Integrated Water Resources Management: A ‘Small’ Step for Conceptualists, a Giant Step for Practitioners

Abstract

Although the origin of the IWRM concept is sometimes placed in Mar del Plata, Dublin or after the GWP, it has been around for more than 45 to 50 years. Evolving, it has incorporated something dear for each, achieving universal acceptance. Like a mantra, no national, regional or international organization in the Americas fails to promote ‘some’ IWRM concept. This is no small step conceptually, if not compared to what would be needed to bring it to practice. In an effort to clarify if there will ever be a universal understanding as to what IWRM means in practice, some practical hurdles in examples from Latin America are examined. The result is more questions than answers, the most important of which is how, if, and when IWRM can be used to achieve practical results for the end-users of water.

Introduction

In the Americas as in many other parts of the world, integrated water resources management (IWRM) originated in the need to find a reasonable compromise among the various competing uses of water when quantity and/or quality conflicts arose, because demand was larger than supply. Thus, it was not initially of much concern to the water-rich countries of the region. However, in the 1990s planners in some countries of Latin America and the Caribbean embraced the movement towards a more integrated view of making government, considering the mutual effect of the different economic, social and environmental sectors. Water was included in this and integration moved out of the water resources realm into the realm of other sectors and actors, outside the traditional water resources community. Many financing and technical assistance organizations and, most of all, the success of the Second World Water Forum of The Hague in 2000—making water the business of all and not only the business of water resource managers—reinforced this internationally. These days, it can be said that practically no national, regional or international organization in the Americas from Mexico to Chile, including Canada, fails to promote ‘some’ IWRM concept.

However, according to the Director of the Ground Water Institute in Pune, India, “IWRM is easy to talk about, but hard to implement”. This acquires special meaning when ‘the’ IWRM concept is introduced in legislation in some countries and thus, it is required by law, with penalties for non-compliance. The reason is that the concept, despite the efforts of many to clarify the issue, represents many things to many people and accepts many definitions. In the extreme, some interpretations of the concept relate more to the exercise of government than to water and are more concerned with the integration of the water resource with other resources rather than on managing water itself, and also incorporates technical, institutional, social, environmental and political aspects. Thus, it is interrelated to practically all human activities.

In the 2002 Johannesburg Conference, the countries pledged to approve IWRM and efficiency plans by 2005. How are the Americas coping with this challenge? By 2005, according to a GWP report, 95 countries worldwide (16 from Latin America) showed some progress in this regard (in Latin America one showed good progress, 10 had taken some steps, and five were in the initial stages). Since then, two (Costa Rica and Mexico) have almost finished their IWRM strategy, and one (Dominican Republic) is in the initial stages. This paper discusses lessons to practitioners learned from the Mexico, Costa Rica and Guatemala cases, from a practical point of view.

In the Beginning…

When searching for the origins of the IWRM concept, it is not uncommon to find in the literature cites placing it at the Dublin Conference in 1992, at the Mar del Plata United Nations Conference on Water in 1977, or even after the creation of the Global Water Partnership (GWP) in 1996. However, some may state that it has been around for much longer than that, and the author tends to agree with this perception.

It was first encountered by the author in the mid-1960s, although it surely must have been around for some time before that, during a discussion on water use conflicts at the University of California in Berkeley, in the form of the ‘Reasonable Use Principle’ (Todd, 1965). When more than one use or user needed the same water supply source, needed the same water volume stored or released from a reservoir at different times, or changed the water quality characteristics of a given receiving water body, conflicts appeared. Every use or user wanted to maximize the water use benefits simultaneously, but of course, that was not possible. It must have been realized then, that maximizing the benefits for one use or user interfered with others, and the only way to solve or minimize those conflicts would be to reach a compromise among users. If placed within a context of a watershed, river basin or region, the ‘best’ compromise would be that which maximized the benefits for the whole (the watershed, river basin or region) and not for any of its parts (the individual uses or users). Interestingly, the same principle was heard again during a lecture in Buenos Aires (Sadoff, 2003), which defined IWRM as maximizing the benefits for the system and not any of its components. As illustrated by the hypothetical example in Figure 1, a combination of hydropower generation upstream and irrigation downstream would be better for the whole system than maximizing the benefits for upstream irrigation only.

