Integrated Water Resource Management: Future Prospects and Challenges

What does it truly mean to secure not just water, but clean and accessible water for everyone?

Introduction

It is undeniable that water sustainability management has quickly become essential to our survival. Water scarcity is defined as the deficiency or lack of safe water supplies for any given region or place (Loucks, 2009). Increasing population, pollution of essential water sources, and impetuous water use are the main contributors to Earth’s water crisis. Mass consumerism exacerbates these problems, erupting further concerns on what the next steps should be for sustainable water development. Though there are still leaps being made, technology and new ideas have quickly advanced to combat Earth's water crisis. A few examples include using system dynamics to model trends in water use and scarcity levels, using policies and guidelines to set standards for plans to alleviate the water crisis, and finding new ways to purify and ensure that the water available is safe to use.

Research question

How can integrated water resource management approaches be applied to better allocate and use available water resources?

What is integrated water resource management?

As defined by the Global Water Partnership, "IWRM is a process which promotes the co-ordinated development and management of water, land, and related, resources to maximize economic and social welfare in an equitable matter, without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems" (Global Water Partnership 2009).

Why does integrated water resource management work?

Loucks (2000) illustrates the unascertained details that must be agreed upon when deciding what to do about the different needs of sectors.
As Loucks states, it is essential that sustainable water resources are, “...planned, designed, and managed in such a way that the life-support system at all biological levels remains functional and that the water and related land resource is not irreversibly degraded over time” (Loucks, 2000, p. 8).
It is also stressed that the anticipation of change is essential in the planning and designing process of water resource management. The same models that were used 10 years ago may not be relevant or applicable to the ones needed today.
Change is bound to occur on different levels, and so water resource systems must transform with this need in order to perform reliably.
Pahl-Wostl et. al. (2007) further emphasizes the importance of having adaptive water management (AWM) in future practices and experiments. Pahl-Wostl (2007) defines adaptive water management as, “...a systematic process for improving management policies and Practices by learning from the outcomes of management strategies that have already been implemented” (p. 5).
In order to address a challenge, past experience as well as newly acquired knowledge can be used to help solve problems in the future.

Literature Review

Water purification

The treatment and decontamination of existing water sources is essential in the effort to better use available water resources.
According to Sanda et. al. (2020), water pollution takes place on multiple levels; these being domestic water pollution, industrial water pollution, and agricultural pollution.

Management

One of the ways that the pressing issue of water scarcity can realistically be alleviated is by implementing the Integrated World Summit on Sustainable Development (IWRM) to create a united approach to balancing all dimensions of water management, while taking into account the needs of individual demands for water.
In the World Summit on Sustainable Development of 2002, the importance of the IWRM was reinforced as being one of the main components aiding in the development of sustainable solutions for water management.
The same models that were used 10 years ago may not be relevant or applicable to the ones needed today. Further emphasizing the need for change, Loucks states, “changes in the natural system due to geomorphologic processes, changes in the engineered components due to aging, changes in the demands or desires due to a changing society, and even changes in the supply of water, possibly due to a changing climate” (Loucks, 2000, p. 5). Change is bound to occur on different levels, and so water resource systems must transform with this need in order to perform reliably.

System dynamics

At a different angle, Xi et al. (2013) aims to use system dynamics as a way of creating models and understanding the way that they change over time.
In a study, Singapore used a system dynamics model titled, SingaporeWater to better understand the water in the area.
By having long-term monitoring for the trends and behaviors of water, Singapore is able to see the effectiveness of the model with time and changes being made to policies.
By having analytical references from data received continuously in system modeling, it is possible to make efficient changes to better serve each area's individual needs in the future.
Singapore has limited space in how much underground water storage can be used, so it is also important to keep in mind when using the system dynamics models for water management, that each region’s capacity physically and economically is taken into consideration.

Theoretical Frameworks

In figure 1.1, the simplified process of adaptive management is shown. The cycle is continuous, with feedback and adjustment being the important points of the process.
In order to properly create change in water resources, knowledge acquired is used to provide feedback to the strategies used to combat problems. Adjustment is made, and the circular process continues.
One of the most important parts in the process of using integrated water resource management is learning new information, and then finding creative ways to apply it to problems.
It is also best to acknowledge that while change many times is necessary, being practical with the way that change is brought about is important as well. Having adaptive water management may be the best way forward in some instances.

