Averting the Global Water Crisis: Three Considerations for a New Decade of Water Governance

Water is the most essential resource on the planet. Not only do we need it for basic survival, but our economies and natural ecosystems also rely on it. Governance structures for water management in many countries are weak and fragmented; institutional and administrative rules, practices, and processes are inadequate.¹ The resultant challenges are of a nature and scale that truly constitute a global crisis.²

Today, over two billion people live in regions where water demand outstrips supply, and it is anticipated that by 2050 there will be five billion people (half the global population) living in these "water-stressed" regions.³ Over 80 percent of the world's wastewater is returned to rivers and oceans untreated,⁴ polluting waterways and causing damage to ecosystems and human health and livelihoods. Overextraction and pollution of water have significantly affected the environment, with over 60 percent of ecosystem services being degraded or used unsustainably.⁵ In addition to the intrinsic value of nature, this degradation represents an annual loss of USD $3–5 trillion in natural capital.⁶ Lastly, while water has been internationally recognized as a human right,⁷ 2.1 billion people still lack access to safe drinking water, and 4.5 billion lack access to adequate sanitation services like clean, functional toilets.⁸

Examples like the water contamination crisis in Flint, Michigan; record-breaking drought in California; the "Day Zero" crisis in Cape Town, South Africa; and the water crisis in Chennai, India, demonstrate that these severe water challenges are widespread and mounting.⁹ If the current evidence of crisis is not daunting enough, these challenges are only expected to be further exacerbated by climate change and the addition of one billion people to the global population by 2030, equating to an expected 40 percent increase in water demand.¹⁰

The global water crisis is mainly a crisis of governance.¹¹ Poor management and allocation of water resources by governments, communities, and water users leads to negative water outcomes like depletion and pollution. Past and current approaches to water governance have created many of the challenges we face. New approaches are needed to reverse negative trends and improve the ecological sustainability, human equity, and economic efficiency of water management. In this paper we discuss the background and recent developments of global water governance and put forth three key recommendations for reform in the coming decade, including improving groundwater governance, integrating water and climate governance, and establishing the appropriate role of the private sector in water governance.

Existing Water Governance Frameworks

The term "water governance" refers to the political, social, economic, and administrative systems that influence the use and management of water resources. It includes water policies and institutions and the roles and responsibilities of different sectors of society (public, private, and civil society) in reference to water.¹²

Over the past several decades, since the advancement of water governance as a for-mal concept at the Dublin Conference in 1992, water governance has continued to evolve. At the global level, the three dominant frameworks relating to water governance and management are Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Principles on Water Governance, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal Six on water and sanitation (SDG 6). The former two frameworks provide normative guidance on what good water governance entails, while the latter sets ambitious targets for the status of water resources management by 2030.

Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) (mid 1990s)

IWRM is defined by the Global Water Partnership as "a process which promotes the coordinated 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."¹³ IWRM is a conceptual framework, a set of common sense suggestions for "good" water governance based on the principles of social equity, economic efficiency, and environmental sustainability. It is the most commonly used guiding framework for water governance; as of 2018, over 40 percent of countries are implementing...