Integrated water resource management: Where are the critics going wrong?NILANJAN GHOSHCritics of IWRM need to note that as a paradigm, it only m...

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Integrated water resource management: Where are the critics going wrong?NILANJAN GHOSHCritics of IWRM need to note that as a paradigm, it only m...
Integrated water resource management: Where are the critics going wrong?
NILANJAN GHOSH
Critics of IWRM need to note that as a paradigm, it only marks the broad contours of the emerging discipline of water governance that is subject to change with time

ECONOMIC GROWTHEUFLOODSINDIAIWRMRESOURCE MANAGEMENTWATER
Over almost the last five decades, there has been a paradigm shift in the ways water is being managed and governed across the world. This paradigm shift is best described as the movement from the traditional reductionist thinking that water is a resource to be harnessed and used for human consumption, to a more holistic thinking of water management at its interface of ecosystem and society. This paradigm which is still emerging and taking a new shape with the accrual and accumulation of new information and knowledge is best delineated by the principles of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM). The objectives are very clear under this new thinking: Securing water for food and basic human needs, securing water for ecosystems, and securing water for various social needs. SDG 6 very clearly acknowledges IWRM as one of the goals among other goals of securing potable water, providing sanitation and hygiene, improving water quality, wastewater treatment and safe reuse, improving water-use-efficiency, ensuring freshwater supplies, and securing water-related ecosystems. Interestingly, all other goals are dependent on the guideline framework provided by IWRM. This becomes clear by acknowledging the tenets of IWRM under the following heads: Human Needs, Ecological Needs, Cooperative Understanding and Management, Multi-stakeholder engagement, and Legal and Institutional Safeguards.

The new economics of water will definitely have to move in a direction that will be a clear departure from the reductionist neoclassical economic thinking.

This paradigm shift to IWRM from a traditional constructionist engineering paradigm of water supply augmentation is not free from conflicts. Based on the various contending thoughts and ideas, the notion of IWRM has been conceptualised in the form of the following points:
a) Water is not a stock of material resource to be stored for human use only, but an integral component of the global hydrological cycle: The large engineering constructions for storage, diversion and use of water for economic purposes yields short-run benefits, but has massive negative implications for the natural ecosystem and for the human community reliant on the ecosystem services. IWRM, on the contrary, treats water as a flow and acknowledges the critical role of the hydrological cycle in sustaining the ecosystem.

b) Economic growth and supply of water are delinked. While neoclassical development economics links economic growth with resource availability, IWRM delinks the two and emphasised the shift towards demand-side management than supply augmentation.

c) The multidimensionality of water demand along with those of the natural ecosystems needs to be acknowledged. The emerging transdisciplinary paradigm of IWRM talks of the existing trade-off prioritisation between the two classes of competing water needs: those of the natural ecosystem and those of the human society, while there are competing demands within the human socio-economy. By understanding the trade-offs, prioritisation of water needs can be arrived at through a better understanding of social, cultural and economic values.

d) Objective analyses are needed for an integrated and comprehensive approach to assessing interventions on hydrological flows by considering the integrity of the hydrological cycle. The new paradigm rests on the creation of an interdisciplinary knowledge base through a multi-disciplinary team of natural and social scientists. Water and its associated ecological economic systems are complex due to the complex links and interrelations with other systems and any approach from a single disciplinary domain are inadequate to address real-life problems.

e) Floods and droughts are not “disasters”, but are integral components of the eco-hydrological cycle.

f) Newer and more holistic social and economic instruments should be developed for the assessment of projects and efficient, equitable, and sustainable utilisation of water resources as also for the reduction of damage to their quality from pollution. The new economics of water will definitely have to move in a direction that will be a clear departure from the reductionist neoclassical economic thinking. Ecological Economics combining the social, ecological and broader ethical concerns need to be incorporated into the newly emerging instruments. This has also been discussed later in this module.

g) Traditional top-down institutional governance frameworks need to be replaced by more updated and modern governance systems that are democratic, participatory, equitable, and sustainable.
https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/integrated-water-resource-management/

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