Key Concepts in Water Resource Management

A Review and Critical Evaluation

Jonathan Lautze

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781134656417
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Environmental Management
• Index: Technology & Engineering

The vocabulary and discourse of water resource management have expanded vastly in recent years to include an array of new concepts and terminology, such as water security, water productivity, virtual water and water governance. While the new conceptual lenses may generate insights that improve responses to the world's water challenges, their practical use is often encumbered by ambiguity and confusion.

This book applies critical scrutiny to a prominent set of new but widely used terms, in order to clarify their meanings and improve the basis on which we identify and tackle the world's water challenges. More specifically, the book takes stock of what several of the more prominent new terms mean, reviews variation in interpretation, explores how they are measured, and discusses their respective added value. It makes many implicit differences between terms explicit and aids understanding and use of these terms by both students and professionals. At the same time, it does not ignore the legitimately contested nature of some concepts. Further, the book enables greater precision on the interpretational options for the various terms, and for the value that they add to water policy and its implementation.

1 Introduction

Jonathan Lautze

1.1 Background

The water world has become saturated with new concepts such as water governance, water security, Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM)—concepts that coexist with pre-existing notions such as water policy and institutions, and water management. While the new conceptual lenses may generate insights that improve responses to the world’s water challenges, their practical use is often encumbered by ambiguity, confusion, and even fatigue associated with the steady flow of new “solutions” that can be interpreted in multiple ways. One result is lost time and energy devoted to sorting through the meanings and measuring sticks for a slew of new words, often in an ad hoc quick-and-dirty fashion, in order to achieve progress in deadline-oriented development projects. Another result of this ambiguity is the wild use of these terms in the context of policy discussions and development dialogues, which can distract people into sorting through meanings rather than sorting through issues and solving problems.

New vocabulary is nonetheless a fact of life. The flow of new terms is now a part of water management, will presumably continue to be, and may actually accelerate. It therefore makes sense not only to adapt to this trend, but to consider institutionalizing a process of adaptation to the steady stream of new terms. An initial step toward this end is to take stock of what several of the more prominent terms mean, to review variation in interpretation, to explore how they are measured, and to discuss their respective added value. Indeed, the current absence of a text that addresses these issues presents a rather major obstacle as many people—inside and outside the water community—have heard these terms yet lack a solid grasp of what they mean.

This book applies scrutiny to a prominent set of new terms in water management, in the hope that systematic application of critical thought can improve the basis on which we identify and tackle the world’s water challenges. This book explores definitions of six prominent topics in water management, reviews their central components, and identifies tools used to measure them when applicable. Structurally, the book devotes one chapter to each of six new concepts that have entered—or grown greatly in prominence—in the water management community in the late twentieth or early twenty-first century. Chapters 2 through 5 each focus on understanding one particular term, and Chapters 6 and 7 package a few related terms together. A final chapter then synthesizes, and draws some lessons and recommendations.

Taken together, these chapters are intended to provide a guide to deciphering some of the prominent new concepts that permeate the water community. Our hope is that discussion of this set of terms together in a single text will allow it to serve as a general reference, and help to foster broader thought about the process of introducing new terms. The book purposely challenges certain notions that are often unquestioningly accepted, often in a provocative manner, in an attempt to remind us to keep thinking and questioning. It is hoped that others will subsequently apply some of the same critical approaches to the arguments contained in this book, in the process improving the precision and clarity surrounding many of the concepts that are discussed.

A tough choice when crafting this book was determining which terms to include for analysis. As noted above, there is no shortage of new terms in the water management community. Selection of the terms that are analyzed in this book was primarily determined by their level of prominence in the language of development agencies and international conference and fora, and by the level of confusion surrounding such terms. While IWRM was not explicitly included due to the volume of discussion already in existence on the topic (e.g., Molle, 2008), discussion of IWRM receives substantial attention in the chapter on water governance. The topics that were included are as follows:

• water scarcity

• water governance

• water security

• water productivity

• water footprints and virtual water

• green and blue water.

