Integrated Water Resources Management: 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:

Water quality
Competing Uses
Increasing demands
Climate change
Land use change
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

Integrated Water Resources Management

Pages

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Water Resources Challenges

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