A story about Integrated Water Resources Management – from an idea in Copenhagen in 1991 to a global United Nations goal in 2015
By Torkil Jønch Clausen, Jens Christian Refsgaard, Henrik Larsen, Jørn Rasmussen and Jan Hassing
The beginning: The International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (1981-1990) forgot about water resources – the Water Quality Institute VKI 1 launched an initiative to address that.
The International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (IDWSSD), a global initiative that ran from 1981 to 1990 after the first UN water conference in Mar de Plata, Argentina, focused only on improving drinking water and sanitation. During this period, the availability of water resources was taken for granted.
However, even more than 40 years ago, water was already a scarce and vulnerable resource, in terms of both quantity and quality. At VKI, we questioned this omission and agreed with the Danish International Development Agency (Danida) to do something about it. A ‘Nordic Freshwater Initiative’, or ‘Copenhagen Informal Consultation on Water Resources Development and Management’, later known as Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), was then launched by VKI2. A final consultation in Copenhagen in November 1991 with 45 participants from 27 countries along with representatives from UN, adopted the Copenhagen Statement and Copenhagen Report, with the brief summary:
‘Freshwater must be recognised as a finite and vulnerable resource, which is vital for the sustenance of life, for all development activities, health and environmental maintenance. Two principles should be prime elements of future strategies for sustainable development and management of resources:
- Water and land resources should be managed at the lowest appropriate levels
- Water should be considered as an economic good, with a value reflecting its most valuable potential use’
Today, it is amazing to read this statement from more than 40 years ago – these brief principles have shaped IWRM ever since!
The birth of IWRM: From Copenhagen to Dublin and the Rio Summit in 1992 – the birth of IWRM was inspired by Copenhagen principles.
The International Conference on Water and the Environment was held in Dublin in January 1992 to shape the freshwater input to the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio, Brazil, in June 1992. The Dublin Conference was the most significant global conference on water since the first UN Water Conference in Mar de Plata, Argentina, in 1977. As a Danish Focal Point, VKI was the only non-UN member on the steering committee for the Dublin Conference, bringing the Copenhagen Statement and principles to the table, and later supported Danida as adviser in the preparatory process for the Rio Summit.
The conference resulted in the four Dublin Principles, three of which were directly inspired by Copenhagen: ‘water as a finite and vulnerable resource’, ‘participatory approach’ and ‘water as an economic good’. The fourth Dublin principle stressed the pivotal role of women in water management3.
The Dublin principles, as inspired by Copenhagen, in turn shaped the freshwater chapter of the Rio Submit outcome document, Agenda 21, officially establishing IWRM.
Africa taking the lead: Uganda, supported by Danida and VKI, took the IWRM concept from Dublin and Rio to heart and developed the Uganda Water Action Plan – the world’s first IWRM plan. Its structure still shapes IWRM today.
The Director of the Uganda Water Department was among the participants in Copenhagen in November 1991. The Copenhagen Statement and Report, as later part of shaping the Dublin and Rio outcomes, really inspired him. So, Uganda asked Danida for help to implement these principles into practice, and VKI was hired to help. Working closely with the Uganda Water Department, the Danish VKI-led team, became very visible in Uganda during the preparation of the Uganda Water Action Plan (WAP) 1992-1994.
Translating and operationalising the IWRM principles was easier said than done, but in the end the Uganda WAP (that today would have been called Uganda IWRM Plan) was recognised as a great collaborative product between Uganda and the Danish team. The Uganda WAP aimed at promoting the achievement of the three Es – Economic Efficiency, Social Equity and Environmental Sustainability – through three simple ‘IWRM pillars’ – the enabling environment, the institutional framework and the management instruments – that would balance ‘water for livelihood’ and ‘water as a resource’.
The WAP structure later shaped the IWRM concept as further development by the Global Water Partnership (GWP) in the late 1990s. With only a few modifications, this framework has remained until today.
Uganda became the cradle of IWRM in practice!
The IWRM train started rolling: The Uganda WAP inspired similar WAPs in Africa and other continents
A regional conference was held among the East African countries to present and discuss the IWRM/WAP concept. Other African countries were invited to join, including Burkina Faso that adopted the WAP concept and – again with support by Danida and help from VKI as consultant – developed a similar WAP for the country. Similarly to Uganda, the principles of IWRM were further propagated through a regional conference for West African countries.
News spread, and other countries (e.g. Nicaragua) and continents joined the Danida/VKI WAP bandwagon, still very much inspired by the Uganda model. In Vietnam, the WAP model was adopted at basin level as a WAP for the Srepok River Basin in the Southern Highlands.
The global breakthough: Global Water Partnership was formed in 1996 to promote IWRM globally, with the VKI Director as Chair of its Technical Advisory Committee, supported by VKI as secretariat.
GWP was formed in December 1995 at the initiative of the Swedish Government, the World Bank and UNDP. While drinking water supply and sanitation were well covered at the global level, no UN or other entity was committed to water resources per se, and GWP was seen as a novel model to fill this gap. Its statutes – still today – are explicitly based on the four Dublin Principles.
Through meetings and inclusive stakeholder consultations around the world from 1996-2003, GWP’s Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) mobilised countries and sub-regions around the world for the IWRM agenda. This process resulted in the creation of 13 regional TACs in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Carribbean commited to support IWRM development. Working with the global GWP Secretariat in Stockholm, VKI led this process and supported the newly formed regional TACs. Later, these were further developed into 13 regional water partnerships, and some 80 country water partnerships, that form the backbone of GWP and its more than 3000 partner institutions today.
In the early development of GWP, the IWRM concept, as based on the Dublin Principles and the freshwater chapter of Agenda 21, was developed further and documented in a series of TAC Background Papers4. From 2000 onwards, a GWP Toolbox on IWRM was developed, structured along the three IWRM pillars from Uganda, and populated with 50 specific tools supported by case studies. With minor modifications since then, that structure is still the basis of the IWRM Toolbox today.
