Is IWRM Ready to Cope with the Future Challenges?
Content Table
Current Challenges for IWRM
Water management has become increasingly complex over time, encompassing various environmental, economic and social dimensions. Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is for a long time considered to be able to cope with this complexity. IWRM accounts for social, economic and environmental factors and integrates surface water, groundwater and the ecosystems through which they flow. Current challenges faced in water management include the increase in uncertainties in the light of global change as well as globalisation. Along with the limited nature of scientific information and technical knowledge water management based on the concept of IWRM fails to satisfactorily deal with these problems.
The Adaptiveness of IWRM
The book ‘The adaptiveness of IWRM’ (Timmerman et al. 2008) views IWRM from various perspectives to determine the strengths and weaknesses of IWRM in view of the current complexity and uncertainty, and provides recommendations to strengthen its weaknesses. A short overview of the findings of the book is given below.
IWRM especially falls short in dealing with uncertainty and adaptive capacity of water management. Entrenched perceptions and beliefs block innovation and change, and space has to be provided for creative and out-of-the-box thinking. For instance, where IWRM considers the entire catchment area as a functional unit, policy implementation still largely focus on national aspects. Economic analysis for instance focuses on national cost-benefits, where measures in a transboundary context could appear to be much more cost-effective. There is consequently a need for better cooperation and coordination across borders.
IWRM is based on the presumption that the complex socio-ecological nature of river basin environments and the inherent uncertainties associated with their management has to be taken into account in policy development and implementation. However still additional efforts are needed relating a.o. to the elements of social vulnerability like equity and fairness, and policy sectors like spatial planning. There is an increased awareness of the necessity of including stakeholder and public participation in water management decision-making, as well as in other areas. The usefulness of citizens’ and stakeholders’ contributions for water managers may vary but citizens often posses ‘local knowledge’ or ‘ordinary knowledge’ related to their being on their land, knowledge that water managers need to make accurate decisions.
Faced with increasingly complicated and uncertain environment, there is an increasing realisation of the need to learn to manage together and participation becomes consequently intertwined with water management. Authorities must therefore develop mechanisms that incorporate participation both in terms of inputs (who participates when) as well as outputs (what is done with the results) to facilitate this water governance. However, especially in transboundary regimes where disputes over water exist and cooperation between riparian countries is not established or where cooperation is built on power or interests, a flexible and adaptive capacity of the water management regime and building and sustaining of trust and social capital to support a collaborative governance system is not easily established. Also an integrated perspective on water information management is needed that considers information as pervasive, supporting all the phases of the decision process. Concluding, to be able to face the future challenges and become more adaptive, IWRM should adopt to creating a learning environment that enables close interaction between policy and science as well as between scientific disciplines.
Resources
The material in this article was taken from the recently published book entitled, The Adaptiveness of IWRM; Analysing European IWRM Research. It is the first book to consider the advances in IWRM in view of expected future developments with the aim to identify the adaptiveness of IWRM. The book provides new insights and knowledge on the challenges and solutions that current water management faces in a situation of complexity and uncertainty.