Figure 1 Reasonable use principle. Source: C. Sadoff (2003) adapted by the author.

Certainly, the concept of IWRM described above has been present in the minds of Latin American water resources managers during the last 40 years. In general, the region moved from the project-by-project approach prevalent in the 1960s to a sub-sectoral approach in the 1970s and mid-1980s, when irrigation, water supply and energy master plans were in vogue (IDB, 1998). But apart from some attempts in countries such as Colombia to capitalize the successful TVA approach, not many examples of real world applications of IWRM can be easily found.

The reason may be that water quantity and/or quality conflicts were not the norm in the region during much of the last half century, because the Americas is the water-richest region of the world, with more than 55% of its total renewable freshwater (García & Aguilar, 2006). With a mean annual precipitation of 1084 mm, the total renewable water resource in the region amounts to nearly 24 000 km³ per year, but exhibiting great heterogeneity. It ranges from approximately 90 km³ per year in the Caribbean, to around 700 km³ per year in Central America, to over 6000 km³ per year in North America, to slightly over 17 000 km³ per year in South America. It seems there is water for everyone as the following average figures of m³/person/year show: approximately 2200 in the Caribbean, 15 000 in North America, 18 000 in Central America, and 47 000 in South America, although individual countries show great variation. However, while the global figure of withdrawals reaches an average of 8.7% of the total available resources in the Americas, it is as high as 15% in the United States, Mexico and some Caribbean countries, but as low as less than 1% in several countries of Central and South America, resulting in an average of only 3.2%.

As a result, the need to find a reasonable compromise among the various competing uses of water was not a pressing one in the region during the past half century, and the application of the ‘Reasonable Use Principle’ version of the IWRM concept was not of much concern to the water resources planners in many of the water-rich countries of the region, except in those areas such as Northwestern Mexico, Northern Chile, parts of Bolivia and Peru, or Northeastern Brazil, where water demands gradually became greater than the supply.

However …

The generalization of awareness about climatic variability, coupled with increases in population and urbanization, and renewed concerns for the environment started to change this picture during the last decade. The Americas is a region with great variety of climate conditions. It has ice caps and glaciers, snowy mountain peaks, four-season weather in some areas and two-season dry and wet cycles in others. It has humid rainforests as well as arid and semi-arid areas. Some areas receive more than 6000 mm of rainfall in a year, whereas others, such as the Atacama Desert, are the driest in the world.

The population is growing and distributing itself not precisely in the water richest areas. The population annual growth rate in the Americas is 1.22%, similar to that globally. Although it is lower in some areas, such as the Caribbean (1.03%) and North America (1.05%), it is higher in South America (1.33%) and Central America (2.21%). In 2004 the population of Latin America and the Caribbean reached 545 million, representing 63% of the population of the Americas, and 8.6% of the world. About 48% of the world population lived in cities in 2004. However, the urbanization reached 52% in Central America, 60% in the Caribbean, 75% in Mexico, and 81% in South America.

A ‘Small’ Conceptual Step …

New concerns about global warming and the environment in general and a renewed interest for sustainable development after the so-called ‘lost decade’ of the 1980s, fuelled a movement in the 1990s towards a more integrated view of making government, considering the mutual effects of the different economic, social and environmental variables. The success of the Second World Water Forum of The Hague in 2000 in making water the business of all, and not only the business of water resources managers—supported by many financing and technical assistance organizations—reinforced this internationally. Integration moved out of the water resources realm into the sphere of other sectors and actors outside the traditional water resources community. Today, it can be said that almost no national, regional or international organization in Latin America and the Caribbean, from Mexico to Chile, fails to promote ‘some’ IWRM concept. This is by no means a small step conceptually, but it is a ‘small’ step if it compared to what would be needed to bring it to practice.