A curious incident was part of this development: At a meeting, the TAC Chair was challenged to briefly illustrate the IWRM idea. He pulled a British Airways comb from this pocket, pointing to its teeth as the various water sub-sectors (people, food, energy, health, environment etc., several versions exist), and with the top and handle as the cross-cutting mechanism and ‘IWRM pillars’ holding them in place.
The IWRM definition and ‘comb’ are still widely used globally to illustrate ‘IWRM at a glimpse’, including its role in today’s focus on the cross-cutting nature of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Moving on globally: From Rio through Johannesburg 2002 and Rio 2012 to the 2030 Agenda and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals in New York in 2015.
A new comrade-in-arms was UNEP: In 1996, the UNEP-VKI Collaborating Centre was established, with IWRM as an important part of its mandate. That centre, now known as the UNEP-DHI Centre, made a real difference in making IWRM happen – and still does today.
The Rio+10 Summit in Johannesburg 2002 saw the first official global recognition of ‘IWRM’ by adopting a call for ‘all countries to develop IWRM and water efficiency plans by 2005’. Timewise, that was a noble but unrealistic ambition, but IWRM planning in countries all over the world accelerated, including in transboundary river basins such as the Mekong (see figure below).
Rio+20 in 2012 saw ‘some 75% of all countries making good progress’ towards IWRM. GWP, the UNEP-DHI Centre and DHI as itself supported a large number of countries and basins in this process.
After years of hesitation, the ‘other’ major global player, the World Water Council, accepted the IWRM concept, and at the World Water Forum in Mexico in 2006, the King Hassan World Water Prize was awarded to a DHI Director (Professor Torkil Jønch Clausen) for his role in promoting IWRM. The prize of USD100,000 was used to create the ‘Women’s Water Fund’ to enhance the career of young women in water management. So, in a way, DHI completed the circle and visibly embraced the 3rd Dublin Principle this way.
While the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) adopted by the UN in 2000 did recognise the importance of drinking water and sanitation as part of the Environment Goal 7, they did not address water resources management as a global challenge. That changed in 2015 when the successor of the MDGs were adopted by UN as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). SDG 6 reads ‘Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all’, and one of the six targets is SDG 6.5: ‘By 2030, implement integrated water resources management at all levels, including through transboundary cooperation as appropriate’. UNEP and the UNEP-DHI Centre are playing a major role in making in this happen, and today the UNEP-DHI Centre has a central role in supporting its implementation, monitoring and reporting.
So, finally, IWRM made the cut – IWRM was no longer a question of ‘if’, but ‘how’.
IWRM today: ‘How’ to proceed?
While the Dublin Principles and the IWRM concept may appear logical and attractive, walking the IWRM talk proved difficult. Many, both inside and outside the so-called water sector, challenged it, and results on the ground developed only slowly. Working with GWP, and continuously supported by Danida, VKI/DHI kept trying, at the national, regional and global level.
Water is a societal, and hence political and cultural, issue. So IWRM is not a panacea or one-size-fits-all approach for all to follow, but rather a broad concept and way of thinking to be adapted to local circumstances. This is both the strength and weakness of IWRM. No wonder, therefore, that it took decades to get where we are today. Putting the IWRM principles into practice around the world is a delicate balancing act.
While progress towards IWRM may be encouraging, the actual degree of implementation worldwide by 2023 was estimated at 57% based on the three IWRM pillars (with ‘financing’ added as a fourth pillar).
DHI had a seat as Governor in the Board of the World Water Council for six years, chairing its IWRM Task Force as part of that. In 2018, that Task Force tried to address current IWRM challenges through a Challenge Paper entitled ‘Revitalising IWRM for the 2030 Agenda’, relating IWRM to other concepts such as the Water, Food and Energy Security Nexus and the Ecosystems Approach, concluding with nine key messages. This was used as input to high-level panels at World Water Forums and other events.
In a rapidly changing world, especially with water rising on the climate change agenda as water scarcity, floods, droughts and sea-level rise accelerate, such discussions on how to implement IWRM will continue, and DHI will continue to be a visible driver in such processes5.
But the spirit and basic thinking from 1991 is still part of DHI’s DNA on IWRM!
TJC et.al., 7 June 2024
- This ‘IWRM story’ started and was led by VKI from 1991 through 2000 and continued after the merger in 2000 under DHI leadership. Today, in 2024, it is still a major DHI/UNEP-DHI Centre flagship initiative. ↩︎
- The Nordic international development agencies Danida (lead), SIDA, NORAD and Finnida provided support and financing. ↩︎
- Dublin Principles: Principle No. 1: Fresh water is a finite and vulnerable resource, essential to sustain life, development and the environment.- Principle No. 2: Water development and management should be based on a participatory approach, involving users, planners and policy-makers at all levels.- Principle No. 3: Women play a central part in the provision, management and safeguarding of water.- Principle No. 4: Water has an economic value in all its competing uses and should be recognised as an economic good. ↩︎
- Notably TAC Background Paper #4 titled ’IWRM’ (2000) that proposed the definition of IWRM: ’IWRM is a process which promotes the coordinated development and management of water, land and related resources in order to maximise the resultant economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without compromising the vulnerability of vital ecosystems’. ↩︎
- This is ‘the IWRM Story’ from 1991 until today (2024). IWRM is basically a way of thinking, i.e. a dynamic and ‘living’ concept that necessarily changes over time. A new critical analysis, as e.g. an update of the 2018 ‘revitalising’ paper, based on recent experiences with implementation of the SDG 6.5 IWRM target world-wide, is called for. ↩︎
