Integrated water resources management (IWRM) has been recognized by many actors as the appropriate approach to respond to challenges in water resources management in a sustainable way. The main players in developing and diffusing the IWRM concept have included expert groups, international organizations, and multistakeholder platforms, which cooperated in various activities promoting the IWRM co...

The recognition that water plays a central role in industrial, agricultural, economic, social and cultural development has, over the past half century, led to the development of strategic management approaches based on the concept of integrated water resources management (IWRM). This paper assesses the extent to which IWRM theory has been converted into practice and identifies existing "researc...

In the region of the Lower Jordan River a steadily increasing population has access only to constantly decreasing natural freshwater resources. Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) considers social, economical and ecological objectives when deciding over long-term strategies in a study area. IWRM is collaborative and knowledge intensive, but missing operational guidelines and data manag...

In Canada, IWRM has evolved from comprehensive river basin management in the 1940s, as an explicit way to integrate economic, social and environmental considerations, to incorporate the perspectives of stakeholders. IWRM is also designed to overcome ‘edge’ effects (overlap of responsibility and authority between two or more public agencies) as well as vertical and horizontal fragmentation. In t...

IWRM is an empirical concept which has been founded on the experience of water practitioners. In other words, it is not a scientific theory to be confirmed or rejected. In turn, it is a set of guidelines derived from conventional understanding of key elements of water management. Experience shows that the countries and governments who start reforms in water sector, focus on policy making, and l...

This paper discusses the development of an analytical support system for implementation of the Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) process. The system integrates four analytical tools: (i) geographic information system; (ii) system dynamics simulation; (iii) agent-based model; and (iv) hydrologic simulation. The choice of tools is driven by their ability to (a) respond to the main requ...

IWRM experiences in developing countries present a case in point. At the operational level, they take a rather narrow view of the concept and have largely tended to be introduced as a blueprint package. The key to successful IWRM implementation is integration—of the local resources and in the local context.

This paper analyzes the evolution of the concept of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) at international conferences over the past three decades and addresses the prospects of IWRM in resolving the current water crisis. It also identifies seven crucial challenges to implementing IWRM. Our rivers and aquifers are the life-blood of the planet. To achieve sustainable development, we must ...

WaterBase is a project of the United Nations University. Its aim is to advance the practice of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) in developing countries, by providing (a) free, open source tools for modeling and decision support (b) a collection of IWRM resources: web sites, tools, literature, training material, etc. and (c) a community of partners who can provide advice, support, co...

Integrated water resources management (IWRM) and adaptive management (AM) are two institutional and management paradigms designed to address shortcomings within water systems governance; the limits of hierarchical water institutional arrangements in the case of IWRM and the challenge of making water management decisions under uncertainty in the case of AM. Recently, there has been a trend to me...