Jan Lundqvist

Towards integrated catchment management: increasing the dialogue between scientists, policy‐makers and stakeholders

The aim of the Hydrology for the Environment, Life and Policy (HELP) project is to strengthen the role and inputs of the scientific community in the integrated catchment management process. Water resources management in the 21st century requires a radical reorientation and an effective dialogue between decision‐makers, stakeholders and the scientific water community. This paper offers a skeleton worldview as a starting point for that dialogue by bringing together key issues as identified by water resource experts from different disciplines. Experiences from all over the world demonstrate the need for multistakeholder advocacy and the importance of compromise‐building mechanisms. Water law defines the rules of the game and provides a necessary framework for policy and its execution. However, there must be adequate social acceptance and active compliance, otherwise the formal rules and administrative regulation will not be perceived as legitimate and ultimately could prove ineffective. The challenge now is to create management systems where the formal decision‐makers interact with relevant members of the scientific community, users and other stakeholders for a coordinated approach that successfully orchestrates water uses towards internal compatibility. Integrated water resources management is essential for securing a proper overview of all the activities that depend on the same resource—the precipitation over the basin—and which are internally linked by the mobility of water from the water divide to the river mouth.

Megacities and Water Management

Efficient and equitable water, wastewater and stormwater management for the megacities is becoming an increasingly complex task. When accelerating water scarcities and pollution in and around urban centres are superimposed on issues like continuing urbanization, lack of investment funds for constructing and maintaining water infrastructures, high public debts, inefficient resources allocation processes, inadequate management capacities, poor governance, inappropriate institutional frameworks and inadequate legal and regulatory regimes, water management in the megacities poses a daunting task in the future. This paper will focus on water management in its totality in megacities, including their technical, social, economic, legal, institutional and environmental dimensions through a series of case studies from different megacities of the world.

Water Management in Megacities

At a full-day seminar during the World Water Week in Stockholm, 16–20 August 2004, key features of megacities from the developing world were penetrated. According to a United Nations definition, a megacity is a city having a population of 5 million or more. Special attention was devoted to the challenges related to water provision and waste disposal and what policies have been pursued to deal with these basic and vital functions of city life. In excellent overviews, the rapid growth of megacities in the southern hemisphere during the last half century, their roles in development, implications in terms of resource pressure, environmental consequences, and management options were synthesized. Practical examples from Jakarta, Sao Paulo, Istanbul, Mexico City, Johannesburg, Dhaka, and Bangkok illustrated the breadth and depth of interactions in the water development environment.

Rules and roles in water policy and management - Need for clarification of rights and obligations

Abstract Water policy and management are currently subject to a significant change. Water users and other stakeholders are gradually playing a much more active and also constructive role. This is no substitute for government efforts. Public sector activities and regulatory arrangements are of vital importance. Traditional functions and orientation of work need, however, to be modified, and new tasks are forcing themselves on to the national, municipal, and local agendas. Interaction between government, civil society organizations, and professionals must be based on a policy where water is made everybodys business and where the various components of management, i.e., development of the resource, provision, actual use, and disposal after use, are considered. With a policy where the relations between water, people, development, and the environment are duly recognised, it becomes imperative and natural that the rules for water management are defined that allow various stakeholders to contribute to achieve water security.

Coping with water scarcity: implications of biomass strategy for communities and policies.

This article summarizes present knowledge of the vulnerability to water scarcity of semi‐arid Third World countries. Their predicament is explained in terms of four parallel modes of water scarcity, superimposed on one another, two of natural origin and two human‐induced. The authors conclude that long‐term planning within the environmental constraints imposed by water scarcity is crucial, and calls for a new awareness among high‐level experts and policy makers. Careful land and water use planning based on the water‐balance method is a key component, but depends on expanding traditional water resources assessment methods developed in the temperate zone to incorporate root zone water storage, differences in groundwater recharge, and landscape zonation in water‐producing v water‐consuming or evaporating areas.

