Long-Term Outcomes of Recognizing Indigenous Property Rights to Water

Summary: Restoring natural resource access for Indigenous groups has become a recent policy focus. We combine satellite data and robust difference-in-difference methods to estimate the causal effect of water right settlements on Native American reservations in the western United States over 1974-2012. Settlements increase agricultural land use by 8% and have no effect on developed land use. Our estimates of tribal water use indicate that many tribes are utilizing only a fraction of their entitlements, forgoing as much as $938M-$1.8B in revenue. We provide evidence that this gap is driven by land tenure constraints and a lack of irrigation infrastructure.

About the speaker: Eric Edwards is an assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at NC State. His work on the economics of natural resource management has been funded by USDA, NOAA, and NSF. He runs North Carolina’s extension program in water economics, focusing on improving water quality and conservation in the state through economic incentives and markets. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics and Environmental Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara.