Wednesday, February 2, 2011

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 




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Four Pillars of IWRM

The Kirshen approach to IWRM

I recently read an interesting article titled, "Challenges in Graduate Education in Integrated Water Resources Management" (Kirshen, 2004) that expressed the need for implementation of integrated water resources management. In this article, four pillars of IWRM were presented.
The pillars are summarized as:



These pillars are described in detail below.

Systems Analysis includes system evaluation, optimization approaches, statistical analysis, simulation modeling, decision analysis, risk assessment, multi-criteria analysis, and the development of indicators and metrics for analyzing problems.

The Science and Technology of Water involves hydrology, fate and transport of environmental contaminants, water chemistry, water quality, water conservation, and water resources engineering.

Biological Aspects of Water, Health and Nutrition covers ecology, environmental impacts, food and nutrition, epidemiology of water-borne diseases and animal-to-human transmission through water, and ecohydrology.

Planning and Policy of Water includes environmental and water resource economics; legal and institutional frameworks; social, cultural, and behavioral issues; water security at the household, local, regional, national, and international levels; the ethics of local, national, and international systems for dealing with water security; and how to integrate them and other issues in the planning process.

Critique of the Kirshen approach
In my first blog post, I referenced a figure that I originally felt summarized the basic aspects of IWRM. In this post, I noted that the "4 pillars" are:
  1. Natural elements
  2. Structural components
  3. External human factors
  4. Viewpoints, policies, and economics



I'm glad I read Kirshen article because it reminded me that having an overarching idea or process to include these pillars is important for IWRM. I now consider my 4 pillars as distinct elements within an over-arching systems framework. The big green area around the pillars is the fabric which you would use to evaluate and study the real system as part of the decision making process. The Kirshen idea is an interesting one but it takes the systems analysis out as a branch of the work rather than the trunk.

Another question I have about Kirshen's approach is why are Nos. 2 and 3 separate? To me, it seems there are too many overlapping issues within these two pillars to ignore. It might work well for an academic curriculum plan (which is what this article was addressing), but might be inadequate for a real-life decision making process.

The desired goal of IWRM is to make better decisions and so the Kirshen 4 pillar idea concisely sets up some basic components, it does not provide a fabric that holds the ideas together. Whether we call it system analysis or decision-making, the point is, we need an overriding framework to incorporate the pieces together. 


References:
Kirshen, Paul H. Challenges in Graduate Education in Integrated Water Resources Management. 2004. Tufts University. Link
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