Water Transfer, A Solution for Water Shortage?

Khatebasreh, Masoumeh; Gholami, Maryam

doi:10.18502/jehsd.v4i2.1051

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…The potential to enhance the socio-economic development of water-stressed areas is the most cited argument for implementing IBWT (Khatebasreh and Gholami, 2019). Specifically, projects have developed local economies in recipient basins (Rogers et al, 2020), enhanced regional equality, allocating water for better-value use and strengthening co-operation between donor and recipient areas (Gichuki and McCornick, 2008), whilst schemes are argued to enhance regional and basin-scale sustainability (Xu et al, 2020).…”

Section: Understanding Ibwtmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Rollason

Sinha

Bracken

2021

Progress in Physical Geography: Earth and Environment

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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.

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Section: Understanding Ibwtmentioning

confidence: 99%