Integrated Water Resources Management: Global Theory, Emerging Practice and Local Needs: 01 (Water in South Asia) - Hardcover

This is an outstanding contribution that calls for the need to examine prospects of future water management in South Asia from an interdisciplinary knowledge base perspective. It is strongly recommended as it examines the risks and uncertainties in knowledge, involved while taking wise decisions on IWRM in South Asia. (Down to Earth)

This book, by engaging with some of the critical conceptual issues in IWRM and providing illustrative and actual case studies, would definitely contribute to sharpening the IWRM discourse globally and at the same time help make it more socially relevant in the South Asian context.

(The Book Review)

The hallmark of this volume is its focus on the comparison and addressing, at the South Asian water-related conflicts in the future....The study provides valuable information about how the south Asian countries were facing the challenge of providing water facing for a very large population.

(Dawn)

Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) has become the international label for the ‘new approach’ to water resources management. This volume, and in fact the entire series, investigates how this global concept resonates with regional, national and local concerns in South Asia. This is the first volume in a new series under the aegis of the South Asia Consortium for Interdisciplinary Water Resources Studies (SaciWATERs) and explains the IWRM. This volume begins by tracking the emergence of IWRM as a central notion in water debates. It then discusses the European experience with IWRM in the context of the European Water Framework Directive—the most comprehensive attempt so far at an IWRM-based water governance and management system. Thereafter, the book turns to South Asia. Among other things, the contributors argue that: - in South Asia, IWRM is a concept in search of a constituency, and not a concept that has emerged from regional or local practice; - understanding and implementing IWRM requires interdisciplinary analysis and frameworks; - IWRM is a ‘boundary’ concept—plastic enough to adapt to local needs and the constraints of several parties employing it, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites; - there are issues and limits in transplanting the model of river basin organizations, a central thrust within the global IWRM discourse; and — a focus on water alone may be misguided, and that IWRM should look intensely at land-water linkages.