NHI responds to tomorrow’s water management challenges by designing novel governance mechanisms today. NHI has designed innovative water management institutions to:
- Reoperate reservoirs and bank groundwater to generate environmental flows;
- Reduce and manage agricultural drainage;
- Administer and enforce water rights;
- Allocate responsibility for reductions in diversions;
- Transfer water across international and interstate boundaries;
- Transfer water to environmental uses;
- Provide “biological risk insurance” to enable adaptive management under the Endangered Species Act; and
- Encourage improvements in the efficiency of agricultural water use through incentive pricing and market opportunities.
