Integrated Water Resource Management

An Interdisciplinary Approach

Neil S. Grigg

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137576156
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

This book addresses the enormous global challenge of providing balanced and sustainable solutions to urgent water problems. The author explores our dependence on access to safe water and other water-related services and how driving forces of the human and natural worlds are degrading this access. The greatest challenges involve conflicts between people and interest groups across all countries, as well as the economic and political difficulties in finding solutions through infrastructure development. The book takes an interdisciplinary approach to Integrated Water Resources Management or IWRM, which provides a set of tools for policy development, planning and organization, assessment, systems analysis, finance, and regulation. The author suggests that IWRM is challenging because of the human element, but that no other process can reconcile the conflicting agendas involved with water management. The broad range of topics covered here, as well as 25 case summaries, will be of interest to scientists, engineers, practitioners, and advanced level students interested in the integrated management of water as a resource.

© The Author(s) 2016

Neil S. GriggIntegrated Water Resource Management10.1057/978-1-137-57615-6_1

Begin Abstract

1. Water as a Connector Among Societal Needs

Neil S. Grigg¹

(1)

Civil and Environmental Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA

End Abstract

Why Water Management Is Important

The importance of water is plain to see because every creature on the planet needs it to survive and prosper. In a perfect world, we would cooperate to manage it as a shared resource so that everyone has enough and water’s condition is protected to benefit people and nature. Unfortunately, people do not cooperate that way and the management of water often involves more conflict than it does cooperation. This presents many challenges as we seek to provide access to healthy water supplies in a time of rapid global development and climate change.

In one competing vision of the future, there could be efficient and equitable management to apply water to its highest and best uses for a sustainable future. At the other extreme, global water supplies and quality could spiral downward toward scarcity and pollution and the disease and deprivation they will bring. The factors that will make the difference between these competing visions are the effectiveness of water resources management and the governance that supports it.

Demands for a healthy and adequate water supply are life-or-death issues for people and ecosystems, but only a tiny fraction of the world’s water is available as freshwater. The risk of a water crisis looms in many places that are facing water shortages and drought, rising sea levels, polluted water, floods, and environmental degradation, among other problems.

To respond to these challenges, methods for effective water resources management are being applied around the world at various levels of success. The context of applying them matters as much as the methods themselves because of large differences in requirements and capacities from one place to another. The widest gaps are between prosperous countries with highly-developed governance systems and those with struggling economies and societies where governance is largely ineffective. In between are many emerging nations where water management is a work in progress and needs are being addressed incrementally.

Depending on how it is defined, water resources management can fall short of the responses needed for a sustainable future. If it is defined as a mostly technical discipline which plans and builds infrastructure, it will certainly fail to respond fully to the needs of people and the planet. If it is focused more on nonstructural and regulatory tools, it may also fail by not providing the infrastructure needed to serve people and protect the environment. If it fails to respond to the urgent needs of water-related sectors such as food, health, and urban development it will also be inadequate. In short, the requirements of water resources management are demanding and it must be comprehensive and integrated with parallel management activities in other sectors.

Why an Integrated Approach Is Needed

Solutions are available, but current management systems fall short in meeting needs. Meanwhile, conflicts block progress and rapidly-increasing demands for water shortchange natural systems. Better approaches based on the best available practices must build on solid technical systems and infrastructure and extend to management systems that integrate water decisions with those in water-dependent sectors such as food, health and environment. The technical systems require tools from science and engineering, and integrative management tools draw from interdisciplinary founts of knowledge.

This book offers a three-level model of water management that includes technical approaches based on science and engineering, management and decision tools, and integrated approaches to link these with actions of water-dependent sectors. Integrated approaches require interdisciplinary inputs and the framework of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) can be used to explain them.

The proven principles of water resources management endure and the tools and methods of the three levels of application apply globally. How they should be applied will depend on the contextual situations at hand. The examples and cases presented here range across different types of problems that occur at different levels of national development and in different cultures.

From Technical to Integrative Water Management

The three levels of water management from technical to integrative are (Fig. 1.1):

• A technical level of handling water, as in use of pipes, pumps and other water infrastructure and equipment. This can be called water resources engineering but it also includes a wide range of operations and maintenance activities and it can be focused on science issues, such as aquatic ecology for example.
• A management level involving decision-making about allocation of the resource values of water and the use of water infrastructure. This scope is often called water resources management. This might seem like the same thing as IWRM, but it must go further to deal with related sectors to reach the integrative level.
• An integrative level involving a broad set of activities to link water decisions to actions in water-dependent sectors, such as health, environment, and food. The intersection of water issues with those of another sector is sometimes called a nexus as for example the water-energy nexus. These linkages between water management and other sectors define the discipline of Integrated Water Resources Management.

