Full Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education, Issue ...

14Cardwell. Cole, Cartwright, and Martintime based on changing values, parameters orthe knowledge base. Because conditions such asdemographic shifts, economic or societal values,and knowledge of ecosystem interactions changeover time, water resources management must alsochange over time, requiring the incorporation ofadaptive management concepts. This reinforcesthe notion that IWRM is a process that requiresperiodic updates and review.This conceptual framework for IWRM providesa starting point for organizing thinking aboutand discussing IWRM, and thus provides thefoundation for the discussion that follows. Otheruseful frameworks are conceivable. For example,the time and institutional axes could be subsumedinto the objectives axis. Another example mightorganize spatial, temporal, and objective integrationbased on institutional types of integration, suchas functional (various agencies with variousmandates), vertical (local, state, federal), andhorizontal (state to state, local government tolocal government) (Muckleston 1990). Anotherapproach might emphasize integration of objectives(again considered in degrees) from singleobjective to watershed planning for economic andenvironmental objectives, to integration of Corpsactivities for a limited set of purposes along ariver corridor as opposed to the entire watershed,to planning across institutions’ activities formultiple objectives within an entire watershed(Stakhiv 1996). Regardless of approach, an IWRMframework should, minimally, provoke thinkingabout management integration for improved publicservice performance.Other Definitions for IWRMTo ground-truth our basic working definition ofIWRM as a coordinated, goal-directed process forcontrolling the development and use of river, lake,ocean, wetland, and other water assets, we compareit with definitions of IWRM that have been proposedby different agencies or organizations. We startwith the definition that appears to be most widelycited—that used by the Global Water Partnership:The integrated water resources management(IWRM) approach is defined as a process thatpromotes the coordinated development andmanagement of water, land and related resourcesin order to maximize the resultant economicand social welfare in an equitable mannerwithout compromising the sustainability of vitalecosystems (Global Water Partnership 2000: 22).Like our definition above, the Global WaterPartnership defines IWRM as a process. Unlikeour definition, Global Water Partnership extendsthe definition to a specific a goal – that ofmaximizing economic and social welfare to theextent allowed by an “equitable” manner and thesustainability of vital ecosystems. In extendingthe definition to explicitly set goals and constraintson water management, for better or for worse, theGlobal Water Partnership implicitly sets the IWRMconcept within a value system. Note that the goalis consistent with the sustainable developmentconcept.In terms of implementation, the Global WaterPartnership definition does not specify whataspects of management to coordinate, although thefour axes presented above can equally apply withinthe Global Water Partnership definition. TheGlobal Water Partnership also explicitly includeswater development as an aspect of management;our working definition similarly includes water“development” activities as water “management.”A second definition comes from the “water team”of the United States bi-lateral development agency—the U.S. Agency for International Development(USAID):IWRM brings together governments, communities,and other stakeholders to choose among alternativeuses of freshwater and coastal resources. Usinga participatory planning and implementationprocess, these stakeholders identify ways to meettheir diverse water needs without depleting ordamaging water resources and their underlyingecosystems (U.S. Agency for InternationalDevelopment 2003: 1).For the U.S. Agency for InternationalDevelopment, IWRM is about the process throughwhich integration should occur, focusing oninstitutional integration and objectives integration.Like the Global Water Partnership, the U.S. Agencyfor International Development definition alsoprescribes a specific goal of meeting diverse waterneeds in its definition of IWRM, and constrains theprocess by forbidding damage to water resourcesand ecosystems. The U.S. Agency for InternationalDevelopment definition focuses on uses of waterUCOWRJOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY WATER RESEARCH & EDUCATION