The record-setting 2011-2012 drought was the worst in the central regions of the United States since the 1930s. Short-term impacts included crop failures, job losses, water shortages, energy impacts, navigation problems and environmental losses. The event reinforced the need for water security...

Integrated water resources management provides a set of ideas to help us manage water more holistically. However, these ideas have been formalized over time in what has now become, in capitals, Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), with specific prescriptive principles whose...

The failure of conventional approaches to achieve equitable and sustainable water management has prompted a new way of perceiving and acting with water. This is creating a 'new water paradigm' that emphasizes broader stakeholder involvement; integration of sectors, issues and disciplines;...

This article traces the history of integrated water resources management (IWRM) in South Africa since the 1970s. It examines IWRM according to its three common pillars, which are also reflected in South Africa's National Water Act: economic efficiency, environmental sustainability, and equity....

The management of water resources among traditional societies in Ghana has been based on indigenous knowledge systems and practices. Colonial administrations subsequently vested water administration at the central level, without proper coordination, resulting in disjointed management systems....

The lessons and opportunities of integrated water resource management in Ontario are described by focusing attention on conservation authorities: watershed-based agencies formed between 1946 and 1979. Six foundational principles of the programme are explained: the watershed as the management...

Negotiations between Afghanistan and Pakistan to share the international watercourses in the Kabul Basin will involve complex networks of natural, societal and political systems. The natural systems are strongly influenced by climate change; societal interests include an economy based on...

Nogales, Sonora, on the US-Mexico border, employs interbasin water and wastewater transfers to address water scarcity in the context of a rising population, a warming climate, and cross-border institutional asymmetries. A unique feature of its geography and border context is Nogales's export of...