Editorial

Water resources insecurity and risk have long been global concerns. Academia, governments, private-sector groups, and nongovernmental and international organizations are studying, as extensively as possible, the probable impacts of climate variability and change, as well as of other global changes (or megatrends), on water resources and the possible consequences on other sectors.

An extraordinary effort in this regard is the comprehensive assessment coordinated by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD). The Hindu Kush Himalayan Monitoring and Assessment Programme (HIMAP, http://hi-map.org/) has the objective of advancing the state of knowledge on the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region, as well as the understanding of drivers of change and their impacts. It also aims to inform stakeholders in general, and policy makers in particular, on the complex situations the HKH is facing in an era of global change. This includes the economic, social, environmental and cultural challenges for the 210 million people who live in the mountains and who are affected directly, and the more than 1.3 billion people who are affected indirectly, as well as the sources of water, food and energy and ecosystem services.

This in-depth multi-authored and multi-institutional study will undoubtedly contribute to advancing the understanding of mountains globally. Dr David J. Molden, director-general of ICIMOD and a member of our editorial board, has been key to the realization of this study. On behalf of the International Journal of Water Resources Development, we congratulate Dr Molden, his team at ICIMOD and the numerous other researchers who collaborated in this study.

China Water Risk, in collaboration with Prof. Jia Shaofeng, Dr Jiabao Yan and Dr Wenhua Liu at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, have carried out another important assessment in the HKH region. No Water, No Growth (China Water Risk, 2018) focuses on the economic risks and impacts of climate change in the region, a region that generates over $4 trillion per year in its 16 countries and 10 major river basins. It proposes that the focus of water in Asia has to go beyond availability of clean water to what is called ‘water-nomics’, where water resources are managed within a framework of economic development and vice versa. The report argues that the governments of all the countries in this region have to develop a roadmap for how to produce higher GDP with less water. The Yangtze River is presented as an example where trade-offs are being decided on a win-win situation as much as possible. This is not surprising, given that the Yangtze River Economic Belt generates approximately 42% of GDP, one-third of rice production, and 73% of hydroelectricity at the national level. The performance of the 16 HKH countries is compared to that of the G20. On behalf of the International Journal of Water Resources Development, we congratulate Prof. Shaofeng Jia, also member of our editorial board, for this contribution.

This volume, the last of 2018, includes 10 articles and one book review. Two articles focus on different aspects of water security in urban settings: water reuse in London (Goodwin, Raffin, Jeffrey, & Smith, 2017) and water insecurity in informal settlements in Malawi (Adams, 2017).

Potable and non-potable water reuse are becoming increasingly important to diversity water resources portfolios of good-quality water for different uses such as potable, domestic non-potable, commercial, industrial, agricultural, environmental. Reused water for potable and/or non-potable purposes has been used for years in Windhoek, Namibia; Orange County, California; and Singapore. New schemes have been developed in England and Brussels. In the United States, the number of cities that are developing similar initiatives continues to increase. A main limitation has been public acceptance. In his article, Goodwin et al. (2017) discuss the influence of the media on the views of the public in the case of a water-reuse proposal in London.

Adams (2017) discusses water security from the perspective of an informal settlement in a developing city, where the population is overdependent on communal water kiosks that are not always functional. The author reinforces the view that policy attention is necessary to solve this problem, and that infrastructure, as important as it is, is only the first step in access to clean and reliable sources of drinking water.

Two articles on coastal areas in Bangladesh emphasize the importance of water insecurity and poverty (Borgomeo, Hall, & Salehin, 2017) and of social learning for adaptive delta management (Mutahara, Warner, Wals, Khan, & Wester, 2017). Both discuss the complexity of poverty and water insecurity under uncertain hydro-climatic conditions, for which multilevel learning and collaboration are required.

Of the several articles that focus on water management for agriculture, the one by Calatrava and Martínez-Granados (2017) discusses the limited success of water markets in the Segura River basin, one of the most water-scarce regions not only in Spain but also in Europe. The authors analyze in depth the many different reasons for this, such as economic costs and institutional and political constraints. Two of the many interesting findings of this article are that the costs farmers have to pay for water transportation, distribution and losses are much higher than the prices agreed to in the contracts, and that, in exceptional cases, the price can be similar to that of desalinized seawater.

A book review by a young scholar at the Institute of Water Policy, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, is also part of the issue.

Regarding our International Journal of Water Resources Development, from January 2019, in addition to the six issues we publish per year, we will start publishing online supplements which will be Open Access. We invite interested guest editors to prepare whole or themed supplements, as well as interested authors to submit papers for both the regular and the supplemental Open Access publications.

Finally, as we normally do at the end of every year, we would like to thank most sincerely the members of our editorial board for their support, our authors for publishing their works with us and, most especially, the experts who agree to act as reviewers of the articles we publish. It would not be an overstatement to say that not only the International Journal of Water Resources Development but every journal owes all their reviewers a great debt of gratitude. We hope we can continue counting on the support of all of you.