Talk:Water resources management in Chile

Untitled
Miguelito, Buen trabajo! Seguimos en contacto. Un abrazo--anunezsanchez (talk) 18:07, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Miguelito, estuve por aqui. Me espero a mañana para darte comentarios y asi me leo el lead section. Suerte y un abrazo!--anunezsanchez (talk) 23:05, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Miguelaaron, I have deleted the WSS reference in the lead section. As discussed, since this is a WRM, article if you were to talk about on sector i.e. WSS in the lead section, you would need to talk about all the sectors i.e. irrigation, energy...etc. The lead section should be an executive summary of the entire article. I recommend you to read the tutorial in Wikipedia about lead sections. Good job and thank you

Extra notes
(cubic kilometers - a cubic kilometer or km3 is equivalent to, and frequently also expressed as “bcm” or billion cubic meters).

The Chilean water management model and 1981 Water Code (MS: Is that a benefit?!?)(MM: Good question. Maybe Bauer feels that consolidation of agrarian reform policy has been more efficient and manageable??)  (MS:Please make sure to show what parts of the article are quotes by using quotation marks. If a quote is enigmatic, let's remove the quote or paraphrase those parts of the quote that you fully understand (as opposed, of course, that you agree with))

Comments on water pricing and water markets
I wonder if these two sections should not be merged in a single section, perhaps called water markets, since water tariffs are outside of the scope of this article and are better dealt with in the WSS article. I copied some content over to that article, and I also suggest to look at the Spanish version of the WSS article which has more information on subsidies in WSS that may be useful for the English WSS article as well.(MM: are you asking me to update some info on the English WSS? I am unclear here.)Miguelaaron (talk) 01:59, 19 June 2009 (UTC) MS:No, no need to do that.--Mschiffler (talk) 03:48, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

In the water market section, it would be interesting to add the volumes of water traded (as a percentage of total flows in each river basin) and prices (ideally also as a share of production costs). Absolute figures do not mean much to most people. Relative figures say much more. Also, all statements should be clearly sourced, or perhaps taken out. I highlighted one example. --Mschiffler (talk) 18:51, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

In the water markets section, it is not clear what is meant by the distinction between "localized level" and "macro scale". This may be described in the source text, but it should be made clear in the article or the distinction should be abandoned, if it is not useful. Also, it would be useful to elaborate a bit more on what specific types of transaction costs limit market activity, since the concept of transaction costs is very general. Finally, it may be useful to elaborate on the relevance of water markets for hydropower. Are water markets irrelevant for hydropower, since dams for hydropower generations are located in basins with no significant water transactions? Or are they relevant? If yes, does the law distinguish between largely consumptive use (irrigation) and non-consumptive use (hydropower)? If yes, how has this been applied in practice? Finally, it is not clear what it means that water companies and real estate developers accounted for 76% of rights between 1993 and 1999. Does it mean that 76% of the flow of the two rivers mentioned are used for municipal uses? Or does it mean that 76% of the transaction volume was bought by them? If yes, what was the transaction volume in relation to average discharge of the rivers?--Mschiffler (talk) 20:54, 13 June 2009 (UTC) (MM: The 76% refers to water companies and real estate developers accounting for 76% of "water rights traded" between 1993-1999. I made change in language to be more clear.)Miguelaaron (talk) 01:59, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Irrigation and hydropower
In the section on irrigation it would be interesting to have some figures on the relative importance of irrigated agriculture in the economy. What is the share of agricultural employment and agricultural GDP in total employment and GDP? What share of agricultural production is from irrigation, and what share from rainfed agriculture? Where is irrigation concentrated geographically? How much of the water used for irrigation comes from groundwater and how much from surface water? What are the main crops grown? What are the main crops grown? Ideally there would be a separate article on irrigation, but in its absence it would be interesting to include this information.

