- Preventive measures involving the establishment of sanitary protection zones around water abstraction points or catchment areas.
- Curative measures involving water treatment to ensure that it meets regulatory requirements.
Comparing the economic costs of these preventive and curative solutions can be seen as a decision-support criterion for local authorities who need to find an economically acceptable solution that is also to the general advantage (potability standards).
At the moment, studies attempting to make an economic assessment of the measures applied to achieve good quality water are mainly based on cost-benefit analyses that only take into account as a criterion the efficiency of the measures taken. The aim of this study is to produce a protocol for a socio-economic analysis with which to assess any plan for the protection of drinking water catchment areas. This protocol is based on the cost-benefit method but incorporates the criterion of the efficiency of the measures.
The Discussion section will consider the assessment at farm level of the impact of introducing contracts concerning several agro-environmental measures on the overall economic and environmental efficiency of farms and also on the partial efficiency of each activity: Phy efficiency for plant protection, N efficiency for fertilisation, etc. Our working hypothesis is that the adoption of such agro-environmental measures improves the economic and environmental efficiency of farms.
Key words : protocol for a socio-economic analysis, efficiency, agro-environmental measures , groundwater abstraction points.
JEL classification system: Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics.
