Ouch. I’m 20 years out of date. There is indeed a market in water rights now, but it has problems. Here’s a reference: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.thegu

Ouch. I’m 20 years out of date. There is indeed a market in water rights now, but it has problems. Here’s a reference: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/sep/16/nsw-government-faces-crunch-call-on-water-rights-as-drought-deepens https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/australia... I read somewhere (can’t find the link) that the rights are allocated on the basis of the previous year’s flow. As you can see from the article, this still means people are pulling out water when there’s not enough water to go around. (There’s the usual complaints about speculation, but IME if you don’t have speculators you don’t have a functioning market. There’s plenty of data from regular financial markets about this.) Apologies.