Implications of biomass strategy for communities and policies

This article summarizes present knowledge of the vulnerability to water scarcity of semi‐arid Third World countries. Their predicament is explained in terms of four parallel modes of water scarcity, superimposed on one another, two of natural origin and two human‐induced. The authors conclude that long‐term planning within the environmental constraints imposed by water scarcity is crucial, and calls for a new awareness among high‐level experts and policy makers. Careful land and water use planning based on the water‐balance method is a key component, but depends on expanding traditional water resources assessment methods developed in the temperate zone to incorporate root zone water storage, differences in groundwater recharge, and landscape zonation in water‐producing v water‐consuming or evaporating areas.

High withdrawal ratio implies changed water policy

Abstract Shortage of water has been recognised as an important obstacle to development of various sectors of socity, primarily food production, and, to a lesser extent, industrial expansion. Lack of access to safe water for household use is also a significant drawback for human well-being. As a consequence, the effort to withdraw water from streams, lakes and from the ground, has been substantial during recent decades. From a supply augmentation point of view, the past focus on the quantititave aspects of water provision to sectors in society has, no doubt, been successful. The prevailing policy has, however, evolved with scant attention to the threat to water quality degradation which is an inevitable by-product of an intensified water resources utilisation. This is particularly apparent in dry areas where the dilution effect of natural water courses is reduced as a result of increased withdrawals. Another shortcoming of the water supply policy has been a surprising lack of concern about how water is actually being used in various sectors, what relative benefits are generated, and how water is being disposed after use. It is argued in this article that high rates of water withdrawal necessitate a change in water policy. Among other things the connections between water quantity and quality will have to be dealt with and also the allocation of water supply between incompatible and competing water uses.

A global perspective on water and the environment

Abstract At the turn to a new millennium, it is titillating to try to foresee what issues that are likely to be significant when we enter into the next century. Many of the water issues that we have been pre-occupied with in the past will, no doubt, continue to be important. But in addition, we should be prepared for new dimensions in what is now called the ‘impending water crisis’. A pro-active behaviour that would make it possible to avoid a new generation of problems is warranted as a complement to the need to re-act to and take care of old problems. As will be argued below, connections between water quantity and quality and between water and the environment have been overlooked in the past.

Water allocation, land tenure and yield in a purana village, Sri Lanka

An adequate water supply is a necessary requirement for a good paddy rice yield. This case study of a paddy tract in a village irrigation system found that the duration of water coverage explained variations in paddy rice yield for the middle and lower parts, whereas the relation between water coverage and yield was weak in the upper part of the paddy tract. In general, there was a decreasing yield with increasing distance from the tank (from 4176 to 718 kg/ha over a distance of 300 m). At the same time there were great variations in yield within each section, which could be attributed to management problems. Land fragmentation was relatively modest but the average yield for the farmer decreased when fragmentation increased.

New Challenges and Old Opportunities of Water-related Food Security

With climate change, the frequency of extreme events and periods is supposed to increase and become more pronounced. The existing approach to storage and regulation may no longer be considered sufficient to cushion against the extremes, i.e. to store and regulate excess water between periods of plenty and scarcity. Whereas water resources data are often given in terms of averages, the reality is characterized by a high degree of variability and unpredictability. Rainfall patterns typically vary over relatively short distances in a basin and over time. Seasonal variation is a major risk factor for farmers and fluctuations from one year to another also pose challenges to planners in terms of the dimensioning of structures for storage and conveyance. The short-term highly stochastic variations are often combined with semi-cyclical periods of wet and dry periods of a few years. A oneyear below-average rainfall may not be disastrous, but when several years of belowaverage rainfall occur, a drought situation with serious socioeconomic consequences has developed. The five articles that follow originate from a seminar during the World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden, in August 2009, around the issue ‘Rainfall variability is more significant than climate change?’. The aim was to elucidate the significance of rainfall variability and unpredictability and to suggest approaches to document and deal with the challenges involved.