To be clear, the point of this book is not to invalidate the use of any of these terms. Rather, the point is to achieve greater clarity on what we mean by each of them, in order to create an improved basis for approaching real issues and challenges in the water management community. New terms and conceptual frameworks should be a means to gaining a better understanding of issues. They should not spur additional confusion that diminishes our understanding of issues. The expectation is that this book will be useful to water professionals seeking to better understand the new terms, researchers seeking to understand variations among the different terms and approaches to measuring them, and students wishing to gain an introduction to these often-used terms.

1.2 Overview of Chapters

The remainder of the book is divided into seven chapters and an appendix. Most chapters follow a fairly consistent structure in which definitions of the particular terms are reviewed, measures and indicators are compared, and value added is determined. Chapters were ordered roughly according to the level of prominence of their central term. Chapters 2 through 5—which include the concepts of water scarcity, water governance, water security, and water productivity—encompass four of the most common terms in twenty-first-century water management. IWRM, which may be the only term to challenge those just listed in frequency of use, was not the focus of a separate chapter since the concept receives coverage in the water governance chapter. Terms in Chapters 6 and 7—focused on virtual water and water footprints, and green and blue water—are growing in use, yet they have not achieved the same level of prominence as terms found in earlier chapters.

Chapter 2, co-authored by Jonathan Lautze and Munir Hanjra, is focused on water scarcity. Widely considered to present a major global challenge, water scarcity is an extremely prominent term in the water management community. Definitions of the term nonetheless vary and there are a range of indicators that measure scarcity in different ways. This chapter considers definitions and measures of water scarcity in the broader context of resources scarcity to identify consistencies and inconsistencies of usage. In particular, the chapter deter mines the degree to which prominent indicators of water scarcity—namely, the Falkenmark indicator, physical and economic water scarcity—align with notions of resources scarcity as a means to assessing the value added of the “true” definition and measure of water scarcity. The results reveal a conflation of the distinct concepts of water stress and water scarcity; i.e., that the former concept has become increasingly subsumed under the name of the latter. Isolation of water scarcity definition and indicators nonetheless reveals somewhat limited value. While the concept has helped raise the profile of water in development discussions, the practical use of the concept may benefit from sectoral disaggregation.

Chapter 3, co-authored by Jonathan Lautze, Sanjiv de Silva, Mark Giordano, and Luke Sanford, is focused on water governance. Water governance has emerged as perhaps the most important topic of the international water community in the early twenty-first century, and achieving “good” water governance is now a focus of both policy discourse and innumerable development projects. Somewhat surprisingly in light of this attention, there is widespread confusion about the meaning of the term “water governance.” This chapter reviews the history of the term’s use and misuse to reveal how the concept is frequently inflated to include issues that go well beyond governance. Further, it highlights how calls to improve water governance frequently espouse pre-determined goals—often derived from the tenets of IWRM—that should instead be the very function of water govern ance to define. To help overcome this confusion, the chapter considers the relationship between IWRM and water governance and suggests a more refined definition of water governance and related qualities of good water governance that are consistent with broader notions of the concepts.

Chapter 4, co-authored by Jonathan Lautze and Herath Manthrithilake, is focused on water security. “Water security” has come to infiltrate prominent discourse in the international water and development community, and achieving it is often viewed as a new water sector target. Despite the elevated status that the concept has increasingly acquired, understandings of the term are murky and quantification is rare. To promote a more tangible understanding of the concept, this chapter develops an index for evaluating water security at a country level. The index is comprised of indicators in five components considered to be critical to the concept: (i) basic needs, (ii) agricultural production, (iii) the environment, (iv) risk management, and (v) independence. Achieving water security in these components can be considered necessary but insufficient criteria to measure the achievement of security in related areas such as health, livelihoods, and industry. After populating indicators with data from Asia-Pacific countries, results are interpreted and the viability of methods is discussed. This effort comprises an important first step for quantifying and assessing water security across countries, which enables more concrete understanding of the term and discussion of its added value.

