Integrating Water Management in the Anthropocene

Abstract

Integrated water resources management (IWRM) has been the dominant discursive frame for global water governance since the 1992 Rio Declaration. Yet it is increasingly criticized as inadequately incorporating ethical or political contexts in governance coordination. This policy review considers the two main iterations of IWRM: rational planning and economic decentralization. It recasts the claimed “failings” of IWRM with respect to each by arguing that governance programs need to internalize the notion that we live in the Anthropocene, wherein humans are understood as major drivers of planetary systems. This requires keeping both technical and ethical-political contexts at the fore of water governance.

Keywords:

• complex systems
• ethics
• integration
• science–society
• water management