Water Markets: Mapping Scientific Knowledge

Abstract

Water is a vital resource for citizens’ economic and social development. However, the uses to which it can be put often conflict. Possible solutions to mitigate disputes involve political options, scarce economic resources, and the search for mechanisms to ensure its adequate allocation. For over half a century, countries such as Australia, Spain, Chile, and the western states of the United States have been considering the possibility of using markets for rights of use. They are defined as formal or informal trading exchanges of rights, whose aim is to improve efficiency, ensure security of supply, and make allocations more flexible. In this context, the aim of this article is to show a current picture of the scientific production related to Water Markets using the comparative bibliometric study of the documents indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus databases as a tool. The advanced search of relevant terms resulted in the retrieval of 261 papers from WoS and 305 from Scopus, with a time limit of 2020, which make up the ad hoc basis of the analysis. From this basis, it can be deduced that the subject of the Water Market has been present in the scientific literature on a more or less regular basis since the beginning of the 1990s. However, it has emerged as a topical issue in recent years, being in a phase of exponential growth, which means that interest in the area is likely to continue in the coming years.