Water Resource Management: our essential guide to water resource management objectives, policy & strategies

Table of contents

1. What is water resource management?
2. Objectives of water resource management
3. Water resource management policy
4. Hydrology and water resources management
5. Water resource management strategies: 3 case studies
6. Aquaculture and water resource management

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Our essential guide to Water Resource Management. Climate change and human activity mean we are facing a challenging task in an unpredictable environment.

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Today's water management differs significantly from the past, presenting a more formidable challenge in an increasingly unpredictable environment. Private and public stakeholders must collaborate to collectively manage the water cycle. Water resources management facilitates effective oversight of water resources across uses, disciplines, and boundaries. The upcoming article covers everything about water resources management, including its meaning, objectives, policy drafting, and more.

What is water resource management?

Water Resources Management (WRM): Where teamwork makes the dream work IWA

The UN defines Water Resources Management (WRM) and Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) as empirical concepts derived from practitioners' on-the-ground experience. While elements of the concept have existed since the 1977 global water conference in Mar del Plata, it gained extensive attention and discussion after Agenda 21 and the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Rio in 1992.

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The IWRM principles adopted at the International Conference on Water and the Environment in Dublin, Ireland, in 1992, are known as the Dublin Principles.

These principles were later summarized by GWP:

“Integrated water resources management is based on the equitable and efficient management and sustainable use of water and recognises that water is an integral part of the ecosystem, a natural resource, and a social and economic good, whose quantity and quality determine the nature of its utilisation.”

Meanwhile the World Bank defines WRM as the “process of planning, developing, and managing water resources, in terms of both water quantity and quality, across all water uses”. It includes the institutions, infrastructure, incentives, and information systems that support and guide water management.

Water resources management, as highlighted by the World Bank, aims to optimize the advantages of water by guaranteeing an ample supply of quality water. This is essential for various purposes such as drinking water and sanitation services, food production, energy generation, inland water transport, and water-based recreation. Simultaneously, it endeavours to support the health of water-dependent ecosystems and safeguard the aesthetic and spiritual values associated with lakes, rivers, and estuaries.

Water resource management also entails managing water-related risks, including floods, drought, and contamination. The complexity of relationships between water and households, economies, and ecosystems, requires integrated management that accounts for the synergies and tradeoffs of water's great number of uses and values.

One of the goals of water resource management is water security. It is not possible to ‘predict and plan’ a single path to water security for rapidly growing and urbanizing global populations. This is due to climatic and non-climatic uncertainties. To help strengthen water security, there is a need to build capacity, adaptability and resilience for the future planning and management of water resources.

According to the World Bank, achieving water security in the context of growing water scarcity, greater unpredictability, degrading water quality and aquatic ecosystems, and more frequent droughts and floods, will require a more integrated and longer-term approach to water management. This is in essence what water resource management is about: bringing together multiple organisations, across different disciplines, to plan for future water usage holistically.

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Objectives of water resource management

Water resource management objectives can vary depending on the region, current water conditions, and policy implementations. Common goals include promoting environmentally sustainable, economically efficient, and equitably allocated use of water resources. Additionally, objectives often aim to enhance benefits and mitigate risks associated with existing hydraulic infrastructure.

In these projects, a consistent objective is to integrate the policy approach into broader sectoral policies across the country, involving the development of social, technical, and administrative water resource management tools.

The Global Water Partnership (GWP) emphasizes an Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) approach based on three pillars:

• Establishing an enabling environment with suitable policies, strategies, and legislation for sustainable water resources development and management.
• Putting in place the institutional framework to implement these policies, strategies, and legislation.
• Establishing the necessary management instruments for these institutions to effectively carry out their responsibilities.

Water resource management policy

When it comes to drafting water resource management policy, it's important to have a clear understanding of what policy is and is not. Not to be confused with implementing strategies, policy is a set of decisions, made at the highest political level in a country following dialogue and consultation. The result will then shape and determine how things will be done in any given sector.

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Within water resource management, a key component is not only the policy, but a process or plan on how to implement such a policy. Furthermore, policy should not be confused with legislation. After a policy has been adopted, legislation needs to be examined to see where amendments and changes are needed.

According to the OECD, water outcomes are often influenced by policies outside the water domain. As a result, increasing unity between water policies and other sectoral policies is a key component of an integrated approach to water resources management.

Furthermore, there is no one size fits all approach, nor one correct administrative model.

The GWP said: “The art of IWRM lies in selecting, adjusting, and applying the right mix of tools for a given situation. Agreeing on milestones and timeframes is critical for success. The implementation may take place on a step-by-step basis, in terms of geographical scope and the sequence and timing of reforms. Scope, timing, and content of measures can be adjusted according to experience. In developing a strategy and framework for change, it is important to recognize that the process of change is unlikely to be rapid.”

For policy-making and planning, in order to obtain an integrated approach it’s important that water development and management takes into account the various uses of water and the range of people’s water needs, including:

• Stakeholders are given a voice in water planning and management, with particular attention to securing the involvement of women and the poor;
• Policies and priorities consider water resources implications, including the two-way relationship between macroeconomic policies and water development, management, and use;
• Water-related decisions made at local and basin levels are along the lines of, or at least do not conflict with, the achievement of broader national objectives; and
• Water planning and strategies are incorporated into broader social, economic, and environmental goals.

