Building Water Resilience in the Face of Global Change: From a Blue-Only to a Green-Blue Water Approach to Land-Water Management

Abstract

In 2006 we wrote an editorial for the Journal that highlighted the urgent need for a shift in thinking in water resources governance and management to improve our understanding of social- ecological water challenges and to correct the assessment of water requirements and investment opportunities necessary to feed a growing world population and meet increasing water demands ⬚⬚Falkenmark and Rockström 2006⬚⬚. We named this a move from a blue ⬚⬚runoff⬚⬚ focus to a broadened green-blue ⬚⬚soil moisture and runoff⬚⬚ focus ⬚⬚Falkenmark and Rockström 2004⬚⬚. The fundamen- tal implication is a shift from seeing runoff to seeing precipitation as the primary water source in governance and management. It furthermore implies a shift from applying integrated water re- sources management ⬚⬚IWRM⬚⬚ as solely a runoff-based manage- ment framework to implementing it as a rain-based water management framework.