Towards understanding governance for sustainable urban water management

Meene, Susan Joy Van de; Brown, Rebekah Ruth; Farrelly, Megan

doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2011.04.003

Cited by 175 publications

(127 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…While traditional water-supply schemes were mainly comprised of large, centralised infrastructure, emerging approaches are characterised by integration of water infrastructure with biophysical systems, taking into consideration the social, economic, environmental and political factors that determine provision of water for ecological and human uses and a long-term sustainability perspective (see Brown and Keath 2008 ;Van de Meene et al 2011 ). We argue that this more comprehensive approach to water governance is more easily attained in the context of a developmental state.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Free-Market Economics and Developmental Statism as Political Paradigms: Implications for Water Governance Theory and Practice in Developing Countries

Chikozho

Mapedza²

2016

Freshwater Governance for the 21st Century

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Key actors in various developing countries are often confronted by diffi cult choices when it comes to the selection and deployment of appropriate water governance regimes taking into account national socio-economic and political realities. Indeed, scholars and practitioners alike continue to grapple with the need to create the optimum water-supply and allocation decision-making space applicable to specifi c developing countries. This chapter uses case studies to explore the utility of free-market economics and developmental statism as two major paradigms that have emerged in the face of enduring questions about how best to govern watersupply systems in developing countries. The chapter establishes that increasing pressure on available natural resources may have already rendered obsolete some of the water-supply systems and governance regimes that have served human societies very well for many decades. It is also clear that national water-supply governance paradigms tend to change in tandem with emerging national development theoretical frameworks and priorities. Each nation or local government feels compelled to adopt a particular framework to fulfi l its needs taking into account the broader global water policy context. While many developing countries have adopted water policy prescriptions from the international arena, national and local socio-economic and political realities ultimately determine what works and what does not work on the ground. Local realities have also helped to inform how nation-states domesticate global concepts for their local purposes. Thus, the choice between free-market approaches and developmental state-oriented approaches is never simple, and hybrid models are often deployed. Indeed, the majority of countries and municipalities rely on a mix of market economics and developmental statism to make their water governance regimes more realistic and workable on the ground.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Free-Market Economics and Developmental Statism as Political Paradigms: Implications for Water Governance Theory and Practice in Developing Countries

Chikozho

Mapedza²

2016

Freshwater Governance for the 21st Century

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“…Furthermore, it is often inflexible, energy intensive and tends to focus on short-term solutions disregarding long-term cost-effectiveness or sustainability (Philip et al 2011). Despite significant progression in technical solutions such as advancements in water, wastewater and stormwater treatment technologies, the transition from conventional to more sustainable Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is slow (Van de Meene et al 2011).…”

Section: The Challenges Of Urban Water Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although there is a general recognition of the urban water challenges and water governance gaps, attempts to develop tools to overcome these barriers by stimulating the implementation of IWRM are often lacking (Van de Meene et al 2011;Brown and Farrelly 2009). Because a significant proportion of IWRM practices are locally implemented, local decision-making processes provide important pathways for long-term planning (Floyd et al 2014;Brown and Farrelly 2009).…”

Section: Promoting a Transition Towards Sustainable Iwrmmentioning

confidence: 99%

Application of the Improved City Blueprint Framework in 45 Municipalities and Regions

Koop

Leeuwen

2015

Water Resour Manage

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Rapid urbanization, water pollution, climate change and inadequate maintenance of water and wastewater infrastructures in cities may lead to flooding, water scarcity, adverse health effects, and rehabilitation costs that may overwhelm the resilience of cities. Furthermore, Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is hindered by water governance gaps. We have analyzed IWRM in 45 municipalities and regions divided over 27 countries using the improved City Blueprint® Framework (CBF). The CBF incorporates solely performance-oriented indicators that more accurately measure the city's own efforts and performances to improve its IWRM. We have also analyzed the trends and pressures (on which the city's IWRM has a negligible influence). The Trends and Pressure Framework (TPF) creates awareness of the most stressing topics that either hamper or, on the contrary, pose opportunity windows for IWRM. The improved Blue City Index (BCI*) and the Trends and Pressures Index (TPI; the arithmetic mean of all TPF indicators) have been compared with other city descriptors. The BCI* and TPI showed a significant and negative Pearson correlation (r=−0.83). This implies that cities with pressing needs to improve their IWRM also face the highest environmental, financial and/or social limitations. The BCI* and TPI correlate significantly with the ND-GAIN climate readiness index (r=0.86; r=−0.94), the environmental awareness index (r=0.85; r=−0.85), the European green city index (r=0.86; r=−0.85) and various World Bank governance indicators. Based on a hierarchical clustering of the 45 municipalities and regions, 5 different levels of sustainability of urban IWRM could be distinguished, i.e., (1) cities lacking basic water services, (2) wasteful cities, (3) water efficient cities, (4) resource efficient and adaptive cities, and (5) water wise cities. This categorization, as well as the CBF and TPF are heuristic approaches to speed up the transition towards water wise cities.

