Routledge Integrated Water Resource Planning: Achieving Sustainable Outcomes

Integrated Water Resource Planning provides practical, evidence-based guidance on water resource planning. In a time of heightened awareness of ecosystem needs, climate change, and increasing and conflicting demands on resources, water professionals and decision-makers around the world are on a steep learning curve. This book presents an international examination of water reform experiences, and provides lessons in how to manage environmental uncertainties, long term management, and increase in demand. It breaks the process down into a series of common steps, applies program logic and evaluation theory, and discusses best practices in assessment, decision making and community engagement. Importantly it recognises the large variation in available knowledge and capacity, risk and scale, and discusses a range of approaches that can be used for different circumstances. The book will fill in the gaps for professionals in interdisciplinary teams including sociologists, hydrologists, engineers, ecologists, and community consultation specialists, by providing a basic grounding in areas outside their usual expertise, and will provide ammunition to community stakeholders in their quest to ensure that water planning outcomes are justified and justifiable. Case studies provide an understanding of the context, practical tools and implementation techniques for achieving sustainable outcomes, and the multi-disciplinary approach and insights offered in this book will be transposable and instructive for water professionals worldwide. Review "Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) has, for many years been rolled out as the panacea for the many challenges of water scarcity and security faced by individuals and by communities globally. Instead of adding another tome to the IWRM pile, the authors tackle the issue of planning, building on their wealth of real experience of conflict and hard decision-making, much from Australia, but with contributions globally. And this focus on planning, on actions and outputs, and on knowing the outcomes desired is the key take home message and value of the book. Developed step-by-step, working through the planning cycle with communities and supported by examples, this provides real insight, instruction and guidance to effective delivery of IWRP." Professor Chris J Spray MBE, Chair of Water Science and Policy, UNESCO Centre for Water Law, Policy & Science, University of Dundee. "This book provides practical guidance for the implementation of integrated water resource planning. The authors draw on their outstanding policy and planning experience and embed Australian and international case studies throughout the text to integrate and synthesise approaches to water planning in Australia and overseas. This book is a timely aid to achieving the three goals of economic efficiency, social equity and environmental sustainability in water planning. The holistic view and clear expression will appeal to a wide audience, especially water planning practitioners, but also teachers, students, researchers, community members, and water users in general." Professor Kathleen Bowmer, Charles Sturt University and Research Fellow, CSIRO Land and Water "Water is central to economic development, environmental sustainability and individual livelihoods. Yet, as the authors of this book point out, access to water is becoming increasingly constrained in many parts of the world because of population growth, increasing living standards and, in many places, the effects of climate change. Systematically planning for people's rights to access water will become increasingly important as water becomes scarcer. Australia has been at the forefront of international water management for the last decade. This book draws upon the authors' experience in Australian water planning to provide a highly practical guide to water planning. The authors have broken the planning process up into six steps, from inception