INTEGRATED WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT WHO SHOULD LEAD, WHO SHOULD PAY?¹

Abstract

Improving water management to meet future global needs will certainly require technical advances, but the main challenge is to integrate the viewpoints of diverse societal interests into decisions about allocation of water resources. The integration cannot be done solely by the market because it requires a balancing among interests which do not respond well to market forces, nor by the state alone because of institutional problems. The concept of “integrated water resources management” has been developed to provide the framework for the required balancing of interests, and, like similar concepts in industries other than water, it has a dual purpose ‐ to link stakeholders and apply best practices to management actions. To clarify the process of integrated water management, the paper focuses on two questions: who should lead integrated water resources management and who should pay for it? Several examples are given to illustrate a range of situations. The paper concludes with a call to improve paradigms of integrated water management, a proposition that water organizations should accept and budget for their external responsibilities as well as their direct missions, affirmation of the need for state and federal agencies to be involved with local interests, a call for better scientific and public information, and identification of the need for continued work to improve the process of integrated water management.

Closing the circle: linking land use planning and water management at the local level

“…The concept of integrated management has been widely accepted in the water resources and environmental management communities (Mitchell, 1990;Viessman, 1996;Grigg, 1999;Margerum and Hooper, 2001;Braga, 2001). In the context of water management, it highlights various kinds of interactions, e.g., between surface water and groundwater, and between water resources and various human and environmental uses of those resources (Mitchell, 1990).…”

Reusing wastewater to cope with water scarcity: Economic, social and environmental considerations for decision-making

“…The decisions of the economic sector will not be water sensitive unless clear and consistent information regarding the trade-offs involved in a full value scale are made available. Once this is achieved, integration could enable each stakeholder representing a distinctive water sector to achieve its own goal/s more efficiently in economic terms, in a long-term perspective (Grigg, 1999). Cost-benefit analysis can be used as a decision-support tool to evaluate these trade-offs and the economic feasibility of the wastewater reuse projects.…”

Integrated water resources management: balancing views and improving practice

“…These are not exhaustive, but do illustrate how the concepts of IWRM can be used in representative management scenarios. First, I give references for several examples published in a 1999 paper about integrated water resources management (Grigg 1999). Next, brief US examples are presented for each element of integration.…”