Addressing Water Governance Challenges in the Anthropocene

Abstract

Water governance, negotiation between actors and institutions for the effective implementation of acceptable water allocation and regulation, faces a plethora of challenges over the coming decades. The challenges arising from population growth, development, climate variability as well as climate change impacts. Concurrently, a crisis of governance has been recognised as one of the major issues facing global water resources over the past decades. The duality of essential role water governance plays in responding to these challenges and the recognised limitations and failures of governance regimes to adequately manage legacy issues predicates the value of closer investigation of both water governance challenges and solutions in the context of climate change and uncertainty. This chapter provides an introduction to the developments in both the challenges to and solutions from water governance over the past few decades.