Giant Steps Needed for Practitioners …

Perhaps the first giant step is to find who the practitioners are. The second step would be for practitioners to come to a universal understanding as to what IWRM means to them in practice. The third and subsequent steps would be for them to actually use IWRM to improve water services for the end users. The first two would be necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for IWRM implementation, unless the third one is met. At present, the most commonly looked at definition of IWRM is that of the GWP (2000):

IWRM is a process which promotes the co-ordinated 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 ecosystems.

However, this is a conceptual definition and despite the efforts of the GWP and many others to clarify the issue, IWRM conceptually represents many things to many people and accepts many definitions. More than 35 definitions have been found in the literature (Biswas, 2004) in support of integration of the natural system and the human system, water and land resources, surface and groundwater, river basins and coastal zones, water volume and water quality, and upstream and downstream uses and users. The need for integration throughout the many sectors of the economy has also been pointed out, as well as the need to consider the macro-economic effects of water projects and the participation of all stakeholders. On the one hand, some interpretations of the concept relate more to the exercise of government than to water and are more concerned with the integration of the water resource with other resources rather than on managing water itself. On the other hand, IWRM has been defined essentially as environmental management (Hofstede, 2006) and considered as a complement to, complemented by, or part of the ecosystem approach which in itself is a holistic approach. Others incorporate technical, institutional, social, environmental and political aspects, making it interrelated to practically all human activities.

So, who are the practitioners and will they ever come to a universal understanding as to what IWRM means in practice? The following examples from Latin America may help to answer this question.

Examples from Latin America and the Caribbean

The process of preparation of the Regional Report from the Americas to the Fourth World Water Forum held in Mexico in March 2006 helped to review the many challenges facing the region regarding water resources management. It also helped to highlight many accomplishments for which the region can feel proud, and also evidenced several issues on which there is no consensus and maybe even one or two controversies (García & Aguilar, 2006). The report reflected different points of view about issues such as the importance of water demand management versus water resources development; water as an economic good versus water as a human right; the effect of international trade agreements on national water rights; the role of infrastructure, especially dams; private sector participation in the provision of basic water services; the real meaning of payment for environmental services; and last but not least, the implementation of IWRM with debates ranging from the meaning of IWRM itself to the usefulness or practicality of its implementation.

The Inter-american Development Bank Iwrm Strategy

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is the oldest of the Regional Banks and the major development lender in the region. Since the Bank was founded more than 40 years ago, it has provided financing (an average of more than US$900 million per year totalling close to US$40 billion in the period; approximately 18% of its lending portfolio) to water-related projects and activities. Since then, this category has remained a common denominator in the Bank's financing portfolio. The social role as well as the productive role of water in economic growth and poverty alleviation has received due importance, as the Bank has financed many irrigation, drainage, hydropower and other water-related projects, as well as flood control projects.

During the first 25 years of the Bank the emphasis in the region was on infrastructure on a sub-sectoral project-by-project basis, with few multi-purpose developments. Investments in water supply and sanitation dominated during the Bank's early years and hydropower investments started to increase gradually in the 1970s, becoming dominant in the 1980s, and ultimately declining from then on. Investments in irrigation and drainage reached a peak during the second half of the 1970s and also declined during the second half of the 1980s. In the 1990s, the Eighth General Increase in the Resources of the IDB, known as the ‘Eight Replenishment’, or IDB-8, called for more attention to be paid to the socio-economic and environmental sectors. This was reflected mostly in water resources by new trends in financing of water projects with an increased concern for the watersheds and people living in them, for the quality of receiving waters, for management as opposed to development of the water resource, and for integrated water resources planning (IDB, 1994).

Following the mandates of IDB-8, the Bank recognized that meeting local and provincial-level objectives, together with national objectives, were important for development. It was also recognized that infrastructure alone could not solve the problems, and that sometimes these problems were aggravated by neglecting other equally important social and environmental variables. Therefore, in 1990 the Bank strengthened a process to incorporate these variables in the financing of water related projects, and in 1998 the Board of Directors approved a strategy for IWRM to foster the application of the mandates of IDB-8 to the water sector by focusing on mainstreaming the principles of IWRM in its water-related projects.

