Conclusions: The future of sustainable water management

Abstract

Ensuring sufficient unpolluted water for urban, agricultural, and industrial use is arguably the most important issue facing the world's communities. Countries such as Australia are currently unable to supply enough water to many areas in times of drought, and it is estimated that perhaps a billion people in the Asia-Pacific Region face the prospect of unsafe water at all times. This chapter and book take a new and skeptical look at some of the underlying factors that affect the management of this vital resource and the proposed solutions. Traditionally, water management policies and practices have dealt only with problems of water distribution to meet the ever-increasing demand, rather than better management of existing resources. The largely fragmented approach that results has contributed to the overexploitation of water resources. Nevertheless, in many parts of Australia, China, South Africa, Canada, the United States, Europe, Japan, and elsewhere, efforts are currently being made to better manage water distribution systems using proactive methods instead of simply reacting to supply and demand problems. Proactive management methods include new ways of accounting for water and methods for reducing losses, as well as benchmarking against international high performers. However, there are no across-the-board solutions since context matters and managers must therefore learn from local operating experience. The difficulties experienced by integrative efforts in this situation indicate that a significant part of the problem lies in the structures of governance in the water industry. Water management should be a regional, national, and international level concern, and it is in many places but generally at the level of policy rather than responsibility for infrastructure and pricing of water.