About the Seminar

Water availability and quality issues will only gain importance in the future, with climate change impacts putting increasing pressure on global water resources. Dealing with these challenges requires drawing on all available water management tools, including Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR). Although MAR has seen increasing global implementation during the last half a century, it is still often overlooked as a management tool. While technical, bio-physical, and hydrogeological aspects of MAR are well researched, this cannot be said for socio-economic and other governance factors. Where information is available, this study seeks to understand the conditions necessary for MAR success. We apply fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis on 313 world MAR applications, and also model separately for high- and low-middle-income countries. Results show that sophisticated hydrogeological site understanding and scheme operation is paramount for MAR success, as is utilizing natural water sources for high value end uses. Successful high-income country MAR schemes tend to be large and utilize natural water sources and sophisticated water injection and treatment methods to augment potable water supply; while successful low-middle-income country schemes are not large, older than 20 years, and use gravity infiltration methods and (limited) no water treatment.

This is the first output of a collaborative research project between University of Adelaide and CSIRO on water banking readiness in Australia. Future work includes a review of Australian MAR legislation, regulation, and policy to explore legal barriers to MAR implementation, an ai-supported structured literature review of global funding and ownership models for water infrastructure, including MAR schemes, to explore funding and costs barriers to MAR implementation, and selected case studies of existing MAR schemes in Australia to explore whole of community costs and benefits of existing MAR schemes.”

About the Speaker

Dr Constantin Seidl is an applied water and agricultural economist, and a member of the Water, Environment and Food economics policy group (WEF group) in the School of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Adelaide. He holds a Master in Agricultural Economics from Humboldt University in Germany and a PhD in Global Food Studies from the University of Adelaide in 2020. Dr Seidl’s research focuses on Australian water markets and farmer adaptation behaviour in the Murray-Darling Basin, but he has also worked on farm profitability and decision making of Australian inland-region grape growers. His research outcomes have been published in high quality journals such as Journal of Hydrology, Journal of Rural Studies, and Agricultural Water Management (ERA A* and A levels). Dr Seidl is currently exploring the socio-economic drivers and impacts of Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) Schemes in Australia as part of a collaborative research project with CSIRO.