Integrated water resources management advocates a coordinated approach for managing water resources in a way that balances social and economic needs with concern for the environment. While potentially useful, integrated water management is also controversial. Supporters believe that the multi-dimensional nature of water can only be understood and m

Integrated water resources management advocates a coordinated approach for managing water resources in a way that balances social and economic needs with concern for the environment. While potentially useful, integrated water management is also controversial. Supporters believe that the multi-dimensional nature of water can only be understood and managed from a holistic perspective, while critics often argue that integrated water management lacks suffi ciently well-defi ned rules for its practical implementation. This book, written by academics, users and practitioners, provides a down-to-earth approach to the ideal of integrated water resources management, drawing from conceptual frameworks and real-life practice to identify the key aspects that are yet to be resolved. As such, it examines the role of water accounting, food trade, environmental externalities and intangible values as key aspects whose consideration may help the water management community move forward. Overall, integrated water resources management is perceived to be a useful utopia, whose value lies more in the steps that need to be taken to make it a reality than in achieving its ever-elusive end goal.

Scholarly interest in water ethics is increasing, motivated by the urgency of climate change, water scarcity, privatization and conflicts over water resources. Water ethics can provide both conceptual perspectives and practical methodologies for identifying outcomes which are environmentally sustainable and socially just. This book assesses the implications of ongoing research in framing a new discipline of water ethics in practice. Contributions consider the difficult ethical and epistemological questions of water ethics in a global context, as well as offering local, empirical perspectives. Case study chapters focus on a range of countries including Canada, China, Germany, India, South Africa and the USA. The respective insights are brought together in the final section concerning the practical project of a universal water ethics charter, alongside theoretical questions about the legitimacy of a global water ethics. Overall the book provides a stimulating examination of water ethics in theory and practice, relevant to academics and professionals in the fields of water resource management and governance, environmental ethics, geography, law and political science.

This book reviews the concept, contemporary research efforts and the implementation of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). The IWRM concept was established as an international guiding water management paradigm in the early 1990ies and has become a vital approach to solving the problems associated with the topic of water. The book summarizes fourteen comprehensive IWRM research projects with worldwide coverage and analyses their motivations, settings, approaches and implementation of results. Aiming to be an up-to-date interdisciplinary scientific reference, this book provides a comprehensive theoretical and empirical analysis of contemporary IWRM research, examples of science based implementations and a synthesis of the lessons learnt. It concludes with some major future challenges, the solving of which will further strengthen the IWRM concept.

The main focus of this book is sustainable management of water resources in a changing climate. The book also addresses the question of how to define and measure the sustainability of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). The sustainability of IWRM is an important issue when planning and/or developing policies that consider the impact of climate change, water governance and ecohydrology in the context of a more holistic approach to ensure sustainable management of water resources. Sustainable IWRM is more about processes, and relatively little systematic or rigorous work has been done to articulate what components are the most essential to ensure the ongoing sustainability of IWRM efforts. The chapters cover topics including global prospective of IWRM; allocation of environmental flows in IWRM; echohydrology, water resources and environmental sustainability; climate change and IWRM; IWRM and water governance including social, economic, public health and cultural aspects; climate change resiliency actions related to water resources management sustainability and tools in support of sustainability for IWRM. This book will be of interest to researchers, practitioners, water resources mangers, policy and decision makers, donors, international institutions, governmental and non-governmental organizations, educators, as well as graduate and undergraduate students. It is a useful reference for Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), ecohydrology, climate change impact and adaptations, water governance, environmental flows, geographic information system and modeling tools, water and energy nexus and related topics.

Groundwater allocation determines who is able to use groundwater resources, how, when and where. It directly affects the value (economic, ecological, socio-cultural) that individuals and society obtain from groundwater, today and in the future.

The book provides insights into the particular nature of water-related challenges in metropolitan regions of the Global South and the “scalar mismatches” that prevent their sustainable and inclusive development. It argues for the adoption of a metropolitan water governance approach to assess these challenges, including the drivers and institutions that shape these, and the policy instruments at river basin and urban scales that aim to address these. The cases of Mexico City and São Paulo, as two mega-cities with a wide ranging of water-related challenges, present lessons to other fast growing urban agglomerations on the variety of possible responses as well as obstacles to their effectiveness that receive little attention.