Fundamentally, the IDB IWRM strategy focused on actions directed towards three levels as depicted in Figure 2. At the constitutional level, actions to help the countries in drafting, approving and applying basic water legislation and IWRM policies and strategies were promoted to help create an enabling environment. At the associative level, the river basin or watershed approach was fostered and attention was focused on integrated watershed management, including river basin organizations. At the operational level, financing of water supply and sanitation, irrigation and drainage, and hydropower projects were continued but with a new emphasis on sub-sector modernization, especially in the water supply and sanitation sub-sector.

Figure 2 Levels of action for IWRM

An institutional model for IWRM was proposed that was not very different to the one also being proposed by the World Bank (Figure 3). This model involved the separation of four distinct functions using regulatory bodies: the water allocation among competing uses function; the provision of water as a social service and as a production factor function; the conservation and/or improvement of the quality of the environment function; and the supply of reliable and timely provision of basic water resources and other related information function.

Figure 3 Institutional model for IWRM

A recent review of the IDB 1990–2005 water related portfolio (García & Ortiz, 2006, p. 46) pointed out that “support for water management is especially evident in watershed management and planning”. Efforts in this sub-sector gave due consideration to the river basin and also made contributions to governance and to the integration of the socio-cultural and environmental variables into water projects. In particular, the Bank was active in promoting an enabling environment, including support for drafting new legislation, policies, strategies and action plans for integrated water resources management in the region, mainly through technical cooperation operations and the non-financial portfolio. Despite these efforts, however, no clear evidence was found of linkages between the integrated water resources management approach and the projects in the rest of the investment portfolio. During the period under consideration, the Bank also placed special emphasis on the institutional reform and modernization of the water resources sector and on implementing IWRM in the region. However, these efforts are not yet consolidated operationally and the efforts to mainstream this approach should be strengthened.

Major Practical Hurdles

The major hurdles encountered in this effort relate to the emphasis that was placed on applying the IWRM concept at the constitutional and associative levels compared to the operational level, although the countries in general showed more interest in water services than in water resources management. In addition, initiatives and proposals for new water legislation were anything but scarce, but very few were actually approved. With the exception of cases related to the provision of water function, the achievement of institutional reforms proved to be extremely difficult in practice, especially those related to the water allocation among competing uses function. A major effort was directed towards exploring a basin-wide integrated water quality approach (Russell et al., 2001). The main obstacles encountered were the need for the collection of large amounts of basin-wide reliable data (which was serious but achievable in time), the availability of reliable predictive water quality models (which existed), and the investments needed to obtain benefits from water quality improvements basin-wide (which proved to be prohibitive).

The IWRM Country Strategies

At the Summit for Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg in 2002, the countries pledged to approve IWRM and efficiency plans by 2005. The latest survey made by GWP (2006) among 95 countries showed that 21% of the countries surveyed had plans or strategies in place and 53% had initiated its formulation process. Therefore, almost 75% of the countries surveyed have met the target set out by the Johannesburg initiative.1 According to the GWP report, in Latin America and the Caribbean:

•	One country (Brazil) has IWRM plans or strategies in place.
•	Ten countries (Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Uruguay) are in the process of preparing them.
•	Five countries (Guatemala, Honduras, Bolivia, Paraguay and Venezuela) have taken initial steps.

Since then, two (Costa Rica and Mexico) have almost finished their IWRM strategy, and one (Dominican Republic) is in the initial stages.

Brazil has made a good effort to translate the conceptual IWRM definition posed by GWP into practical terms. In this sense, IWRM is applied in the planning process through consideration and evaluation of the following aspects:

•	In any given river basin, multiple uses of water are considered and evaluated.
•	Economic, social and environmental objectives are considered and weighed up.
•	Due consideration is given to other government areas, levels, and instruments, such as national and regional plans.

