Editorial

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in its Economic Outlook (2015), the world economy will grow at a slower pace than predicted earlier: 3.3% rather than 3.6%. The OECD suggests that lower interest rates could be considered an advantage to increase public infrastructure investments, including those necessary to tackle climate change.

In terms of water resources, this could represent an opportunity for both developed and developing countries to improve, develop and properly maintain the much-needed green and grey infrastructure to respond not only to climate change but also to the growing needs of the domestic, industrial, commercial and agricultural sectors for both water and energy. In fact, infrastructure for the water sector is predicted to be the largest percentage of global infrastructure investment by 2025 (OECD, 2012). For OECD and BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries, water spending will reach $1 trillion by 2025, almost triple the amounts that will be needed for investments in electricity or transportation. For developing countries, it is estimated that the annual needs between 2015–2030 will be in the order of $1.6–2.5 trillion for water and sanitation–related infrastructure alone. This has enormous implications for public spending, as some 75% of investments globally are from public sources in the form of loans, grants and technical assistance (World Bank, 2012).

Our Journal has always had a major focus on infrastructure and will remain interested in further comprehensive discussions on water infrastructural development. This will include aspects related to management, governance, finance, policy and politics, as well as social and environmental implications.

From 2016, our Journal will be bimonthly instead of quarterly as it has been from its inception more than three decades ago. This first bimonthly issue includes 10 contributions with a wide geographical distribution. These include contributions with focus on the United States, with a rigorous study on stakeholder collaboration in the Columbia River Treaty review process by Shively and Thompson (2015); Portugal, with a focus on social performance in public services delivery; Central Asia in general, in terms of implementation of water management projects (Yamaswari et al. 2015), Urmia Lake in Iran and the Helmand River basin in Afghanistan; and rainfall-runoff modelling for better understanding of water resources in the Upper Senegal River basin. In the Asia-Pacific region, the contributions focus on drivers of water governance reforms in the Philippines, lake management organizations in China, evaluation of Maori values in multiscalar environmental policies in New Zealand (Kanwar, Kaza, & Bowden, 2015), and uncertainty and trust among irrigators and regulatory bodies in the Murray-Darling Basin in Australia.

In terms of our Editorial Board, Dr Anthony Cox of the OECD and Dr Sivakumar Bellie of the University of South Wales in Australia are stepping down. Their support has been invaluable for the last two years. We would also like to welcome our new member, Neil S. Grigg, professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Colorado State University. Professor Grigg has a long history of collaboration with this Journal as an author and reviewer. We thus welcome him warmly.

Finally, we invite our readership to contribute to our regular and special issues. These latter will focus on topics such as water for energy, the policy and politics of water resources management, the changing nature of public participation in the water sector, water resilience for cities, and water resources in China in the context of climate change and anthropogenic activities, among others. We aim at continuing to advance the status of knowledge in all the above areas with rigorous studies and high-quality discussions.

Cecilia Tortajada
Editor-in-chief
[email protected] K. Biswas
Editor