Integrated Water Resources Management: A new approach for managing water

Welcome back! In my last blog post I discussed some of the negative impacts associated with large scale water projects, specifically dam construction whereby social and environmental factors were considered inferior to economic ones. This approach is considered to be unsustainable because these concerns were not given equal treatment and has since given rise to the concept of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM).

What is IWRM

The Global Water Partnership define IWRM as “… a process which promotes the coordinated development and management of water, land and related resources in order to maximise economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems”. This approach is a direct response to the top-down methods used previously and also addresses the issue of different sectors acting independently from one another. Principles for this approach were developed at the International Conference on Water and the Environment in Dublin, Ireland in 1992 and are referred to as the Dublin principles. They are as follows:

1. Fresh water is a finite and vulnerable resource, essential to sustain life, development and the environment.
2. Water development and management should be based on a participatory approach, involving users, planners and policy-makers at all levels.
3. Women play a central part in the provision, management and safeguarding of water.
4. Water has an economic value in all its competing uses and should be recognised as an economic good.

IWRM planning cycle

Further to this, IWRM is considered to be a process rather than a one-off project which is achieved through; developing appropriate policies strategies and legislation; setting up the institutional framework from which policies, strategies and legislation can be implemented; and setting up management tools to carry out the implementation. Additionally, implementing this approach is site specific meaning not one administrative model will work in all places and needs to be adapted to each case in order to be effective.

Implementation of IWRM is largely done by two organisations, the first being the Global Water Partnership (GWP) and the World Water Council (WWC). These two organisations were created to give more direction to achieving water related goals as previously they were divided between many different organisations such as WMO, WHO, FAO, UNESCO, UNDP, UNED and UNICEF (Savenije & Van der Zaag, 2008).

Any criticisms..?

Although the concept of IWRM seemed to be openly embraced particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, there are some criticisms to the approach. Mehta (2015) outlines some of the issues with implementing IWRM in reality and how it hasn’t always resulted in the best outcomes. Firstly, IWRM has become more focused on the managerial and governance side of the process whilst deferring probably the more critical issue facing Africa, which is increasing access to water and enhancing water resources. This does not reflect accurately the African context where poverty reduction and livelihood security is heavily correlated with developing agriculture rather than focusing on management measures (Mehta, 2015).

In addition to this, Mehta (2015) argues that IWRM has diverted attention from more serious issue such as "...land grabs, privatisation, the negative impacts of water permits and a range of institutional ambiguities that prevent water allocations to small and poor water users". IWRM tends to gloss over the political realities of the implementation to seem more appealing. The technical nature also appears to favour people with specialist knowledge on the topic, potentially excluding particular stakeholders from effectively participating. This technocratic dimension has been considered to be a form of post-democratic governance whereby experts in the field hold the most authority on the subject (Mehta 2015). Finally, the goals of integration is challenging in itself and can often lead to conflicts between different water users who have different needs for the same resource, such as water for agriculture vs energy (Biswas 2004).

To conclude…

IWRM has become extremely popular over the last few decades, particularly in Africa. It’s prominence can be attributed to ill-effects of large scale, top down managed water projects which did not appropriately consider social and environmental impacts in the decision making process. IWRM is seen to rectify this imbalance between social, economic and environmental concerns, however, has had some mixed results. The concept seems to be to vague to match the complexities surrounding political actualities and methods for implementing it have not always been appropriate for the area, particularly in Africa where there are different needs than other parts of the world. 

Thank you for reading!