GWP added: “Putting sustainable and integrated management of water resources into practice must be anchored at all levels with the highest political commitment.”

Hydrology and water resources management

Hydrology is the study of the global water cycle and the physical, chemical, and biological processes involved in the different reservoirs and fluxes of water within this cycle. In general, hydrologists focus on terrestrial water, while recognizing that the global hydrological cycle includes exchanges of water between the land surface, ocean, atmosphere, and subsurface.

 

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Meanwhile, water in the oceans and atmosphere is mainly the concern of oceanographers and meteorologists. Many hydrologists work at the interface between land surface water and the atmosphere, studying precipitation and evapotranspiration processes in the field of hydrometeorology.

Water resource management, as outlined by S.J. Marshall in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences, encompasses various hydrological disciplines, addressing the global water cycle, surface and groundwater, water chemistry, pollution, and aquatic biology.

Post-treatment, water supplies cater to diverse needs in industrial, municipal, agricultural, and ecological sectors. The intricate balancing act involves stakeholders, water policy, legal experts, and hydrologists who contribute to complex deliberations and negotiations. Applied hydrology plays a central role in engineering major waterworks, shaping civilization's water distribution systems from ancient Babylon to modern hydroelectric dams, reservoirs, and treatment facilities.

These tools aid governments in managing water resources to meet societal and ecological needs. Marshall emphasizes water resource management's global challenges, including competition for limited resources, regional disparities, growing water demand, aquifer depletion, and climate-change-induced stress. Addressing these challenges requires innovative and sustainable approaches, fostering international cooperation in the coming decades.

Water resource management strategies: 3 case studies

To help understand what can be achieved with effective water resource management strategies, it’s important to reference case studies where programmes have been implemented. Below are three case studies ranging in scale and ambition:

1. Water utility level: 25 years and beyond at United Utilities

UK water utilities are required to submit statutory a Water Resources Management Plan (WRMP) every five years to set out its intended approach for at least the next 25 years.

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The UK water utility documented its revised draft Water Resources Management Plan 2019 (rdWRMP19), which was developed following consultation on a draft Water Resources Management Plan, held in spring 2018. The plan defines a strategy to achieve a long-term, best value and sustainable plan for water supplies in the North West to ensure adequate supply to meet demand over the 25 years from 2020 to 2045.

Within the document, UU proposed leakage reduction activities, with a target of achieving a 15% reduction by 2025 and just over 40% reduction by 2045. A significant focus of the plan is drought resilience, with the utility claiming to have tested its system against droughts more severe or extreme than historically experienced. They assert having a resilient system capable of withstanding at least a 1 in 200-year event with a 0.5% annual risk.

2. Regional level: Integrated Water Resources Management in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia

In the countries of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, competition for water resources had been intensifying. This competition was driven by increasing demands from agriculture, energy producers, industry, and cities. The pressing need was to ensure that these competing demands were met through a robust policy framework grounded in internationally recognized principles of integrated water resources management (IWRM).

After concerted efforts, there is evidence that the region was increasingly applying the principles of IWRM. This involved significant steps such as the revision of water codes, the establishment of river basin councils, and the development of river basin management plans. Additionally, there was a growing reliance on economic instruments to manage water demand and cover the costs of water services.

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City-state level: A sustainable approach to water resource management in Singapore

An island city-state off southern Malaysia, Singapore is a single water agency, known as PUB. The water company manages the complete water cycle, from collecting, treating and supplying drinking water, to the collection and treatment of used water and turning it into NEWater.

Singapore set out its approach to water resource management using a ‘3 P’3 approach in parallel with its ‘Four National Taps’ development: local catchment water, imported water, NEWater and desalinated water.

The city-state now has a diversified water system: multiple desalination plants in operation, together with water reclamation, recently outlining increased treatment capacity at the Jurong Water Reclamation Plant and the Changi Water Reclamation Plant.

Aquaculture and water resource management

Aquaculture is defined as the breeding, rearing and harvesting of fish, shellfish, plants, algae and other organisms in all types of water. While this may seem distant from the water supply for consumption, agriculture and industry, it can be linked via water resource management.

A wide range of organisms are supported by Aquatic ecosystems, including insects, fish, invertebrates and microorganisms. Tech biodiversity of aquatic systems is a major concern in much water conservation and restoration projects.

Understanding trophic systems and their health as a function of environmental conditions, including water turbidity and temperature, is the responsibility of some hydrologists.

Water plays an important role in both agriculture and aquaculture, as great quantities of water are used in both processes. As a result, water used in both agriculture and aquaculture has to be of sufficient quality so as not to be damaging to human health.

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Aquaponics utilizes wastewater from facilities raising fish or marine animals to provide nutrients for soil-less plant growth, a method known as hydroponics. The plants purify the water, which is then returned to the marine animals.

A notable example is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Sea Grant Program, supporting the world's larg

largest aquaponics operation in a 123,000 sq-ft Wisconsin greenhouse. There, various greens are cultivated using water piped from a neighbouring facility raising salmon and rainbow trout. The plants filter out harmful ammonia, and the purified water is recirculated to the fish-farming facility.

 

^{Image credit: Wisconsin State Farmer}   

 

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