Features WATER: Local-level Management Overview (slide show) Facts & Figures on Fresh Water Local Solutions to the Global Water Crisis WATER / Part 1. The Issue Managing freshwater scarcities constitutes one of the great imperatives of governance almost everywhere in the world; local management is an indispensable component.

Setting the Scene: The Facts on Water Scarcity

Environmental Trends, The State of World Population 2001
As reported by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the global population has tripled in 70 years while water use has grown six-fold. More than 1 billion people currently lack access to safe drinking water and 3 billion people lack access to basic sewage systems. More than 90 percent of all the sewage produced in the developing countries returns to the land and water untreated. UNFPA calculates that 508 million people lived in 31 water-stressed or water-scarce countries in 2000; by 2025 those numbers will likely rise to 3 billion people in 48 countries.

World Resources Institute
This Web site features a range of information on water resources and freshwater ecosystems including watershed maps and profiles, which explore 145 watersheds around the world, including 91 that cross international borders. It also provides some useful links to related sites.

Presentation to Donors' Meeting, Water Demand Management Research Network
On a global basis, watersheds in arid and semi-arid regions are home to about one billion people but contain 70% of the world's poorest people, and 44% of the children whose growth is stunted by malnutrition. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region itself has 5% of the world's population but less than 1% of its renewable freshwater availability. Of 20 nations with internal renewable fresh water availability below 1000 cubic metres per capita, 15 are in MENA. In a November 1999 presentation at IDRC's Regional Office in Cairo, David B. Brooks, author of Water: Local-level Management, argues that demand management is the best yet least understood option for water in the coming decades.

Water Management in Africa and the Middle East: Challenges and Opportunities
(edited by Eglal Rached, Eva Rathgeber, and David B. Brooks; IDRC 1996)
A water crisis is looming in Africa and the Middle East, where annual renewable freshwater available per person has declined by half since 1950, and continues to decline. In this book, scientists take stock of the crisis, identify key issues and trends, and map out strategies for further research and action. They take a close look at the problems that beset different regions: from drought-prone East Africa to the Middle East — where water is a major factor in regional conflicts — to tropical areas — where water quality is a concern and water-borne diseases are endemic.

WATER RESOURCES AND THE POTENTIAL FOR CONFLICT

It is now conventional wisdom that water scarcities typically reach beyond community boundaries and political borders; they are generally the shared problems of countries and continents. Indeed, for many countries, the water body is the border. About 40 percent of the world's population lives now in river basins shared by more than one country. Scores of communities (such as Israel and Palestine) rely for drinking water on the same over-stressed aquifers. This is why water scarcity, ill-governed, raises the risk of conflict. It is also why people find ways to manage shared water much more often by cooperation than by warfare.

Dossier: Conflict Over Natural Resources
Why do conflicts arise over natural resources — land, water, forests, etc. — in Canada and elsewhere in the world? Explore the socioeconomic, cultural, and political factors that contribute to this problem and examine various ways of managing it.

Related articles

Israeli and Palestinian Waters: Economics, Ecology and Equity
This article is an abridgment of the keynote address by David B. Brooks at the First Israeli-Palestinian International Academic Conference on Water in Zurich, Switzerland, in December 1992, organized by the Truman Institute for Peace at Hebrew University and the Jerusalem Center for Strategic Studies (MAQDES), a Palestinian organization. The conference was sponsored by IDRC and several other organizations.

Access to Water in the Eastern Mediterranean: A Cause of Conflict or Source of Cooperation?
(December 1998) One of the historic causes of conflict in the Middle East is emerging as a potential instrument for promoting regional cooperation. In the long run, the common need for water can also serve as an important element in the peace building process, said speakers at a November 1998 seminar hosted by IDRC and Carleton University.

Drinking (Water) With Your Enemy
(December 2000) If there is political will for peace, water will not be a hindrance. If you want reasons to fight, water will give you ample opportunities. (Uri Shamir, Israeli hydrologist)

Burkina Faso: Managing Conflict at the Village Handpump and Beyond
(June 2001) Young men in Silmiougou, a village in central Burkina Faso, would like a fair chance at finding wives in nearby villages. But they have a big handicap that is unrelated to their own suitability as husbands: their village has only one handpump for 3,000 people. This fact makes women from outside Silmiougou dread the idea of marrying a man from there. They know their lives would be filled with the daily drudgery of spending hours fetching enough water to meet their family's needs.

