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On the matter of sustainable water resources management
Citation:
SHUSTER, W. D. On the matter of sustainable water resources management. Chapter 6, Sustainability: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives. Bentham Science Publishers, Ltd., Oak Park, IL, , pp 112-140, (2012).
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the public.
Description:
This chapter attempts to develop the concept of sustainability and make it operational in the realm of water resources management. Water is unique in its primacy among natural resources as an essential component of life itself. Due to its equally unique chemical and physical properties, water carries with it a history of where it has been and its courses in the hydrologic cycle are readily measured or observed. However, the transience of some fluxes of water in the hydrologic cycle is more difficult to predict or manage; it is often impossible to accumulate all the necessary freshwater resources in one place by rainfall and runoff alone. Therefore we must manage other parts of the water cycle to account for anthropogenic objectives, and this would include mining groundwater, controlling evaporation in irrigated systems among a host of other trade-offs that currently sit on economic factors. We will explore how social-equity and environmental objectives must be considered with the same weight given economic factors. The influence of an expanded and more integrated view of the hydrologic cycle is illustrated through examples and case studies, and provides some introduction and ideas for the notion that water resources can be more sustainably managed through recognizing inputs and outputs that each present riches of exchangeable social, cultural, natural resource, and technological capitals.
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On the matter of sustainable water resources management
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