For hydropower, it should be made clear that this is a non-consumptive use and that water thus is in almost all cases not "extracted" from a river. Also, electricity consumption is not measured in GW (which is a unit for installed electric production capacity), but in GW hours.--Mschiffler (talk) 18:57, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Aquatic ecosystems
There is no mention of aquatic ecosystems in Chile. How important are lakes and rivers for fish and other aquatic species? Are there any endangered species depending on them? Have minimum environmental flows in rivers been an issue in the debate on the reform of the water law and water markets? The article makes reference to general concerns about "environmental sustainability", but does not describe what the specific concerns in Chile are. Also, the infobox mentions Ramsar sites in Chile. It would be great to list them and to check if there are articles on each of them on Wikipedia.--Mschiffler (talk) 21:19, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

And here is a list of Ramsar sites in Chile, from the Ramsar websites:
 * Carlos Anwandter Sanctuary
 * Surire salt pan es:Salar de Surire
 * Huasco salt pan
 * Tara salt pan and the Sistema hidrológico de Soncor] in the [[Los Flamencos National Reserve
 * Laguna del Negro Francisco and Laguna Santa Rosa in the Nevado Tres Cruces National Park
 * El Yali wetlands
 * Santuario de la Naturaleza Laguna Conchalí
 * Bahía Lomas--Mschiffler (talk) 21:35, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

And after looking them up one by one I found they are also listed, where else, on Wikipedia.... List_of_Ramsar_wetlands_of_international_importance--Mschiffler (talk) 21:44, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Additional suggestions on presentation and style

 * Units should be used consistently, e.g. either km3 or billion m3 (see storage capacity)
 * The table with hydrological characteristics of regions would benefit greatly from being converted in a sortable table, such as in List of countries by population. However, this would require substantial editing efforts.
 * In the same table, it may be more useful to show the renewable water resources/year in BCM per region instead of the average annual runoff.

(MM: Should I just remove "avg. annual runoff" then? Also if "Avg. Renewable water resources/year" and "Per capita water availability" are considered the same value, we have it in the table already. The problem with inconsistent data in the table may have come from adding population figures that are from more recent (2002) census data. The FAO data in the table for all other values are from 2000. Population growth may account for a lower figure of 939 m3/year that you calculated. I imagine all the "Avg. Renewable water resources/year" and "Per capita water availability" values in the table will have this inconsistency due to the population data. Maybe pop. data should be removed or we note above the table that pop. data is more recent than the FAO data.)Miguelaaron (talk) 17:02, 20 June 2009 (UTC)


 * The data shown in the table are not consistent. For example, a calculation based on the data shows that average renewable WR in Region I are 402 BCM/year, which corresponds to 939 m3/yr and not 1,226m3/year as shown in the table.(MM: Does this mean that average renewable WR and Per capita water availability are the same value?) Miguelaaron (talk) 02:00, 19 June 2009 (UTC) MS:To me they are the same.--Mschiffler (talk) 03:49, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
 * In the table, it would be great to include blue links to the rivers on which there are articles on Wikipedia
 * Avoid the terms "currently", "now" or "recently", since the article is likely to remain in place for a while. Instead use specific references to years or months.
 * In the lead section, be as specific as possible, without being exhaustive. Do not generalize in the lead section, if it is possible to be specific.
 * Also, make sure to include references in the lead section, even if they repeat references in the main body of the text.
 * If references are identical, use the function to shorten the list of references and make the article more readable.
 * I believe it is more common to say "Water resources management" instead of "Water resource management" in the singular.
 * There are numerous bullet-point lists in the text. In some cases it may be better to use a text paragraph to "bind together" the fragmented information of these lists in a story line. An example is the section on the institutional framework.
 * Make sure to stay on topic in a section. For example, the information on virtual water is useful, but does not belong in the section on mining, since it also refers to export of virtual water through agriculture.--Mschiffler (talk) 20:48, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Nice progress
The article is evolving nicely, after glancing at it quickly. I am impressed by the sortable table, which is more than what I expected. How about moving the total as well as the LAC and global averages to a separate table below the main table, so that the sorting results will make more sense?

Also, on the inconsistencies, it may well be because of the different population figures (2002 in your table, 2000 in the FAO table). I leave it up to you how to resolve it, but something needs to be done. The easiest way would be to add a footnote. The cleanest way would be too re-calcuate per capita water availability based on the 2002 population figures and update the per capita water availability column of the table accordingly.--Mschiffler (talk) 00:56, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

External links modified
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