Integrated Water Resource Management Case Study

Introduction

The concept of IWRM introduced at global level from the United Nations Water Conference in 1977 (UNWC 1977), with governments later committing to the application of IWRM by developing IWRM and water efficiency plans. And is reported that by 2012, more than 80% of countries had made good progress towards meeting this target, and yet IWRM, as the common and galvanizing mission for water resources management is under scrutiny.

Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is defined as the concept of promoting the coordinated development and management of water, land and related resources in order to maximize the resultant economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystem

Is it relevant?

This has become a worldwide debate. Is the question of which many of water issues scholars tried to answer, however, due to the complexity of water resource and its difficulties in implementation(Rogers and Hall 2003, Grigg 2008), water experts found themselves in dilemma to point whether IWRM is relevant or not. The dilemma is more magnified considering that since the reintroduction of IWRM water problems rise and accumulate fast than how are resolved (Biswas AK 2004).The paper tends to discuss the main ideas and issues on the debate.

The concept (IWRM) sounds very nicely and gained popularity acceptance however the literatures shows that it is not a new concept its existence is over 100 years and it didn’t work to the past( Giordano and Shah 2014; Biswas AK 2004). The reintroduction of the concept was supposed to analyze the reasons of its previous failure then how will the obstacles be tackled so as to make it efficiently in this second

Then how comes only water professionals involved in IWRM?(Biswas 2004) Will the water professionals solve the issues of energy, how about Ecology Sustainability? Did they consider political parameters where water is trans boundary issue? Does water administrated easily in basin or need smaller unit? Can water, agriculture and energy be treated separately?

Hijacked for other agendas: In spite of inefficiency in solving water problems IWRM also proved to mask other agendas, some people continued to practice what they were doing in the previous but under the umbrella of the IWRM for the sake of attracting the funds from the donors therefore it has becomes like “the business as usual”.(Giordano 2014). Thus made to people to concentrate on IWRM and forget other many alternatives which may be used to improve water