“Water governance deserves its place on the global agenda before it’s too late.” This is with such a call that a vibrant editorial of the journal Nature concluded in December 2016 (Nature 2016: 170). The author(s) underlined how human activities, rather than mere hydrological dimensions, were responsible for most changes and crises in Earth’s water system. The inherently political dimension of water governance—a “ hard-won human compromise ”—as well as the necessity to recognize the “long process that aims to guide policies” at the global level were emphasized.
As a matter of fact, the idea that water governance matters has been around for some time now. The notion of a “global water crisis ” has gained interest since the 1990s (Biswas 1999) and is now widely recognized as a crisis of governance (e.g., Biswas and Tortajada 2010; Bogardi et al. 2012; Pahl-Wostl et al. 2012; Gupta et al. 2013; Grafton et al. 2013). The extraordinary and continuously growing number of freshwater uses, underlined by its vital dimension, its unequal distribution on the earth’s surface and the numerous uncertainties linked to climate change have raised some serious thoughts on the importance of water governance for human and ecosystems needs (Gleick 2000). The “long process” that the Nature editorial refers to was thus initiated several decades ago.
Numerous initiatives have been launched in order to address the challenges of minimizing anthropic impacts and ensuring a balanced interaction within socio-ecological systems, two key issues related to sustainable water uses (Gunderson and Holling 2002; Berkes et al. 2000). The Global Water Partnership (GWP) celebrated “20 years of impact” in 2016, the Water Governance Initiative, run under the umbrella of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) , held its 8th international meeting in Rabat, Morocco (12–13 January 2017), and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development explicitly places, under goal number six, water governance at the very core of sustainable development (United Nations 2015).
The actors involved in such initiatives, be they practitioners, activists or scholars, work to set governance principles, to disseminate good practices and to define and promote indicators allowing measurement of progress. They reflect on the definition of relevant tools to address the intricate challenges that water management is facing. At the same time, an expanding number of scientific articles, activists’ calls and policy papers have been published, illustrating the lively debates regarding how water should or could be governed. It is to such approaches, concepts, principles and models that we refer to in this volume when we talk about “international water management trends.”
In this regard, this book aims to reflect critically on these different trends by holding them up against what is happening in the field. The main objective is to revisit a selection of trends and to promote discussion with the help of empirically grounded research mainly conducted in Switzerland. This Introduction is structured around five sections. Firstly (1), we focus on, along with the work of several authors, water crisis that is considered a crisis of governance. Secondly (2), we reflect on different international water management trends, on their contexts of origin and on relationships that occur between the different approaches. Thirdly (3), we present the nature of this volume. Fourthly (4), we reflect on the relevancy of case studies mainly conducted in Switzerland and explain why it represents an interesting laboratory for analyzing water trends. Finally (5), we introduce the structure of the book.
1 Water Crisis as a Crisis of Governance
Building upon resilience theories (Gunderson and Holling 2002; Berkes et al. 2000), we share the vision of water resources as a system characterized by strong interplays between society and the environment. Based on a multiplicity of feedback loops and interconnections, this system is particularly complex, fragile and unstable. Its renewal capacities and sustainability greatly depend on anthropic dimensions that entail both quantitative (water intakes, effects on water flows, etc.) and qualitative (pollution, increase of temperature, etc.) impacts on the resource. These interplays have become even more significant with the Industrial Revolution, which had two main consequences for the water sector: an increase in the goods and services derived from water resources; and an intensification of localized pressure due to spreading urbanization. Nowadays, these two continuous tendencies are followed by new challenges and uncertainties linked with climate changes. Among other illustrations, one can mention the growing occurrence of extreme events or the rise of temperature affecting the melting of glaciers and the overall ecosystem functioning.
In other words, the combination between the nature of the resource and its use by society may lead to what Hardin (1968) called a tragedy, in the form of resource overexploitation and/or pollution threats. As argued by many authors, the triggering factors of this tragedy generally arise from governance failures (Pahl-Wostl et al. 2012), i.e., from incapacities to govern human behaviours in a sustainable way. The multifaceted characteristics, the diversity of acceptance and the complexity of governance processes imply a multiplicity of possible deficiencies that may, as this volume will show, occur in diverse settings and at different scales . Although for different reasons, this is just as much the case in developing as in already developed countries. As stated by Biswas and Tortajada (2010: 130): “Because of the changes that are likely to take place, water governance has to change more during the next 20 years than it has in past 2000 years if societal needs for water-related activities, including environmental requirements, are to be met successfully in a timely, equitable and cost-effective manner.” As uncertainties grow, providing a solution to these governance failures becomes an even greater challenge.
The water crisis increasingly calls for the definition of governance instruments aiming at answering these weaknesses and anticipating possible changes. In this regard, our objective is to contribute to this lively debate by considering the different perspectives proposed to solve the water crisis through multiple analytical lenses and by anchoring our perspective in evidence-based research.
2 International Water Management Trends: Contexts and Filiations
In recent years, water management challenges have been embraced by a variety of approaches. Following incremental dynamics and under the influence of different objectives and agendas, several management trends have risen at the international level in order to define solutions to persisting water crises and to overcome the weaknesses of previous governance practices. Among others, one can mention Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) , adaptive governance , water security or, more recently, the Water–Energy–Food Nexus.
These trends materialize both in normative approaches supported by international organizations as well as in more analytical frameworks produced by the academic community. This dual nature—normative and analytical—is, however, not so clear-cut and both dimensions interact and nourish each other. In several instances, these trends have been developed firstly as an answer to practical and empirical concerns and have been (more or less) critically assessed by research only in a second step. This is particularly true for IWRM (GWP 2000a; Biswas 2004, 2008; Rahaman and Varis 2005; Giordano and Shah 2014), water security (GWP 2000b; Cook and Bakker 2012; Zeitoun et al. 2016) or the nexus approach (Waughray 2011; Hoff 2011; Allouche et al. 2014).
A number of publications, often following a historical perspective, track the origins of and critically explore these international water management trends. They contribute to identify their rationale and the main drivers for their emergence, development and, sometimes, revival. Researchers focus on their conceptual and ideological foundations, identifying underlying objectives, power games and political stances. They highlight their “why” (the specific agendas of their promoters) and “how” (the strategy by which they are initiated), as well as their shortcomings (among others: Biswas 2008; Rahaman and Varis 2005; Benson et al. 2015; Cook and Bakker 2012; Zeitoun ...