Related books

Watershed: The Role of Fresh Water in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
(Stephen C. Lonergan and David B. Brooks; IDRC 1995)
Watershed describes the water crisis faced by Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories today. The authors examine the geopolitics of water in the region, the economic importance, problems of water supply and water quality, and regional conflicts over water. They offer immediate solutions to water problems in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Watershed is a unique examination of water as a source of conflict and as a possible part of the peace process.

Water Balances in the Eastern Mediterranean
(edited by David B. Brooks and Ozay Mehmet; IDRC 2000)
The roots of destabilization, migration, and local conflict around the world can often be traced to a lack of fresh water. In the Middle East and the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean region, the situation is approaching crisis proportions. People living in this part of the world have only one-sixth as much fresh water available per capita as the global average. Although predictions of a Middle Eastern "water war" are dissipating, the need for regional cooperation in the effective management of water resources is no less urgent.

Management of Shared Groundwater Resources: The Israeli–Palestinian Case with an International Perspective
(edited by Eran Feitelson and Marwan Haddad; IDRC/Kluwer Academic 2001)
For their supply of freshwater, both Palestinians and Israelis rely heavily on underground aquifers beneath Israel and the Palestinians territories. These aquifers are at the heart of ongoing negotiations between Palestine and Israel, as water is often considered a major obstacle to peace. This book presents a framework for the joint management of shared aquifers, with specific reference and proposals for the major Israeli–Palestinian case: the Mountain Aquifer. It is the first book to explicitly address the issue of cross-border groundwater management, an issue that is increasingly becoming a focal point of discussions at both the international and cross-jurisdictional levels.

WHY LOCAL WATER MANAGEMENT?

Community-based natural resource management — specifically water management — must play a critical part in solving scarcity problems. Local water management permits a democratizing decentralization of decision and accountability. Well done, it empowers people to take part in the decisions that define their own futures. And it encourages the integration of traditional knowledge with innovative science to promote fair and efficient supply management.

The Dublin Statement on Water and Sustainable Development
Five hundred participants, including government-designated experts from a hundred countries and representatives of eighty international, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations attended the International Conference on Water and the Environment in Dublin, Ireland, January 26-31, 1992. At its closing session, the Conference adopted the Dublin Statement. The participants called for fundamental new approaches to the assessment, development, and management of freshwater resources,  through political commitment and involvement from the highest levels of government to the smallest communities.

A Lesson in Water Management from the Developing World
(July 2002) What is the best way to manage our water supply? Canadians may learn from the experience of local communities in other parts of the world argue Mark Winfield, the Director of the Environmmental Governance Program at the Pembina Institute, and David B. Brooks, natural resource economist.

Helping the Thirsty to Solve Their Water Crisis
(November 1997)  "Unless current trends are reversed, we will have a major water crisis around the planet," said World Bank Vice-President, Dr Ismail Serageldin, of the silent calamity threatening humanity. Although the Earth has enough water to supply its inhabitants, unequal distribution creates havoc.

Cultivating Peace: Conflict and Collaboration in Natural Resource Management
(edited by Daniel Buckles; IDRC/World Bank 1999)
Conflict over natural resources — such as land, water, and forests — has for ages been widespread. Cultivating Peace presents original case studies from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, interspersed with essays on the cultural dimensions of conflict, the meaning of stakeholder analysis, the impact of development interventions on peace and conflict, and the policy dimensions of conflict management. The case studies present important developing-world experience on moving from conflict to collaborative modes of management.

IDRC Briefing: Cultivating Peace: From Conflict to Collaboration in Natural Resource Management
(December 2000) Whether it be a local dispute between neighbouring farmers or an international debate over shared resources such as a waterway, people compete for the natural resources they need to ensure or enhance their quality of life. In many instances where a natural resource lies at the centre of a dispute, solutions are increasingly being found in the form of a new and growing field of research and practice: community-based natural resource management (CBNRM).

• Water: Local-level Management
  Slide show (overview)

In Conversation: David Brooks on Water Scarcity and Local-level Management 2002-03-15
There is no silver bullet for managing the water shortages facing many countries, but there is one aspect that has not been sufficiently recognized as part of the solution: water management at the local or community level. This is the point of view of David Brooks, the author of the recent book WATER: Local-level Management published by IDRC.