Sharing water: the role of robust water-sharing arrangements in integrated water resources management
How should the entitlements and obligations associated with water be shared? On 29 August 2019, at World Water Week in Stockholm, GWP releases a new Perspectives Paper on Sharing Water: The role of robust water-sharing arrangements in integrated water resources management. Water is scarce and getting scarcer. According to the UN Sustainable Development Goal 6 Synthesis Report on Water and Sanitation (UN, 2018), 52% of the world’s population will be put at risk by 2050 if pressures on water resources continue. Therefore, the search for a solution must include the development of robust ways to manage access to and the use of water. Most of the world’s allocation systems were developed when water was abundant and, hence, have not been designed to manage scarcity. Too often, the result is depletion, over-use and the erosion of the rights of disadvantaged people”, says the author of the paper, GWP Technical Committee member Professor Mike Young from the University of Adelaide’s Centre for Global Food and Resources in Australia. In the new GWP Perspectives Paper, Professor Young offers a framework and a set of questions designed to assist local communities and local water managers consider the case for seeking to improve existing water-sharing arrangements.