This does not mean that all of them are included in the final plan, but they are considered, weighed up and evaluated in its initial stages and then only what is relevant for the case in question is included. Stakeholders are included in the decision-making process through a transparent approach.

An effort to speed up the process was initiated in 2006 by the UNEP Collaborating Centre on Water and Environment (UCC-Water) and the DHI-Water and Environment with the collaboration of IUCN. Workshops with that purpose in mind have been held in Central America, the Caribbean, the South American Andean region, and the South American Southern Cone. Although there were some hurdles, at least there is consensus with regard to the general steps needed to formulate an IWRM Strategy, as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4 General steps for a strategy

Major Practical Hurdles

Although these results are encouraging, some difficulties have been encountered from the operational level end-of-the-line user point of view. As with the IDB IWRM Strategy previously discussed, most of these efforts have been focused at the constitutional level and even if they are strong in concepts, few actions meaningful for the end-user have resulted so far. There is a tendency to be heavy on diagnostics but weak in solutions and a gap still exists between papers and actions. Some propose solutions to water problems that do not fit with the socio-economic and socio-politic systems prevailing in the countries for which they are proposed and, in some cases, the discussion of issues transcend the water arena into the socio-political and ideological arenas. In addition, in cases where the proposing agency is also a water user, other agencies perceive a bias, provoking strong resistance from them. In spite of the strong interest showed by the countries for IWRM in some regions, the results of the UCC-Water/DHI-Water and Environment have shown a wide variety of interpretations as to what IWRM is and how it can be applied. In the Central American and Andean Region at least, there was a strong bias towards an environmental interpretation of the IWRM concept, which seems to be taking hold across the region. There was also strong interest for the policy, strategy and legislation aspects, but a lack of clarity about how to follow those with action plans was perceived, at least among some of the participants.

IWRM Strategy in Mexico

The IWRM concept is fully accepted and has been adopted to the extent that IWRM, as defined by GWP, appears at least 37 times in the 2004 National Water Law (LAN). The Law also includes sanctions for non-compliance and much discussion has been had in the National Water Commission (CONAGUA) and other institutions regarding how to comply with such a non-operational definition. Does compliance mean everything in the definition, full integration or partial integration? Where is the interface between multisectoral water resources management, watershed management, natural resource management, environmental management and socio-political management, or is there no interface and should the holistic approach be taken? Is CONAGUA capable of that? Will it not interfere with the functions delegated by law to other institutions? These are but only a few of the many questions that prompted the National Water Commission to develop and adopt a conceptual IWRM paper and it is in the process of developing specific regional action plans.

As in Brazil, Mexico has also adopted a pragmatic translation of the IWRM concept to be applied in specific hydrologic units (such as watersheds and river basins). For water resources management to be integrated, the following processes should be included, as long as they are relevant for solving the problem under analysis:

•	soil-water and water-vegetation relationships;
•	economic, social and environmental aspects;
•	actions from all levels of government and stakeholders;
•	surface and groundwater;
•	water volume and water quality;
•	supply and demand oriented actions; and
•	uses and/or users that compete for the same water body or source.

The ‘Reasonable Use Principle’ was also considered when there are various beneficial uses and users that compete for the same source or water body, stating that the solution is to maximize the benefits for the whole system (region, basin, aquifer) and not for a specific use, giving due consideration to concertation and conflict resolution techniques. However, much discussion was generated when considering which of the three sustainable development objectives should be maximized, finally agreeing within CONAGUA that economic efficiency should be sought, including social and environmental considerations as stipulations in an optimization set of equations. Such an approach has been proposed to re-distribute and increase the water use efficiency in the state of Aguascalientes, whose water supply comes mainly from one of the five aquifers existing within it. It was found that the safe yield was 300 million m³ per year, while extractions added up to almost 500 million m³ per year. 70% of the extractions were used for agriculture and livestock, which contributed 5% to the state GDP, while 5% were used for industry, which contributed 30% to the state GDP and 25% were used for public and urban uses, whose contribution to the state GDP was estimated to be 65%.

