Is normative integrated water resources management implementable? Charting a practical course with lessons from Southern Africa
Introduction
With all respect to the Global Water Partnership, Waternet, the World Bank, and most of the water management ‘establishment,’ it is time to abandon Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) as a guide for implementation. IWRM has become a mantra or religious text, a set of unquestioned assumptions and assertions about how water resources should be developed and managed. It was useful for awhile, because of the incredible damage caused by single-minded single-sector water development in the past—Un-integrated Water Resources Management (UWRM) if you will: building dams and irrigation schemes with no reference to downstream social and ecological impacts for example. But not only has IWRM outlived its usefulness as a guide to action, clinging to its principles and debating them in forums like the present one may now be retarding progress toward achieving poverty reduction goals, especially in under-developed sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). As a guide to research and scientific understanding, IWRM represents a systems theory approach and therefore remains valid. But we will not be throwing the entire baby out with the bath water if we throw out IWRM as the biblical guide to investment and action.
Clearly, this is a provocative position. In the following sections I provide arguments and some data to support the premise that a more practical paradigm is needed as a guide to action. The next section briefly and selectively reviews some of the IWRM literature, both pro and con. The third section proposes an action-oriented realistic agenda to break what seems to be a bottleneck caused by over-emphasis on the ‘integrated’ side of water resources management. The paper concludes with a plea for self-critical openness in seeking a way forward.
Section snippets
The IWRM mountain of literature
Some may think that the concept of IWRM is new and modern. This is not entirely the case, as the historical overview by Molle (2006) demonstrates. He shows that taking the river basin as a development or management unit can be traced to ancient times, in both Asia and Europe. Upstream-downstream interconnectedness for example has been recognized as significant for centuries. Molle traces the development of modern ideas of river basin development and management to the early nineteenth century,
Towards practical water development and management
The hydrological, ecological, social, economic, and political interdependencies within river basins, and the complexities of these dependencies, are well established if not always well-understood (Molle et al., 2007). As water resources are developed, these interdependencies become ever more salient and fraught with potential conflict; whereas at earlier stages of river basin development, apparent “win-win” solutions are possible, these become increasingly unlikely at later stages, requiring
Conclusion
This paper has argued for discarding IWRM as a religious text or blueprint of objectives to be achieved simultaneously and harmoniously. But it has not advocated abandoning IWRM. IWRM continues to be shorthand for a valid model emphasizing the systematic interconnectedness within river basins. However, water managers need to understand more clearly both that there are additional but no less critical connections beyond the basin, and that the connections are not only hydrological and ecological
Acknowledgements
I thank the participants at the Waternet/WARFSA Symposium in November 2007, including Professor Pieter van der Zaag, for their positive comments on the paper. I am also grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions.
References (19)
- et al.
IWRM and Poverty Reduction in Malawi: A Socio-economic Analysis
Physics and Chemistry of the Earth
(2005) Political challenges to implementing IWRM in Southern Africa
Physics and Chemistry of the Earth
(2005)Integrated Water Resources Management: Relevantg Concept or Irrelevan Buzzword: A Capacity Building and Research Agenda for Southern Africa
Physics and Chemistry of the Earth
(2005)IWRM/IWRAM: A New Sanctioned Discourse? SOAS Water Issues Study Group Occasional Paper 50
(2003)Integrated Water Resources Management: A Reassessment
Water International
(2004)- Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF). 2004. Olifants Water Management Area: Internal Strategic Perspective....
- Global Water Partnership (GWP). (2000). Integrated Water Resources Management. GWP Technical Committee Background Paper...
- Jonker, L. 2006. Integrated Water Resources Management: The Theory-praxis-nexus. Paper presented at the 7th WaterNet /...
- Lankford, B., D. J. Merrey, J. Cour, and N. Hepworth. 2007. From Integrated to Expedient: An Adaptive Framework for...
Cited by (60)
Ecosystem-Based Adaptation: Approaches to Sustainable Management of Aquatic Resources
2022, Ecosystem-Based Adaptation: Approaches to Sustainable Management of Aquatic ResourcesUnderstanding and managing the food-energy-water nexus – opportunities for water resources research
2018, Advances in Water ResourcesThe water-energy-food nexus: Is the increasing attention warranted, from either a research or policy perspective?
2017, Environmental Science and PolicyDecentralised water governance in Zimbabwe: Disorder within order
2016, Water Resources and Rural DevelopmentCitation Excerpt :In September 2005 the Anti-Corruption Commission of Zimbabwe (ACCZ) was established to try to end the increase in corruption. The water policy reforms in Zimbabwe have been influenced by a wave of water reforms that have been sweeping across the Southern African region (Merrey, 2008; Swatuk, 2002). These reforms are largely premised on the 1992 Dublin Principles of Water (Gleick, 2002; Mapedza and Geheb, 2010), whose core elements are as follows:
Community perceptions, participation, and satisfaction with existing Water Resource Management Plans: a case study of a polluted water system in South Africa
2023, Aqua Water Infrastructure, Ecosystems and Society