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| Sustainable Water Management |
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Projects
Sustainable Water
Management: A Comparative Watershed Analysis (1999)
Water
for Life: An AV-Production about the Sustainable Use of Our Water
Resources (2000)
Principal Investigators
MIT:
H.Hemond, J.Durant, W.Thilly, J.Gawel
UT: S.Ohgaki, T.Mino,
H.Furumai
ETH: A.Zehnder (leader), U.Bundi, W.Wagner,
L.Lutz
Univ. Sao Paolo: M.de Souza, L.Rios
Freshwater is
considered to be the first natural resource to reach its limit on a
global scale as the demand by a growing global population continues
to increase. In many arid and semi-arid regions of the world, water
stress is already causing severe nutrition and health problems,
limiting economic and social development, and leading to political
tensions in trans-boundary river basins. Concerns about the
sustainability of water resources present a motivation to better
understand the driving forces and the consequences of water use.
Enlightened watershed management is a necessary component of global
sustainability.
Goals/Objectives
The primary goal
of this project was to derive generally applicable criteria and
concepts for sustainable water management, so as to contribute to
the evolution of an integrative evaluation methodology as a
practical decision-making tool. The analysis focused on the process
of utilizing scientific findings in society and politics,
particularly the interrelations between sustainable water management
and social, economic, and institutional prerequisites.
To
accomplish these goals, the project had the following specific
objectives:
- To analyze how former policy decisions have influenced social,
economic and environmental developments under various political
and economic conditions
- To carry out a comparative analysis of development among
watersheds from a policy perspective to contribute to promising
concepts for sustainable water management
- To bridge knowledge gaps between trade-offs among surface
versus groundwater use, supply treatment versus wastewater
treatment, conservation versus re-use, and centralized treatment
versus subsidized disposal
The goal of the second phase
of the project focused on providing the information on sustainable
water management for outreach and education. To do so, the group
carried out audio-visual production to be used for educating key
players, including policy makers, private and public companies,
authorities from the local to the national level, environmentalists,
and the individual customers.
Findings/Results
The
first phase of this research focused on in-depth analysis of four
watersheds, namely the Aberjona watershed (USA), the Tama watershed
(Japan) and the Toess watershed (Switzerland), and the Atibaia
watershed (Brazil). Individual research groups involved in the
collaboration carried out the case studies.
Historically,
the industrialized watersheds have attempted to meet their
highest-priority water management goals by implementing
energy-and-finance-intensive technological measures to restore or
prevent further degradation of water resources. As a consequence,
the growth pattern followed by industrialized countries and their
technological approach to overcome the arising environmental
problems are poor models for the newly industrialized regions. The
comparative case studies generated the following additional
observations:
- Commonalities among the four watersheds suggest that some
watershed processes tend to be universal
- A clear mutual dependency between socioeconomic development
and the state of water resources was observed in each case
- For sustainable water resource management in newly
industrialized regions, it is essential to recognize the
environmental effects of development at an early stage and to
include the environmental aspects in any development plans from
the beginning
- Rather than restoration and remediation, the results suggest
that preservation be seen as a priority early in the development
process
The case studies highlighted different
prioritization of water management in the four areas, stemming from
differences in the developmental stage, water usage, socio-cultural
factors, etc. Such differences point to the challenges associated
with developing a globally applicable criteria and concepts for
sustainable water management.
More Information
Website
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