Chapter 5, co-authored by Jonathan Lautze, Xueliang Cai, and Greenwell Matchaya, is focused on water productivity. Improving water productivity (WP), especially in agriculture, is increasingly recognized as a central challenge in international development. A growing body of literature has nonetheless delimited the value and role of WP. This chapter compares WP with related concepts of water efficiency and agriculture productivity in order to interpolate particular benefits obtained through utilization of a WP perspective. The chapter’s main finding is that WP holds value as a decision-making guide for allocating water between areas and sectors when applied with other indicators. The chapter also found that WP does not add value when applied in isolation in a particular location such as a scheme or farm; pre-existing indicators of water efficiency and agricultural productivity may in fact prove more useful at this scale. The chapter concludes by suggesting that “improving WP” should not be treated as a central challenge in water management, but the WP indicator holds value when employed together with other indicators.

Chapter 6, authored by Dennis Wichelns, is focused on virtual water and water footprints. The notions of virtual water and water footprints have gained considerable traction in scholarly literature and the popular press. The preponderance of articles on these topics might lead one to think the notions are based on a firm conceptual foundation and that they enhance understanding of challenging issues regarding water resources. This chapter reviews how these concepts are defined and measured, and identifies certain underlying flaws that greatly constrain the utility of those notions. Particular focus is devoted to dangers associated with direct application of virtual water to guide international trade. Further, the chapter reveals that comparing the water footprints of goods and services is an exercise that can easily mislead consumers into making decisions that inflict unintended harm on households and communities in faraway places. The chapter concludes that, while these two concepts help to shed important light on the role of water in trade, it is increasingly clear that use of such concepts in isolation could hold dangerous implications.

Chapter 7, co-authored by Aditya Sood, Sanmugam Prathapar, and Vladimir Smakhtin, is focused on green and blue water. Accounting for green water has received growing attention for its importance in reducing hunger, alleviating poverty and adapting to climate change. In particular, recognition for distinctions between green and blue water are presumed to unlock opportunities for improving water management in rainfed agriculture. Despite this attention, there is scant articulation of the value that the new paradigm has added relative to previously utilized concepts characterizing agriculture water use in the hydrologic cycle. Indeed, while the green v. blue water distinction may help reveal options for improving food security, it may be that other concepts could be equally used to achieve the same end. To understand the degree to which the green v. blue water paradigm has added value, this chapter compares this paradigm with classical approaches for conceptualizing water use in agriculture. Drivers and definitions for other water colors are also considered. The results of this analysis reveal that, while the reduction of water into simple colors may help to market certain concepts that might otherwise be perceived as esoteric, coloring water can also prove dangerously misleading.

Chapter 8, co-authored by Jonathan Lautze and Vladimir Smakhtin, is comprised of the book’s conclusion. This chapter recapitulates findings as a means to generating guidance on how to move forward in a constructive fashion. The chapter first reviews underlying drivers for new term introduction, the value that they have added and sources of confusion associated with new terms. The chapter next derives broader lessons and recommendations on the process of new term introduction. Finally, the chapter offers thoughts on which concepts might serve as central paradigms or frameworks in water resources management if a thoughtful process were to be applied.

The final chapter of the book, co-authored by Munir Hanjra and Jonathan Lautze, is an Appendix that focuses on providing definitions and descriptions of 25 new terms in water management that are not contained in the book’s main chapters. Approximately one paragraph is devoted to each term. Terms range from downstreamness to natural infrastructure to water accounting. The relative number of terms reviewed in the Appendix rendered this chapter more descriptive in nature.

Reference

Molle, F. 2008. Nirvana concepts, narratives ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Notes on Contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Water Scarcity
• 3. Water Governance
• 4. Water Security
• 5. Water Productivity
• 6. Virtual Water and Water Footprints
• 7. Green and Blue Water
• 8. Conclusions
• Appendix: Other New Terms in Water Management
• Index