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Integrated water resource management

– combining perspectives from

law, policy and science

Andrew Allan, Susan Baggett, Michael Bonell, Geoffrey Gooch, Sarah Hendry, Alistair Rieu-Clarke

and Chris Spray, Dundee Centre for Water Law, Policy and Science, University of Dundee, Scotland

ater resource management is a complex issue faced

with significant challenges, both in the United

Kingdom and abroad. In order to succeed in dealing

with these challenges policymakers, water managers and water

professionals need access to concise information and research

results that can help them make efficient and equitable deci-

sions over water. The Dundee Centre for Water Law, Policy and

Science is the UK’s only Category 2 United Nations Educational,

Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Centre. Its far-

reaching research activities encompass the links between water

governance, science and policy. The centre’s work is carried

out with partners worldwide including in Africa, Asia, Latin

America and Europe as well as in Scotland and the UK.

Key challenges

Water professionals, policymakers and managers face significant

challenges including adaption to existing legal and policy systems,

the special problems involved in water management in develop-

ing countries, transboundary water management, interconnections

between land and water, sustainability, climate change, and stake-

holder and public participation.

One of the main challenges facing water management is the inte-

gration of different sectors and different levels of management and

administration in the context of both developed and developing

countries. This integration is often termed integrated water resource

management (IWRM). Water resource management in a European

context has been considered within a framework of extensive legis-

lation in the field of environment and water since 1972. As well as

general issues around creating a level playing field for trade and

business, since the 1970s the European Union (EU) has increasingly

been concerned with environmental protection to restore environ-

ments damaged by industrial pollution, improve public health

and quality of life, ensure that the polluter pays, and contribute to

sustainable development. The challenges include water polluted by

industry and agriculture, both current and historic; increasing water

scarcity, especially in the southern states; and increasingly unpre-

dictable water events such as floods and droughts.

In order to address these problems, the EU has taken a number of

different approaches – sometimes characterized as the ‘three waves’

of EU water law – over the past 40 years. In the third wave, the EU

has been introducing a system of IWRM under its Water Framework

Directive (WFD). The WFD requires states to organize their water

management on hydrological boundaries (river basins)

even where these cross national boundaries, and to seek

cooperation with third-party states. It requires monitor-

ing and assessment of the uses to which water is put,

and an explicit recognition of the trade-offs that are

made. It also requires integrated management of inland

surface waters, groundwater and coastal waters; abstrac-

tion controls; full cost recovery for all water uses, not

just urban supply; and mandatory public consultation

on draft river basin plans. Most of these features are

common to all IWRM systems.

As well as bringing in IWRM, the WFD also has

an overall objective of ‘good ecological status’. While

IWRM is being introduced in many states following

agreement at the Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable

Development in 2002, a goal of improved ecologi-

cal water quality is an ambitious concept which not

all states would currently wish to attempt. Thus the

EU is still at the forefront of developing environment

and water law concepts worldwide. Its work is being

further developed through the ‘water blueprint’ which

will allow the continued refinement of IWRM in Europe

with greater focus on water scarcity, flood and drought,

and water efficiency.

Developing countries, on the other hand, face rather

more difficulty than developed nations in implement-

ing IWRM at the national level. IWRM is an expensive

approach to put into practice in any event, and demands

that a certain level of administrative and infrastruc-

tural capacity is in place for its operation. Despite the

differences in national physical, social and economic

environments, many developing countries face common

problems in applying an IWRM approach to improve

the management of their water resources. These are

affected by the three key (financial, infrastructural and

human) elements of water resource management, where

lack of capacity in any or all three may impede success-

ful implementation of IWRM.

The world water crisis has often been described as

one of poor governance. While inadequate governance

arrangements pervade all levels of water resources, one

of the greatest challenges – and a potential catalyst for

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