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Water in the 21st Century
Heightened Awareness of Water Issues
Traditionally seen as limitless bounty, water has only recently been recognized as a scarce resource, and only since the 1950s have policymakers begun to espouse the economic and environmental values of water. Since the 1970s, a series of international meetings addressed water issues, starting with the First UN Water Conference at Mar del Plata in March 1977. This was followed by others (the box below shows the major international conferences that have drawn attention to the serious condition of the globe's freshwater resources in the last decade).
A consensus is growing among scientists, water planners, governments, and civil society that new policies and approaches will have to be adopted within the next two decades to avoid calamity, and that supply, use, and management of water resources will have to be integrated across sectors and between regions sharing the same source.
The concept of fully integrated water resource management (IWRM) emerged from the Dublin and Rio Conferences of 1992. The four guiding principles (now referred to as the Dublin Principles) are (i) freshwater is a finite and vulnerable resource, essential to sustain life, development, and the environment; (ii) water development and management should be based on a participatory approach, involving users, planners, and policymakers at all levels; (iii) women play a central part in providing, managing, and safeguarding water; and (iv) water has an economic value in all its competing uses and should be recognized as an economic good.
Major International Conferences in the 1990s
| 1990 |
Safe Water and Sanitation for the 1990s (United Nations Development Programme [UNDP], New Delhi): appealed for concerted action to ensure access for all to the basic human needs of safe drinking water and environmentally sound sanitation. |
| 1991 |
A Strategy for Water Sector Capacity Building (UNDP, Delft): defined the basic elements of capacity building necessary to create an enabling environment in the water sector. |
| 1992 |
International Conference on Water and Environment (UN, Dublin): set out the four principles of water resource management that came to be known as the Dublin Principles.
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| 1992 |
United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UN, Rio de Janeiro): promoted integrated water resource management based on the perception of water as an integral part of the ecosystem, a natural resource, and a socioeconomic good.
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| 1997 |
First World Water Forum (Marrakech): recommended action to meet basic human needs for clean water and sanitation, establish effective mechanism for management of shared waters, preserve ecosystems, encourage efficient use of water, address gender equality issues in water use, and encourage partnerships between civil society and governments.
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| 1998 |
Water and Sustainable Development (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO] and the French Government): raised concerns about tendencies to focus on scarcity as the main water crisis while neglecting problems of poor water management and the proliferation of regional coordination issues.
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| 1999 |
Fifth Joint International Conference on Hydrology (UNESCO and the World Meteorological Organization): drew attention to the catastrophic consequences of water mismanagement on the poorer communities in developing countries.
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