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7.2 Adaptive water resource
management
The history of water management is, in many
ways, a history of searches for universally
applicable solutions (Moench, 1999).
The “development era” focused on construction
of large-scale infrastructure projects such as dams
and municipal supply schemes. In a similar
manner, many now advocate economic pricing,
basin approaches, integrated planning, the
development of participatory water management
institutions and demand management as “the”
solution to management needs. The principle of
adaptive management turns many current debates
on resource management on their head. Instead of
getting bogged down debating whether or not
decentralised participatory approaches are better
than centralised ones for water management, the
principle of adaptive management involves
working from the specifics of a given problem
outwards, to the best solution for addressing it.
Some problems may be best addressed through
decentralised participatory approaches; others may
require more centralised forms of planning and
intervention (Moench, 1999, Batchelor 2001).
Adaptive management is also a process by
which management actions and directions are
adjusted in the light of new information on
current and likely future conditions. It recognises
the limitations of current knowledge and the
potential impacts of current resource management
strategies and also recognises that there is a
disjuncture between the inherent variability of
natural and social systems and the tendency for
management approaches to cluster around a
few management models. New management
paradigms emerge in response to the limitations
in earlier ones. When these new paradigms
become dominant, their inherent limitations
emerge and they are gradually discarded in
favour of new “better” paradigms.
The rapid pace of technical, social and
economic change in Andhra Pradesh is such that
it is very difficult to predict future patterns of
water supply and demand with any great
confidence. The possible impacts of short and
long term climate changes add further
uncertainty. This being the case, resource
management systems are required that are flexible
and able to adapt to new challenges.
7.3 Integrated water resource
management
In many areas, competition and equitable
access to water resources was not an issue as long
as the size of the “cake” was growing. Now,
however, competition over access is emerging as a
major issue in semi-arid areas and one that has
the potential to have a serious long-term impact
on the livelihoods of people living in these areas.
Lack of integration between the sectors
involved in water resources planning and
management is a fundamental impediment to
improved water resource management. In general,
there is little integration between the watershed
development, water supply and sanitation (WSS)
and power sectors despite the fact that all three
sectors impact hugely on the availability and
access to water resources and, hence, on the
livelihoods of urban and rural communities. For
example, in semi-arid India, an unintended
impact of watershed development and RWSS
source protection measures is an increase in
groundwater extraction for irrigation that can
lead to an increasing risk of resource-related
failure of village water supplies. A potential
unintended impact of power sector reform is also
a big increase in groundwater extraction that may
also impact adversely on rural drinking water
supplies. Given that the profitability of
“commercial” irrigated cropping is so high, new
tariffs are unlikely to limit groundwater
extraction by larger farmers. However, they are
likely to make pumping costs too high for poor
and marginal farmers that are growing subsistence
crops. In contrast to the previous two examples,
in many areas, the livelihoods of all farmers
(i.e. the relatively rich and the poor and marginal
farmers) are being affected by the reallocation of
water resources, that they were using for
irrigation, to meet the ever increasing demands of
urban areas.
Regardless of official policy (or norms), access
and allocation issues tend to have major political
and economic ramifications. Furthermore the
mechanisms used for allocation, touch deep
cultural, ethical and often religious sensitivities.
Clearly integrated water resource management is
needed that involves identification of the multiple
impacts and trade-offs resulting from current or
proposed sectoral policies. Once these impacts
and trade-offs are identified (by water auditing or
other procedures) it is then up to the political
process to make informed decisions.
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