Water Resources Challenges

Over the years, I've heard what people consider to be the challenges we face in trying to manage our water resources and plan for the future. I decided to take it upon myself and discover what people are publishing in regards to the types of challenges we face. I searched about 30 documents (articles and other publications) and found that most the challenges can be organized into 6 categories.

The challenges include:

  1.  Water quality 
  2.  Competing Uses 
  3.  Increasing demands 
  4.  Climate change 
  5.  Land use change 
  6.  Institutional challenges*  

I counted which categories people focused on and summarized it in a pie chart. Most publications listed more than one type of challenge.

*managing risk, coordination, corruption, conflicting policies, inadequate funds


Within these different types of challenges people focus on, I found some interesting aspects regarding the types of authors that report these challenges. These findings are summarized below:
  • Energy industries tend to focus on growing competition
  • Regulators tend to focus on water quality and climate change
  • Global organizations tend to focus on increasing demands and climate change
  • Regional water purveyors and utilities tend to focus on climate change, water quality, and increasing demands
  • Governments tend to focus on increasing demands and institutional challenges
  • Authors writing about poorer countries tend to focus on institutional challenges, water quality, and increasing demand
  • Authors writing about richer countries tend to highlight climate change, land use change, and pop growth
  • Academics tend to focus on climate change


References 




Comments

  1. AnonymousFebruary 3, 2011 at 10:25 AM

    What is published is different than what is real.

    ReplyDelete

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