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Purpose of the book
The purpose of this book, Integrated Water Resource Planning: Achieving Sustainable Outcomes, is to provide practical guidance on water resource planning through each step of the water planning process, based on the authors’ research and experience over several years.
With increasing demands and competing uses for water globally, critical decisions made about water management impact the environment and community health and well-being. Evidence from effects of droughts and foods as well as from heartfelt conflicts about sharing water suggests that we still have a lot to learn about how to achieve sustainable and adaptive management of rivers and groundwater.
In recent years many countries have reformed water institutions. Jurisdictions around the world have been so busy implementing new approaches there has been little opportunity for refection and sharing of ideas. Early motivation for us to write this book derived from our own experiences working on water reform in different State governments in Australia, with little awareness of what was working well elsewhere. We knew what others were trying but would it work any better than what we were doing?
Furthermore, reviews in Australia have identified gaps in skills and capability that exist or are emerging in the water industries (ICEWaRM 2005). In 2008 we, along with colleague Vanessa O’Keefe, undertook interviews of water planners and stakeholders around Australia as part of the National Water Commission (NWC) funded ‘Water Planning Practices and Lessons Learned’ project (Hamstead et al. 2008a). Water planning agencies in Australia, which have been implementing reforms since 1996, had a high staff turnover and deficit in certain skill areas such as hydrology, community engagement, social assessment, scenario planning and policy. Similarly a survey of water planners in 2009 (Mackenzie and Bodsworth 2009) identified interest in further training and professional development on collaborative water planning approaches, particularly in the areas of Indigenous and cross-cultural engagement, conflict management and social assessment. An accompanying proposed training program identified nine possible deliverers within Australia of a post-graduate/professional course focusing on these social aspects. Further support for expanding tertiary degree curriculum to ensure water professionals are ‘work ready’, was identified in a 2008 review of universities and the water industry (Murray and Seddon 2008).
Since then the NWC has engaged us and others to contribute to their periodic assessments of progress in implementing Australia’s National Water Initiative1. These assessments confirmed challenges arising consistently in all jurisdictions, some innovative approaches being tried, but an overall lack of guidance for water planners trying to implement a significant reform in managing freshwater and groundwater resources. The NWC has gone a long way in filling knowledge gaps on specific topics in Australia.
While these reviews demonstrate a need for targeted practical guidance in Australia, our further research suggests that the demand is a global phenomenon. A tendency in countries around the world is a continuing reorganisation of institutional arrangements in tandem with electoral cycles, with some jurisdictions increasing interdisciplinary teams and community engagement and others taking a pragmatic approach to getting an outcome with minimal external input. Continuous organisational change leads to high staff turnover and compounds skill shortages and loss of experiential learning. In many cases, this has disrupted effective monitoring and evaluation of processes and outcomes, which is absolutely essential in assessing program effectiveness. At the same time, assessments of reform and implementation of integrated water resource management (IWRM) globally (UNEP 2012), of the EU Water Framework Directive (Bourblanc et al 2012; EC staff 2012), South Africa’s integrated water management approach, and Australia’s water reform policy – the National Water Initiative (Hamstead et al 2008a, b), have shown much progress, but reinforce the fact that water professionals and decision-makers around the world are on a steep learning curve.
An international examination of experience of water reforms can provide lessons as jurisdictions plan in a time of heightened awareness of ecosystem needs, climate change, and increasing and conflicting demands on water resources. A greater multidisciplinary and multi-sectoral approach is needed to proactively manage uncertainty of climate, long-term implications of management actions, and the sheer increase in demand from urban growth, irrigation and mining. Just as important, water professionals need to develop better ways of using evidence gained from global experiences, to convince both decision-makers and the community to make hard decisions, weighing immediate objectives with longer-term outcomes. The insights gained from this book should be transposable and instructive for water professionals engaging in water allocation processes worldwide.
Our approach
Many recent books on water management focus on specific themes such as climate change or environmental assessment; are location-specific (e.g. Australia or EU based); or are edited texts consisting of contributed articles. Various agencies have prepared guidelines or manuals (DEFRA 2006) for similar processes but in many cases they are not sufficiently detailed or topic-relevant to provide guidance for water planning. This book aims to fill a gap by providing water planners and policy analysts with detailed, practical guidance on water resource planning, supported by the evidence they need to convince others of ways to address the problem. Importantly this book will fill in the gaps for professionals in interdisciplinary teams including sociologists, hydrologists, engineers, ecologists, and community consultation or conflict specialists, by providing a basic grounding in areas outside their usual expertise, including environmental and social impact assessment, consultation, and risk-based approaches.
Many community stakeholders have considerable experience in the water business and act as representatives of natural resource management, conservation, industry (farmers, irrigators) groups, or local government bodies. This book will provide ammunition in their quest to ensure that water planning outcomes are justified and justifiable. Thus it can be used as a reference, academic resource, or in short training or university courses in water resource planning. The book should be useful in advanced courses in natural resource management, regional and infrastructure planning, and engineering.
