Boundaries as tools for sustainable water management (original) (raw)
Related papers
Share : managing water across boundaries
2008
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Integrated water resource management (IWRM) is widely accepted and has been implemented though international, national and regional water management guidelines. Nonetheless , concrete implementation of IWRM gives rise to new questions for policy analysis. Scholars interested in water regulation, the design of effective and efficient policy instruments , and structures of participative and multi-level policy processes face challenges regarding research design, concepts and empirical approaches. This special issue integrates research about regional, national and transboundary policy perspectives on water management in seven countries, four continents and two transnational water bodies. From the six articles presented in this special issue, we learn more about how to define integration, to think about borders and scales and to theoretically and empirically study collaborative management in water policy analysis.
Environmental Policy and Governance, 2017
Integrated water resources management (IWRM) has long been advocated in academia and politics but appears difficult to pursue in practice. Defenders of IWRM call for governance institutions adapted to hydrological boundaries but these would be at odds with existing administrative ones. In this paper, we investigate how coordination platforms at sub-basin scale can contribute to IWRM. Most IWRM literature focuses on the catchment scale. It is however acknowledged by several authors that coordination is also needed at a lower level. Through document analysis and semi-structured interviews, a comparison is made of the Flemish sub-basin boards and the Walloon river contracts, two types of coordination platforms in different regions of Belgium. Belonging to the same federal state, they form valuable cases to compare divergent systems rooted in a similar administrative setting. A number of key factors appears to contribute to the effectiveness of the coordination platforms, as it is perceived by their stakeholders. These factors are a clear but flexible legislative framework, (financial) support of a higher government rather than command-and-control steering, the personal commitment of their coordinators, an independent status of their staff, a sense of urgency and a good connection with civil society and wider public.
Water companies and river environments: The external costs of water abstraction
Utilities Policy, 1998
This paper assesses the external costs of water abstraction from rivers, and underlying aquifers, by water companies. It uses contingent valuation and stated preference methods to estimate the magnitude of benefits to anglers and the general public from increasing river flows to an environmentally acceptable flow regime from the current low flow situation caused by over-abstraction. The paper also assesses whether these benefits exceed the costs to water companies of replacing the water from elsewhere plus the additional cost to the Environment Agency of engaging in other engineering operations to alleviate low flows in rivers in southwest England. Whether low flows should be alleviated in any low flow river in benefit-cost terms, is revealed to be mainly dependent upon costs rather than variations in benefits to anglers and the general public between rivers.
1 Embedding economic drivers in participative water management
2016
Country location influences the institutional surroundings of the infrastructures related to water systems. In the Netherlands, water management has its own particularities. Temporarily inflow of affluent water from the rivers or the sea resulted in a highly developed institutional setting based on flood risk prevention. From an economic perspective, managing water is about allocating and using water in an effective and efficient way. This article deals with the coordination problem related to multi functionality of water systems. ‘Allocation efficiency ’ is the issue. The diversity of water systems such as rivers, lakes, ditches or groundwater is multifunctional and within the systems, demand is competing. Decision makers should be aware of the different aspects of infrastructures that interfere with water systems. Further on in the decision-making, these aspects need to be valued. This may be done explicitly (for example in a formal cost-benefit analysis) or implicitly. Implicit v...
A framework to integrate formal and informal water rights in river basin management
The paper explores a water management framework for bringing together formal water permits and informal water agreements to effect intra-and inter-sectoral water allocation. This framework is based on setting and modifying seasonally applied volumetric and proportional caps for managing irrigation abstractions and the sharing of water between users and sectors in river basins. The volumetric cap, which establishes the upper ceiling of irrigation abstractions in the wet season, relates to formal water permits and maximum intake capacities. The proportional cap, which functions in the dry season beneath the volumetric ceiling, builds on customary water negotiations and on the design and adjustment of intakes by users. The analysis is informed by conditions found in the Great Ruaha River Basin, Southern Tanzania, where rivers sequentially provide water for irrigation, a wetland, the Ruaha National Park, and for electricity generation. A working example of the framework helps explain its effect on inter-sectoral re-allocation. .
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2005
is the devolution of water management and regulation to regional authorities that take the form of Water Services Authorities and Catchment Management Agencies. Our argument is that local government has a very narrow focus of responsibility within WRM-that is, a focus specifically on water supply-and that this is not planned within the WRM framework of the catchment. We suggest that in a new policy environment that talks to sustainability planning this represents a major oversight. Moreover, this situation is exacerbated by the different boundaries within which WRM and water supply operate. We illustrate this argument through examining the situation in the Sand River catchment and the Bohlabela Municipal District and highlights key issues that should be considered in charting a way forward.