Access to safe water is a worldwide problem facing three quarters of a billion people  every day. The problem of access to water is not primarily due to an overall scarcity of  water, but rather the unequal geographical and seasonal distribution of the water  resources. The key issue at stake here is, how to make water available. The new  approach presented by international institutions for improving water access is  Integrated Water Resource Management. This chapter questions this new approach  and highlights the depoliticizing implications

E Swyngedouw

F Molle

M Reisner

T Moss

T Tafesse

UNESCO

United Nations

W Blomquist

Olivier Graefe

Springer - Publisher Connector

Integrated Water Resources Management as a New Approach to Water Security

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Graefe, Olivier

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Integrated Water Resources Managementas a New Approach to Water SecurityOlivier GraefeAbstract Access to safe water is a worldwide problem facing three quarters of abillion people every day. The problem of access to water is not primarily due to anoverall scarcity of water, but rather the unequal geographical and seasonal distri-bution of the water resources. The key issue at stake here is, how to make wateravailable. The new approach presented by international institutions for improvingwater access is Integrated Water Resource Management. This chapter questions thisnew approach and highlights the depoliticizing implications.Keywords Access to water  Political ecology  Water scarcity  Water transfers Water governanceAccess to safe water is a worldwide problem facing three quarters of a billionpeople every day. In other words, one in ten people lack access to safe wateraccording to the United Nations, a number which will increase in the future. By2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute waterscarcity and two-thirds of the world population could live in regions under waterstress conditions (UN 2009, 2015). The problem of access to water is not primarilydue to an overall scarcity of water, but rather the unequal geographical and seasonaldistribution of the water resources. The key issue at stake here is, how to makewater available. Techniques to divert water to places where there is little or none orto store water for times of shortages have been developed since antiquity. TheRoman aqueducts and the Ma’rib Dam in the ancient Kingdom of Saba’ (8thcentury BC) are impressive examples of human ingenuity and engineering in orderto overcome hydrological conditions. However, the issue today is not only of atechnical or an ecological nature. Access to water for all is a question of investment,a question of ﬁnancial means and thus the capacity of the different national, regionalor local authorities to mobilize the means necessary to overcome the geographicalO. Graefe (&)Department of Geosciences, University of Fribourg, 4, Chemin Du Musée,1700 Fribourg, Switzerlande-mail: olivier.graefe@unifr.ch© The Author(s) 2016P. Jackson et al. (eds.), Eating, Drinking: Surviving,SpringerBriefs in Global Understanding, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-42468-2_543and seasonal disparities of water availability. It is thus a question of political willand of power relationships between stakeholders, the state and the people; essen-tially a question of the politics of controlling water sources like rivers and aquifers.Water Availability Is not an Ecological Issue,but a Management Problem Solved at High Socialand Ecological CostsThat water availability is not dependent on ecological conditions is particularlyobvious in regions such as Africa, Central Asia, the USA, as well as in China.Neighboring countries with similar ecological conditions in North- as well as inWest Africa have very different access rates to safe water sources. In theDemocratic Republic of Congo only three quarter of the population is providedwith safe drinking water, despite holding nearly a quarter of all renewable waterresources and represents the water richest country of the entire continent. In con-trast, in very dry countries like Egypt or Namibia, nearly 100 % of the populationhas access to safe drinking water (MDG 2015). The problems of water supply areobviously not of an ecological nature but are the outcome of the political economyspeciﬁc to these countries. The importance of the political economy to understandwater availability is also evident in the American West, where the water supply fordrinking water, irrigation, and the industry of not only California, but also of thewestern states like Nevada, Arizona, and Utah has been developed in a particularsocio-economic and political context presented in famous books like “Rivers ofEmpire” by D. Worster (1985) and “Cadillac Desert” by M. Reisner (1986). Otherfamous examples of how limited hydrological conditions are overcome on a largescale in order to enable urban, agricultural, and industrial development can be seenin the control and exploitation of the Amou-Daria and the Syr-Daria in Central Asiaor the Yangtse in China. Rivers here have been tamed, controlled, and managed inorder to exploit them in the service of the economy, the people and the state. But thecontrol and the exploitation, (i.e. the management patterns of these rivers) havecreated social and economic inequalities, sometimes even dramatic ecologicalconsequences. Of major concern is the removal of people and the loss of propertiesdue to the construction of dams. According to the World Commission on Dams,between 40 and 80 million people have been displaced worldwide since the 1940soften without recovering their livelihoods (World Commission on Dams 2000). Thedisplacement of people, as well as the consequences downstream leads to anincrease of social and economic disparities. Very few people (mostly the nationalelites) actually beneﬁt from these dams and the economic wealth created by it,while the majority of people loose their livelihoods, triggering oppositions andsometime virulent resistance. Another issue created by the construction of dams isthe unequal water share riparian states can use, despite treaties, and agreements.Successive treaties over the use of Nile water between Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan44 