Interbasin water transfer in a changing world: A new conceptual model

Abstract

Water scarcity is a global issue, affecting in excess of four billion people. Interbasin Water Transfer (IBWT) is an established method for increasing water supply by transferring excess water from one catchment to another, water-scarce catchment. The implementation of IBWT peaked in the 1980s and was accompanied by a robust academic debate of its impacts. A recent resurgence in the popularity of IBWT, and particularly the promotion of mega-scale schemes, warrants revisiting this technology. This paper provides an updated review, building on previously published work, but also incorporates learning from schemes developed since the 1980s. We examine the spatial and temporal distribution of schemes and their drivers, review the arguments for and against the implementation of IBWT schemes and examine conceptual models for assessing IBWT schemes. Our analysis suggests that IBWT is growing in popularity as a supply-side solution for water scarcity and is likely to represent a key tool for water managers into the future. However, we argue that IBWT cannot continue to be delivered through current approaches, which prioritise water-centric policies and practices at the expense of social and environmental concerns. We critically examine the Socio-Ecological Systems and Water-Energy-Food (WEF) Nexus models as new conceptual models for conceptualising and assessing IBWT. We conclude that neither model offers a comprehensive solution. Instead, we propose an enhanced WEF model (eWEF) to facilitate a more holistic assessment of how these mega-scale engineering interventions are integrated into water management strategies. The proposed model will help water managers, decision-makers, IBWT funders and communities create more sustainable IBWT schemes.

The Effectiveness of Community Participation in Urban Water Supply: A Narrative Review

“…Based on the evidence on the strengths and weaknesses of community participation, these past two decades, scientists in water management studies tried to employ a more holistic and integrated approach that combines both approaches [7,36]. To employ an inclusive development approach that relies on both a top-down approach in which the government and its agencies try to provide a centralized water supply system for all and the bottom-up approach in which the community actively participates in the development and maintenance of water supply and the government sets up policies and regulations for self-supplied water provision [37].…”

Assessment of aquifer recharge and groundwater availability in a semiarid region of Brazil in the context of an interbasin water transfer scheme

“…Particularly in arid and semiarid areas of the world, more and more populations rely almost entirely on imported water (Davies et al 1992). Despite their generally large engineering challenges and correspondingly high costs, interbasin water transfer schemes are becoming increasingly common and are increasing in ambition (Rollason et al 2021). The largest future water transfer mega-projects are located in North America, Asia, and Africa with predicted total investment exceeding US$2.7 trillion (Shumilova et al 2018).…”

“…While there are many examples of water transfers that have brought socio-economic benefits to both the recipient and donor basins, studies are not uncommon in the literature describing negative impacts on donor and transit basins, particularly on marginal communities, who have surrendered rights to land and water (Rollason et al 2021). However, the extent to which intentional discharge into transiting river systems and unintentional leakage may be augmenting water resources for communities along and down gradient of water transfer schemes has not previously been subject to research.…”

No-free-lunch-theorem: a page taken from the computational intelligence for water resources planning and management

“…The gist of this concept was to promote the idea that achieving true sustainability would not be possible without acknowledging the role of other natural resources (e.g., air, soil) and how preserving the ecosystem, mitigating the environmental impacts, and socio-economic evaluation should be incorporated into water resources management schemes (Biswas 2008). Alternatively, resorting to out-of-the-box engineering-based solutions such as interbasin water transfer (Zhuang 2016;Rollason et al 2022) or water augmentation via seawater desalination or recycling water (Crutchik and Campos 2021) are other known practical approaches to remedy the water shortage-related problems on a local scale.…”