Sustainable development and water resource management

Abstract

Focuses on evaluating the contributions that sustainability concepts can make to the theory and practice of water resource management. Water resource management should be used as a basis for the unification of environmental, economic and social concerns, however, it is hampered by incomplete understanding of resource systems and their productivity, resilience and vulnerability to cumulative impacts. The paper discusses the limitations of the Canadian Federal Water Policy and the planning framework being pursued in the Great Lakes Basin by the International Joint Commission which is based on an ecosystem perspective of the Lakes as a functional entity. The author follows the decision-making process that led to the construction of the Dixon Dam on the Red Deer River, Canada, and concludes with some lessons for the future. -M.Z.Barber