O. Graefef.e. have resulted in inequitable rights in favor of Egypt and thus to recurringtensions between these neighboring countries (Tafesse 2001). Finally, the approachof making more water available for drinking, irrigation, and industry has lead tosigniﬁcant ecological disasters. The depletion of water resources f.e. has signiﬁ-cantly shrunk the Tchad Lake and the Aral sea and thus led to the salinization andthe sterilization of vast areas that surround the sea. Furthermore, rivers do not carrysufﬁcient water downstream of dams leading to the disappearance of aquatic andnon-aquatic species. While new initiatives like the EU Water Framework Directivedo try to reduce the ecological impacts, many damages are still to be addressed.Because of the resistance and tensions at various scales, international institutionsadvocated a new water management approach in order to better integrate variousnational, regional, local stakeholders, as well as users from the agricultural,industrial, and drinking water sectors. The division and competition between thesesectors led to conflicts and to the depletion of the resources as the water supply hasbeen raised to solve or anticipate the conflicts between users.The new approach thus is the “Integrated Water Resource Management”, whichis closely linked to the river basin as the privileged territorial management unit.IWRM: The New Water Management ParadigmThe choice of the river basin as the geographical reference for the Integrated WaterResource Management (IWRM) has been promoted by the most prominent insti-tutions involved in the water sector [f.e. Global Water Partnership (2010);UNESCO (2009); UN (2009); World Water Council (2015), etc.]. The EU inparticular, has taken this scale as the new reference unit for the Water FrameworkDirective, which all EU member states implement. As such, it was praised in 2002at the Earth summit Rio + 10 conference in Johannesburg. Since then, the relevanceof the river basin has been promoted repeatedly in strategy papers, reports, andpolicies. River basins across national borders are subject of an increasing number ofinternational river treaties or management organizations. Famous examples includethe Danube River Protection Convention signed in 1994, the Mekong RiverCommission created in 1995 and the Nile Basin Initiative created in 1999. In total167 international cooperation conventions or treaties for river basins are in placetoday (Blanchon 2009). In particular, the Global Water Partnership is a strongadvocate of the basin approach as management unit and brings forward the keyargument for the river basin as reference scale: “Water flows according to naturalcharacteristics and does not respect administrative boundaries—therefore thequestion arises: should water be managed and management structures be deﬁnedaccording to existing administrative boundaries or according to natural boundaries,usually taken to be river basins? From a pure water resource point of view mightthere be a logic to adopting a river basin approach, or at least considering the riverbasin as the logical planning unit” (Global Water Partnership 2010: 47). Thisrhetorical question tries to establish the choice of the water divide as a boundary,Integrated Water Resources Management as a New Approach to Water Security 45because it is given by nature and therefore most relevant for ecological soundmanagement (Blomquist and Schlager 2005). Nevertheless, this choice ignores thatthe choice itself is neither natural, nor self-evident. The high complexity of today’swater management practices and the multiple connections of river basins throughwater transfers make this territorial management unit as geographical reference onlypartially appropriate.Water Management Practices: Plumbing and PumpingThe emphasis on the river basins neglects the widespread practice of water transfers,even though these practices are well known since the beginning of irrigation tech-niques. The construction of dams allows the transfers of extensive water quantities inthe Americas, but also in Asia and Africa. The most prominent example at a large scalein Africa is the Lesotho Highlands Water project in South Africa. Another example isthe transfer of water from the Kunene River into the Cuvelai basin thanks to theCalueque dam for the supply of North Namibia. Today, 120 million people worldwidedepend on water transfers for their water consumption. It is estimated that 1000 km3 ofwater will be transferred between basins every year for the next 20 years, especiallyafter the completion of projects in India and China like the South-North Water TransferProject diverting water from the Yangtse thanks to the Three Gorges Dam to theYellow river basin (Blanchon 2009; Niemann 2008; Kluge 2005). The connectivity ofrivers, water transfers, and diversions are well established and contradict the dominantconception of IWRM and the correlated scale of the river basin.Water Governance as the New PanaceaThe river basin is seen as a possibility to overcome or circumvent existingadministrative and political boundaries (Molle 2009). Using the river basin as theterritorial management unit is an attempt to impose a new and “natural” territory,which is justiﬁed and legitimized by (natural) sciences. It is an attempt to enforce anew scale for the water management and hence to bypass existing political andadministrative instances and the related power relationships. The global actors likethe Global Water Partnership, UNDP, the World Bank, and the EU try to convey inthis way the political question of resource management in a managerial and tech-nocratic frame of governance (Moss 2003). Water governance can be understood inthe framework of the debate around the meaning of governance. For several criticalauthors, the concept of governance serves as a substitute for concepts of govern-ment through the reduction of social and political features in the processes ofdecision-making. Governance hence, refers to mechanisms and to coordinatedactivities directed towards problem solving. By contrast for government and nongovernment governance is an attempt to minimize the political, e.g., debates,46 O. Graefeconflicts and politically binding and transparent decision-making processes, toreplace them by a deﬁned policy, i.e. guidelines, (bench