SUSTAINABILITY CHALLENGES IN WATER MANAGEMENT

Abstract

• Water is a unique and finite resource that all users (humans, agriculture, and the environment) need to survive. However, supply is both diminishing and highly uncertain in the future due to climate change, driving intense competition between users. This situation demands we urgently teach and adopt sustainable water management for the benefit of all. • Successful sustainable water management depends on careful measurement, good quality information, high levels of caution, and flexible arrangements that are challenging to design and implement. However, most of us are also unwilling to give our water up. • Innovative sharing and reallocation of water resources offer a modern basis for teaching sustainable outcomes condensed to supply and demand concepts. Yet these concepts also face problems, which we discuss here for structuring effective teaching. • Sustainable water management is a shared problem requiring shared adjustment, which has proven challenging to achieve in the past. However, the current pressures on inequitable supply, increasingly variable supply, and uncertainty are increasing the urgency for reform