Sustainability Issues in Water Management in the Context of Water Security

Abstract

This chapter basically complements Chap. 13on river basin management in Turkey and elaborates further on the concepts of sustainability, integrated water resources management (IWRM), and water security. Sustainability and IWRM are long renowned concepts in Turkey, but their integration into developmental issues and water management has been rather slow. The same is true for the fundamental basis of water security although it is also a new concept in the world. In Turkey, the basic difficulty has been to perceive the link between sustainability, water resources, and development. Misconceptions on these linkages and drawbacks related to institutional and legal aspects of water management in the country have slowed down the development of sound policies for decision making in management. Studies on these issues long remained at academic level, and the early institutional responses were rather slow. The chapter discusses the above problems and presents examples of the few studies carried out on sustainability and water security, including the water-food-energy nexus.