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“…Environmental management is often hampered by a limited understanding of the temporal and spatial variability of pollution levels, the sources of contamination and the processes within systems that affect the recovery of a system (Kooistra et al, 2001;Scheffer et al, 2001;Lahr and Kooistra, 2010). In addition, the traditional hierarchical water management practices that are still in use around the world have been criticized as being ineffective and leaving little scope for adaptation to changes (Pahl-Wostl, 2007;van de Meene et al, 2011). The current trend to decentralize such urban water management might allow for more local management of water resources, indicating the need for improving our understanding of the variability of pollution levels in a range of urban waterbodies with greater emphasis on local processes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The blue mussel, Mytilus edulis, is a common sessile bivalve in estuarine and marine environments that is able to adapt to a wide range of environmental conditions, such as food concentration, temperature, and salinity (e.g. Thompson and Bayne, 1974;Widdows et al, 1979;Zandee et al, 1980;Almadavillela, 1984), and that shows low sensitivity to anthropogenic pressures (Mainwaring et al, 2014). As such, this species is able to thrive at different pollution levels and has therefore been used as an indicator species for pollution (Phillips, 1976) and as a model organism for physiological, genetic, and toxicological studies (Luedeking and Koehler, 2004) for some time.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can mussels be used as sentinel organisms for characterization of pollution in urban water systems?

Reichwaldt¹,

Ghadouani²

2016

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. Urbanization strongly impacts aquatic ecosystems by decreasing water quality and altering water cycles. Today, much effort is put towards the restoration and conservation of urban waterbodies to enhance ecosystem service provision, leading to liveable and sustainable cities. To enable a sustainable management of waterbodies, the quantification of the temporal and spatial variability of pollution levels and biogeochemical processes is essential. Stable isotopes have widely been used to identify sources of pollution in ecosystems. For example, increased nitrogen levels in waterbodies are often accompanied with a higher nitrogen stable isotope signature (δ 15 N), which can then be detected in higher trophic levels such as mussels. The main aim of this study was to assess the suitability of nitrogen stable isotopes as measured in mussels (Mytilus edulis), as an indicator able to resolve spatial and temporal variability of nitrogen pollution in an urban, tidally influenced estuary (Swan River estuary in Western Australia). Nitrogen concentrations were generally low and nitrogen stable isotope values of nitrate throughout the estuary were well within natural values of uncontaminated groundwater, organic nitrate from soils, or marinederived sources, indicating groundwater inflow rather than pollution by human activity was responsible for differences between sites. The δ 15 N signature in mussels was very stable over time within each site which indicated that mussels can be used as time-integrated sentinel organisms in urban systems. In addition, our study shows that the nature of the relationship between δ 15 N in the mussels and the nitrate in the water can provide insights into site-specific biogeochemical transformation of nutrients. We suggest that mussels and other sentinel organisms can become a robust tool for the detection and characterization of the dynamics of a number of emerging anthropogenic pollutants of concern in urban water systems.

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Towards understanding governance for sustainable urban water management

Cited by 175 publications

References 50 publications

Free-Market Economics and Developmental Statism as Political Paradigms: Implications for Water Governance Theory and Practice in Developing Countries

Free-Market Economics and Developmental Statism as Political Paradigms: Implications for Water Governance Theory and Practice in Developing Countries

Application of the Improved City Blueprint Framework in 45 Municipalities and Regions

Can mussels be used as sentinel organisms for characterization of pollution in urban water systems?

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