Fig. 1.1

Levels of water management from technical to integrative

Technical work is at the core of all levels; management inputs are needed for decisions involving funding and resource allocations; and the linkages with decisions of other sectors extend the concept to IWRM. Thus, anyone working in water management participates in IWRM at one level or another. While there are other ways to classify these levels, this approach can be used to explain the overall set of tasks involved in water resources management.

As an example, a reservoir operator may use well-defined engineering criteria to make decisions about releases of water. Then, the analyst who advises on allocating the water to farms or cities would support water management decisions by also considering resource values of the water. At the IWRM level, planners would also evaluate how water decisions are linked to community development and goals of other sectors.

Using such examples, it is clear that IWRM should be of practical use as well as useful for academic discussions. To apply it effectively, a manager must implement effective infrastructure systems and management programs, ensure that these are managed well, and work successfully with water-dependent sectors to meet their needs.

Water resources engineering has evolved over centuries as humans sought to put water to work to meet needs for drinking, farming, and providing energy. The concept of management principles for complex decisions came later, along with emergence of modern systems of governance. IWRM is the most recent paradigm of water resources management and is evolving in response to complex and interconnected problems of society. Practitioners in other complex fields are also seeking to develop integrated approaches, such as in health care, education, and the environment.

Paradigms for Integrated Management

As IWRM has evolved, it has come to replace or expand earlier concepts with similar purposes. Examples of earlier concepts are multipurpose, comprehensive, and holistic water management. Multipurpose water management was a popular concept decades ago, and the World Bank used the term comprehensive in development of its policies during the 1990s. Holistic water management focused on water management in developing countries and applied mostly to the irrigation sector with emphasis on interagency coordination, performance standards for water users and staff, use of indigenous knowledge, local participation for corollary activities; top-down and bottom-up coordination and the linkage between water and agriculture policy.

The recent concept of Total Water Management (TWM) is similar to IWRM, but its concepts have not been extensively developed and it was not designed for development situations. It was developed within the membership of the American Water Works Association (AWWA) and builds on their understanding of the needs of utility managers. A definition of TWM was developed by a group of water industry professionals: “Total Water Management is the exercise of stewardship of water resources for the greatest good of society and the environment. A basic principle of Total Water Management is that the supply is renewable, but limited, and should be managed on a sustainable use basis. Taking into consideration local and regional variations, Total Water Management: encourages planning and management on a natural water systems basis through a dynamic process that adapts to changing conditions; balances competing uses of water through efficient allocation that addresses social values, cost effectiveness, and environmental benefits and costs; requires the participation of all units of government and stakeholders in decision-making through a process of coordination and conflict resolution; promotes water conservation, reuse, source protection, and supply development to enhance water quality and quantity; and fosters public health, safety, and community good will” (Grigg 2008).

This definition was crafted by a group of highly-experienced managers and each phrase in it was chosen carefully. A short explanation of TWM was provided by John Young (2006), Chief Operating Officer of American Water, who wrote that it is to “…assure that water resources are managed for the greatest good of the people and environment and that all segments of society have a voice in the process.” Currently, AWWA has shifted to a concept of One Water, which is interpreted as managing water no matter what form it is in, whether as raw water, water in pipes, recycled water, or groundwater.

Comparing TWM to IWRM shows the importance of nuances to explain differences in concepts that seem similar. At a high conceptual level, TWM and IWRM seem to have the same goals for meeting needs and being good stewards of water. However, TWM focuses on management in the context of water utility decisions and IWRM focuses on the nexus connections among sectors, even as wise decisions about water are made. As a result, IWRM concentrates more on the issues of linked issues among sectors.

Combining technical and non-technical tools requires a more sophisticated approach to water management than in the past. Technical tasks are better-defined than non-technical tasks but still require complex tools, while non-technical skills range across the policy, management and decision science fields and focus on social capacity and collective action. Given these needed skills water management must be interdisciplinary and not limited to a single academic field. Rather than try to invent a new, interdisciplinary field, the more viable course of action is to work within existing specialty areas and build capacity for the solution of problems by interdisciplinary cooperation.

How the Paradigm of IWRM Evolved

The origins of IWRM are in water resources engineering and management, which stem back to the 19th Century rise of science and empiricism as problem-solving methods. Prior to about 1970, these were mostly technical fields dominated by engineers. Their complexity grew with rising expectations and new technologies, and in response they blended social and environmental objectives with structural solutions to w...