markings, best practicesetc.) and parallel instances. The beneﬁciaries of management decisions according tocritics are not individual people any more seen as collective political subjects, butrather the population as a mass, which are the victim of external environmentalproblems. This depolitization reduces decisions concerning resource allocation topolicy deﬁnitions and a consensus oriented and procedural management beyonddemocratic representative instances (Swyngedouw 2010). From this perspective,water governance and the correlated IWRM approach resemble a take-over of thepublic water management by environmental experts without political and demo-cratic legitimization (Graefe 2013).The exclusive choice of the river basin as territorial management unit is ques-tioned in light of the increasing importance of water transfers. To privilege onespeciﬁc scale in order to control the growing interconnectivity of basins and theoverall complexity of water management seems not only naive and wrong, but isalso misleading to ﬁnd appropriate solutions to gain water security. The problemsare neither of technical nor hydrological nature but are above all political.The challenge of access to water for drinking, irrigation, and industry alldepends on the political choices of national and international authorities.Investments are necessary in order to apply existing technologies and more efﬁcientmanagement strategies reducing the water demand and consumption. It is estimatedthat 100 billion dollars per year would sufﬁce to secure water access to all,including the poor in the Global South (Blanchon 2009). It is ﬁnally a question ofnational and international understanding and solidarity, which will secure thefundamental right to safe drinking water.ReferencesBlanchon, D. (2009). Atlas mondial de l’eau. De l’eau pour tous? Autrement, Paris.Blomquist, W., & Schlager, E. (2005). Political pitfalls of integrated watershed management.Society & Natural Resources, 18(2), 101–117.Global Water Partnership. (2010). Integrated Water Resources Management (http://www.gwp.org/en/The-Challenge/What-is-IWRM/Dublin-Rio-Principles/. Access 7 January 2011).Graefe, O. (2013). The river basin as territorial water management unit. Towards post-political watermanagement. In G. Arnaud-Fassetta, E. Masson & E. Reynard (Eds.), European continentalhydrosystems under changing water policy (pp. 11–16). München: Friedrich Pfeil Verlag.Kluge, T. (2005). Kritische Betrachtung des Ansatzes “Integriertes Wasserressourcen-Management” (IWRM). In S. Neubert, W. Scheumann, A. van Edig & W. Huppert (Eds.),Integriertes Wasserressourcen-Management (IWRM). Ein Konzept in die Praxis. DeutschesInstitut für Entwicklungspolitik (pp. 31–43). Baden-Baden: Nomos.Molle, F. (2009). River-basin planning and management: The social life of a concept. Geoforum,40(3), 484–494.Moss, T. (2003). Solving problems of ‘ﬁt’ at the expense of problems of ‘interplay’? The spatialreorganisation of water management following the EU Water Framework Directive. In H.Integrated Water Resources Management as a New Approach to Water Security 47Briet, E. Engles, T. Moss, & M. Troja (Eds.), How institutions change: Perspective on sociallearning in global and local environmental concerns (pp. 85–121). Opladen: Leske + Budrich.Niemann, S., 2008. Spatial aspects of supply: Migration, water transfer and IWRM. In: D.Hummel (Ed.), Population dynamics and supply systems. A transdisciplinary approach(pp. 99–128). Frankfurt a.M.Reisner, M. (1986). Cadillac desert: The American west and its disappearing water. New York:Viking Penguin.Swyngedouw, E. (2010). Apocalypse Forever?: Post-political Populism and the spectre of climatechange. Theory, Culture & Society, 27, 213–232.Tafesse, T. (2001). The nile question: Hydropolitics, legal wrangling. Modus Vivendi andPerspectives: London, Transaction Publishers.UNESCO. (2009). IWRM guidelines at River Basin level, part 1. Principles. Paris: UnescoPublishing.United Nations. (2009). United Nations World Water Development Report 3. Water in a changingworld. Earthscan, Paris: Unesco Publishing.United Nations. (2015). Millennium Development Goals Report 2015, New York.World Commission on Dams (2000). Dams and development. A new framework fordecision-making. London and Sterling, Earthscan Publications.World Water Council. (2015). Integrated Water Resource Management: A new way forward.A Discussion Paper of the World Water Council Task Force on IWRM. http://iucn.org. Access11 May 2016.Worster, D. (1985). Rivers of empire. Water, aridity, and the growth of the American West.Oxford: Oxford University Press.Open Access This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, duplica-tion, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you giveappropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commonslicense and any changes made are indicated.The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the work’s CreativeCommons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if such material is not included inthe work’s Creative Commons license and the respective action is not permitted by statutoryregulation, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to duplicate, adapt orreproduce the material.48 O. GraefeWater resources. Water resources here include only freshwater, because saline (sea) water requirestreatment before most uses. Territory size shows the proportion of all worldwide freshwaterresources found there. Source www.worldmapper.org. Published with kind permission of ©Copyright Benjamin D. Hennig (Worldmapper Project)Water depletion. This map shows those territories that use much of their internal water resources,measured with a threshold of people using more than 10 % of renewable water resources. Eachterritory is resized based on the volume of water used beyond 10 %. Territory size shows theproportion of all water used that is more than 10 % of the renewable internal freshwaterresources of that territory. Source www.worldmapper.org. Published with kind permission of ©Copyright Benjamin D. Hennig (Worldmapper Project)Integrated Water Resources Management as a New Approach to Water Security 49

Integrated water resources management as a new approach to water security

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