In figure 1.2, the methods used to remove nitrogen contents in wastewater are shown. While there are many different methods, each one is not as successful as the next.
There are also factors contributing to which one is the most effective to use in different areas; some of which include the geography of the region, population density, and the project financing.
There are many physical, chemical, and biological ways to decrease the nitrogen content in wastewater, with each having differences in effectiveness. Land application and algal utilization remove all forms of nitrogen compounds, making them the more efficient methods.
Consistent with water resource management, there are legal and social constraints that make solving these problems more difficult.

(Lake Louise Portrait View, 2019)

Methods

The best research design to use to answer how integrated water resource management techniques can be used to better allocate and use available water resources is participatory modeling. It allows for collaboration between decision-makers, local communities, as well as experts. It also enables local community members to make models to use as tools to understand complex problems, and in turn, learn how to better solve problems.
More specifically, Integrated Environmental Modeling (IEM) is the method that is most successful in addressing environmental issues. With this method, complex relationships in nature and changes in the environment are recorded and modeled.
A few constraints of this method include time, amount of data, and complexity. Validity in this method is based on the analysis of the relationships defined in the model and how well they correspond to the actual system the model is trying to replicate. Since a model’s validity is mostly a matter of accuracy rather than usefulness, (Barlas and Carpenter 1990) in this case, a threat to validity would be the overall accuracy of the model and its ability to correctly capture a system's relationships.
These water resource models will be used eventually to aid in the understanding of a system's components, educate others, and be used as support in policy making. Additionally, this method of study is used to explore as well as explain natural phenomena (Biggs et. al. 2021). Ideally a community would be involved in the process of creating models, and a team of individuals could be used to handle all aspects of this method (data collection, model generation, communicating findings etc.).

References

Barlas, Y., & Carpenter, S. (1990). Philosophical roots of model validation: Two paradigms. System Dynamics Review, 6(2), 148–166. https://doi.org/10.1002/sdr.4260060203

Biggs, R., Clements, H., Vos, A. de, Maciejewski, K., Preiser, R., & Schlüter, M. (2021). How to use this handbook. The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods for Social-Ecological Systems, 64–79. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003021339-5

Boretti, A., Rosa, L. Reassessing the projections of the World Water Development Report. npj Clean Water 2, 15 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41545-019-0039-9

Loucks, D. (2000) Sustainable Water Resources Management, Water International, 25:1, 3-10, DOI: 10.1080/02508060008686793

Hojjati-Najafabadi, A., Mansoorianfar, M., Liang, T., Shahin, K., & Karimi-Maleh, H. (2022). A review on magnetic sensors for monitoring of hazardous pollutants in water resources. Science of The Total Environment, 824, 153844. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.153844

Laniak, G. F., Olchin, G., Goodall, J., Voinov, A., Hill, M., Glynn, P., Whelan, G., Geller, G., Quinn, N., Blind, M., Peckham, S., Reaney, S., Gaber, N., Kennedy, R., & Hughes, A. (2013). Integrated Environmental Modeling: A Vision and roadmap for the future. Environmental Modelling & Software, 39, 3–23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2012.09.006

Loehr, R. C. (1979). Agricultural Waste Management: Problems, processes, and approaches. Academic Press.

McDonald, R. I., Weber, K., Padowski, J., Flörke, M., Schneider, C., Green, P. A., Gleeson, T., Eckman, S., Lehner, B., Balk, D., Boucher, T., Grill, G., & Montgomery, M. (2014). Water on an urban planet: Urbanization and the reach of urban water infrastructure. Global Environmental Change, 27, 96– 105. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2014.04.022

Muhammad Mizanur Rahaman & Olli Varis (2005) Integrated water resources management: evolution, prospects and future challenges, Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy, 1:1, 15-21, 10.1080/15487733.2005.11907961

Pahl-Wostl, C., Sendzimir, J., Jeffrey, P., Aerts, J., Berkamp, G., & Cross, K. (2007). Managing Change toward Adaptive Water Management through Social Learning. Ecology and Society, 12(2). http://www.jstor.org/stable/26267877

Sanda, B., & Ibrahim, I. (2020). Causes, Categories and Control of Water Pollution, 4(9), 84–90.

Veera Gnaneswar Gude. (2020). Sustainable Water: Resources, Management and Challenges. Nova.

Xi, X., & Poh, K. L. (2013). Using system dynamics for Sustainable Water Resources Management in Singapore. Procedia Computer Science, 16, 157–166. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2013.01.017

ENS 301.01 Savannah (Responses)

View previous Showcase project

View next Showcase project

Page updated

Report abuse