipzig, Germany

    Erik Gawel & Norman Bedtke

  2. Institute for Infrastructure and Resource Management, Faculty of Economics and Business Management, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany

    Erik Gawel

Authors
  1. Erik Gawel
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  2. Norman Bedtke
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Erik Gawel .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Sanitary Engineering and Waste Management, Leibniz University Hannover, Hanover, Germany

    Stephan Köster

  2. Department of Environmental and Planning Law, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig, Germany

    Moritz Reese

  3. Dep of Env Science and Engr, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Jian'e Zuo

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Gawel, E., Bedtke, N. (2019). Economic Requirements and Instruments for Sustainable Urban Water Management – Comparative Review. In: Köster, S., Reese, M., Zuo, J. (eds) Urban Water Management for Future Cities. Future City, vol 12. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01488-9_21

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01488-9_21

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-01487-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-01488-9

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

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