Adaptive Water Governance: Integrating the Human Dimensions into Water Resource Governance

The governance dimensions of water security: a review.

Water governance is critical to water security, and to the long-term sustainability of the Earth's freshwater systems. This review examines recent debates regarding the governance dimensions of water security, including adaptive governance, polycentric governance, social learning and multi-level governance. The analysis emphasizes the political and institutional dimensions of water governance, ...

Resilience and Water Governance: Adaptive Governance in the Columbia River Basin

The 1964 Columbia River Treaty between the United States and Canada is currently under review. Under the treaty, the river is jointly operated by the two countries for hydropower and is the largest producer of hydropower in the western hemisphere. In considering the next phase of international river governance, the degree of uncertainty surrounding the drivers of change complicates efforts to p...

Hierarchical Structure of Water Governance

This chapter first of all reviews the organizational theory of new institutional economics in order to pave the way in literature and methodology for the study of water governance structure. Then, it proceeds with the basic implications of water governance and finds that the most important output of water governance is to ensure water security. The collective actions for this purpose result in ...

Community participation in water governance

Water governance in the twentieth-first century

The challenges facing water management have become increasingly global in scope since the 1970s. This reflects the rising awareness about the uncertainties posed by the worsening situation of the hydrosphere, and particularly freshwater, and the unsustainability of water management practices in many areas. It is also a reflection of the conflicts flaring up from the protracted social inequaliti...