This book is distinctive in applying IWRM through the lens of a water planning framework based on the elements of the planning cycle, to take a systematic approach to the entire water planning process. We include case studies to improve understanding of the context, practical tools and implementation techniques for achieving sustainable outcomes. Regulatory mechanisms, scenario development based on data, risk assessment, community engagement, and social assessment are discussed.
While to a large extent these practices have broader application, we focus on planning for allocation (or sharing) of water resources, with the aim of achieving sustainable use of water resources, particularly in cases where there is competition for the available water, or ‘wicked problems’ in water allocation.
Water planning is greatly affected by the legal, institutional and political context in which it occurs. Much has been written on preferred prerequisites for water resource planning. The UN World Water Development Report 3 (UNEP 2009) states that important conditions for implementing IWRM include political will and commitment; well-defined, flexible and enforceable legal frameworks and regulation; adequate investment, financial stability and sustainable cost recovery; and participation and coordination mechanisms. While we touch on these matters, our focus is on the process for water resource planning, recognising at the same time that the means and methods may be constrained by this context.
Our systematic model of a water resource planning process represents a possible ‘ideal’ but most water resource planning does not happen in such an orderly way, or as thoroughly as would be considered best practice. Priorities change due to crises; compromises are made due to financial constraints; time pressures may lead to skipping or amalgamating steps; and decisions have to be made despite limited information. Our work in preparing this book has highlighted a key issue – few water resource plans and processes have been critically evaluated against their objectives to determine what has been most effective. We wholeheartedly hope that this book will facilitate jurisdictions in the ever so important critical analysis of effectiveness of water resource planning.
Water resource planning as part of IWRM
A term that is commonly used in water management circles is Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM). In 2002, at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), The Technical Advisory Committee of the Global Water Partnership defined IWRM as
a process, which promotes the coordinated development and management of water, land and related resources in order to maximize the resultant economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems (GWP TAC 2000: 22).
The WSSD’s Plan of Implementation included IWRM as one of the key components for achieving sustainable development. It provided specific targets and guidelines for implementing IWRM worldwide (Rahaman and Varis 2005). The Global Water Partnership suggested three goals of IWRM are:
● economic efficiency – to make scarce water resources go as far as possible and to allocate water strategically to different economic sectors and uses
● social equity – to ensure equitable access to water and to the benefits from water use, between women and men, rich people and poor, across different social and economic groups both within and across countries
● environmental sustainability – to protect the water resources base and related aquatic ecosystems and more broadly to help address global environmental issues (Jønch-Clausen and Fugl 2001).
IWRM recognises that water resources have multiple uses that interact, thus requiring holistic consideration of all uses. These uses include human consumptive purposes as well as the provision of water for biodiversity and the preservation of ecosystems. IWRM recognises that water behaves within a complex hydrologic cycle that includes rainfall and evapo-transpiration; runoff and infiltration; and surface and underground flow. Thus in managing one aspect of the cycle, consideration must be given to the interaction with other connected aspects, for example between connected rivers, between rivers and connected aquifers, and between runoff affecting forestry activities, vegetated landscapes and downstream rivers. It recognises that terrestrial and underground water flows do not take any notice of national or state boundaries, so management in one jurisdiction interacts with that in others that share the same water system. Further, IWRM acknowledges that management aimed at other purposes, for example development for cities, agriculture, electricity, and tourism, can affect management of water resources. IWRM does not however insist on managing all of these together in one process, as this would become intractably large and complex. Rather it aims for management to occur at a scale and scope that is practical, but at the same time providing bridges and connections to management processes where interaction is likely (Lenton and Muller 2009).
For our purposes, water resource planning focuses on how water is allocated for different purposes, as an aspect of water resource management. In this book we assume that it shares the same aim as IWRM – to achieve a combination of economic, social, and environmental objectives. As much as possible all are achieved together, but in reality there is normally a significant degree of competition between these objectives, so ‘optimal’ or ‘balanced’ solutions are sought that reflect a realistic trade of based on human values. Water resource planning aims to reflect the integration aspect of IWRM, either directly managing or providing connections to activities that interact.
The growing global population will increase competition for domestic, agricultural and industrial water consumption leading to stress on water resources. Solutions must be locally based since each country experiences its own issues with development needs, water stress, and at different times: foods or drought, lack of potable water, or degraded resources. These shape the way a water resource planning process should be run. Doing nothing is a high-risk option. Planning is essential.
The scale of water resource planning can vary. While it should aim to maximise opportunities for integrated management, the decision has to be based on what is practical and achievable. Internationally it is increasingly common to place an emphasis on planning at the river basin scale because of the strong interaction between upstream and downstream uses of water. However scope varies substantially on whether linked aquifers are included; whether planning extends to activities in the catchment (e.g. forestry, land clearing) affected by water; whether it extends to urban supply (e.g. demand management, sanitation, pollution, and use of recycled water); and so on. Where such matters are not included directly in the sa...