IWRM Strategy in Costa Rica

With support from the IDB-Netherlands Water Partnership (INWAP), the government of Costa Rica embarked on an ambitious programme to develop its IWRM master Plan in two stages. The first stage, which has been successfully completed, consisted of developing an IWRM Strategy through a highly participatory approach, to be followed by a second stage already under way to develop the Master Plan itself. This is a two-step approach that has been favoured by INWAP to bridge the paper-action gap so many times observed in similar efforts, where the strategy is not followed by actual user-oriented actions capable of being financed by the country under its budgetary and management capabilities.

It is known that Costa Rica's national policies are highly environmentally oriented and, as in many other countries in Central America, the Ministry of Environment (MINAE) has control of the water. This posed a difficulty by introducing an environmental bias that was strongly contested by other institutions such as the Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE), the Water Supply and Sewerage Institute (AyA) and the National Irrigation and Drainage Service (SENARA), all of which include in their legal responsibilities dealing with the water resource. Much of the discussion revolved around who would be the National Water Authority, although current Costa Rican legislation assigns that role to MINAE. However, the baseline was who would charge for water extractions and how much.

After much discussion, an agreement was reached about the distribution of responsibilities concerning the water resources functions, as depicted in Figure 3. MINAE was left in charge of the water allocation among competing uses function, the conservation and/or improvement of the quality of the environment function, and part of the provision of reliable and timely provision of water resources and other related information. The other Ministries and service providers such as ICE, AyA and SENARA were left in charge of their respective social and productive water uses, regulated by a single regulatory body, and part of the provision of information function.

During the development of the IWRM Strategy, a new Water Law was also being discussed in Congress and that posed simultaneously a problem and an advantage. The problem was that both the proposed strategy and law included policy guidelines that, if not concerted, could point the country in different directions. The advantage was that the simultaneous discussion of both instruments provided an opportunity for concerted effort and coordination, which was fully taken advantage of by both teams. The strategy was finally approved by the government but, unfortunately, the approval of the new Water Law is still on hold.

Another issue that had to be solved during the process was that market-based approaches were not politically nor socially favoured in Costa Rica at the time. The objective of economic efficiency with social and environmental considerations as constraints in the optimization was not fully appreciated, and requiring careful wording pointing towards that direction, but maintaining the favoured social and environmental prevalence.

IWRM Strategy in Guatemala

This effort was started after Costa Rica, also supported by INWAP, and benefited from the Costa Rican experience. The same two-step approach was used and at present the IWRM Strategy is being developed. However, there are important differences between the two countries, both in approaches and in what is considered important. In contrast to Costa Rica, Guatemala has a high indigenous population whose conceptualization of the meaning of water and water rights is different.

First, the project was favoured by the Planning and Programming Secretariat of the Presidence (SEGEPLAN), who was interested in rationalizing the public expenditures in water projects and as such, was void of any bias towards any water user. Unfortunately, the project had to compete with an existing effort by the Ministry of Agriculture, supported by IDB, to develop a water resources strategy and with an effort by the Ministry of Environment to coordinate the development of a government water policy through the National Water Commission (CONAGUA). In contrast to Mexico, where CONAGUA is a de-concentrated institution with a rank and organization close to a Ministry, in Guatemala CONAGUA is a Committee formed by representatives from the many institutions that deal with water.

Until the creation of the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Agriculture had traditionally been the water authority in the country and, although its effort towards an IWRM strategy was discussed in CONAGUA, the feeling of bias towards water use in agriculture and livestock favoured SEGEPLAN's effort. In addition, the water policy being coordinated by the Ministry of Environment considered only the government sector, and SEGEPLAN wanted to also include the private sector and civil society.

As a result, when it began, the SEGEPLAN project focused on how water could help achieve the objectives of four national plans started by the government with the aim of improving living conditions in the poorest municipalities (Guate Solidaria in Spanish), foster economic growth (Guate crece), improve competitiveness (Guate compite), and protect the environment (Guate verde). However, compared to Costa Rica, the effort has so far been concentrated mainly within SEGEPLAN and the project team. Nevertheless, as a result of guidelines given during a presentation to the Cabinet, consultations with private sector stakeholders and civil society representatives, including indigenous peoples, are being planned.

