Integrated Water Resources Management: STRIVER Efforts to Assess the Current Status and Future Possibilities in Four River Basins

Abstract

This paper summarizes the main findings from the EC-funded STRIVER project (’Strategy and methodology for improved IWRM – An integrated interdisciplinary assessment in four twinning river basins’, 2006-2009) which focused on core elements and a variety of important issues relating to Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). Results from the four case basins: Glomma (Norway), Tagus (Spain and Portugal), Tungabhadra (India) and Sesan (Vietnam and Cambodia) are presented. Emphasis is placed on assessing the current status of IWRM and specific IWRM problems occurring in the basins which include transboundary water governance, environmental flows, water pollution, land - water use interactions, stakeholder participation and basic environmental data. The experiences of the interaction between the STRIVER scientists and local stakeholders are also presented in the paper. The results clearly indicate that research projects like STRIVER can play a “neutral” and more objective role in identifying and contributing to the resolution of IWRM problems. In addition, such projects can facilitate stakeholder integration and participation. In STRIVER, stakeholder experience and knowledge complemented discussions about IWRM which had a basis in STRIVER produced science-based results. Stakeholders in the basins demonstrated a special interest in the results of the scientific tools developed in the project (e.g., on pollution modeling and environmental flow) and in the scenarios developed jointly by the scientists and the stakeholders during three stakeholder workshops in each of the four case basins. The paper concludes with a set of policy guidelines derived from the different analyses conducted in the project, which propose initiatives concerning IWRM implementation in the case basins and beyond.