Development Aspects Impressum Editors

Water management principles

Capacity-building networks which form the Cap-Net UNDP global network of net- works are driven by agreed principles on how water resources should be managed. These include:

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  The right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right and the critical importance of water resources for sustainable development, includ- ing poverty and hunger eradication, public health, food security, hydropower, agriculture and rural development.
  
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  The necessity of setting goals for wastewater management, including reducing water pollution from households, industrial and agricultural sources and pro- moting water efficiency, wastewater treatment and the use of wastewater as a resource, particularly in expanding urban areas.
  
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  The commitment made in the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation (JPOI) re- garding the development and implementation of integrated water resources management and water efficiency plans.
  
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  The need to address the interrelationship between water, energy, food and cli- mate change in order to achieve synergies as well as to minimize conflicts among policy objectives, being particularly sensitive to impacts on vulnerable popula- tions.
  

7. Conclusions

Integrated water resources management (IWRM), i.e., the “management of water, land and related resources, in order to maximise the resultant economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems”, offers a comprehensive framework to deal with water-related secu- rity challenges faced by humankind (UNEP, 2011). IWRM needs to continuously evolve towards partnerships with water-using sectors whose policies and strate- gies are governed by many factors outside the water sector. There is a need for a

coordinated and harmonized nexus knowledge base and database indicators and metrics that cover all relevant spatial and temporal scales and planning horizons.

The Green Economy concept, much like in the case of IWRM, presents further hurdles to dealing with the increasing level of complexity that comes with higher levels of integration. Implementation of such broader concepts is not straightfor- ward and tensions arise when integrating across sectors, institutions, levels and scales (Hoff, 2011).
Capacity development and social learning – in which development partners can play a role – can help to deal with the increasing complexity of cross-sectoral approaches, and it can help to level the playing field among the sectors. Learn- ing platforms such as the Cap-Net network for professional and social innovation and adaptive management can enable horizontal and vertical policy coherence in this instance. Knowledge generation, sharing, adaptation and transfer have to be put into motion to efficiently feed innovation and problem-solving for the ever- increasing challenges which humankind faces today.