IWRM Local Actions in the Fourth World Water Forum

The Fourth World Water Forum held in Mexico in March 2006 had five thematic areas: water for growth and development; implementing IWRM; water supply and sanitation for all; water management for food and the environment; and risk management. The activities consisted mainly of presentations of local actions regarding those five areas.

In its final report (WWC-CONAGUA, 2006), the Fourth World Water Forum Secretariat states that of the 1477 local actions submitted to the Forum from all over the world, the greatest number (31%) were on the theme ‘Implementing IWRM’. Second (27%) were local actions associated with the theme ‘Water Supply and Sanitation for All’. Local actions related to the theme ‘Water for Growth and Development’ were third (18%), those related to ‘Water Management for Food and the Environment’ were fourth (17%), and those related to ‘Risk Management’ were last (7%).

The Americas region submitted 885 local actions (García & Aguilar, 2006) and the thematic ranking was the same as the global ranking. ‘Implementing IWRM’ and ‘Water Supply and Sanitation for All’ were also in first and second place (28% and 24%, respectively). ‘Water for Growth and Development’, ‘Water Management for Food and the Environment’, and ‘Risk Management’ followed, with 22%, 21%, and 5% respectively.

Of course, this can be interpreted as revealing the importance of IWRM as the foundation for its proper utilization, both globally as stated in the Forum's final report, and in the Americas region. However, there is a strong temptation to ask the following biased questions: if globally, 31% of local actions were about IWRM, does that mean that 69% were not? Similarly, in the Americas, if 28% of local actions were about IWRM, does it mean that 72% were not? If all the local actions associated with water for growth and development, water supply and sanitation, water management for food and the environment, and risk management did not need to use the IWRM approach, for what purpose was then IWRM used?

The Operative Committee of the Americas (OCA) that coordinated the participation of the region in the Forum named an independent Committee to rank the local actions submitted for the purpose of being included in the Regional Report of the Americas. Of the 11 highest ranked IWRM local actions, four were associated with reforestation in upper watersheds and conservation of water resources; two were associated with bi-national arrangements for watershed management; one was associated with educational programmes for IWRM; one dealt with the management of invading plant species in water bodies for their use by local artisans; one was related to bio-treatment of waste water; one described the agreements reached in Mexico's Lerma-Chapala basin for the distribution of its water resources; and one described the Mexico National Water Plan.

Apart from the last two, all of the others seemed to describe actions that had been taking place before under a different name, and it is hard to rationalize how they could belong to a group described as the foundation for a proper utilization of water resources for growth and development, water supply and sanitation, food and the environment or risk management. However, the common denominator is that all involved the coordinated participation of many actors (local, municipal, state and federal).

Troubling Questions for Practitioners

Given the previous discussions, there is a temptation to ask the following questions:

•	Is IWRM applicable mainly at the institutional and associative levels and only towards the creation of an enabling environment, and not at the operational level? (Figure 2).
•	Is it now IWRM instead of IWRM, meaning that the emphasis is in integration instead of water resources management?
•	Should the emphasis be on water resources management instead of integration?
•	Should the importance of integration diminish as the actions move from the constitutional level to the associative and to the operational levels, or vice versa?
•	Is IWRM now more related to the exercise of government and governance than to water management?
•	Is IWRM more concerned with the integration of the water resource with other resources rather than within the water resource itself?
•	Has the incorporation of institutional, social, environmental and political aspects migrated the discussion to issues within these other sectors, rather than within the water sector itself or its relationships with the other sectors?
•	Has the discussion of IWRM moved out of water into the socio-economic, socio-political and ideological arenas?

These are indeed troubling questions for practitioners. There should be hope that the answers are not. There should be hope that the answers will help them take the third and subsequent giant steps mentioned earlier, so that IWRM is used to achieve practical results for the end-users of water.

Notes

1. Other surveys have also been made, with similar results.