Enhancing Participation and Governance in Water Resources Management: Conventional Approaches and Information Technology
Contents: Introduction. 1. Enhancing public participation and governance in water resources management/Libor Jansky, Dann M. Sklarew and Juha I. Uitto. I. Conventional approaches: 2. Public participation and water resources management: the case of West Sumatra/Syafruddin Karimi. 3. Public participation in the development of a management plan for an international river basin: the Okavango case/Anthony R. Turton and Anton Earle. 4. Transboundary environmental impact assessment as a tool for promoting public participation in international watercourse management/Jessica Troell, Carl Bruch, Angela Cassar and Scott Schang. II. "Information technology" approaches: 5. The internet and e-inclusion: promoting on-line public participation/Hans van Ginkel and Brendan Barrett. 6. Promoting public participation in international waters management: an agenda for peer-to-peer learning/Dann M. Sklarew. 7. Development of an email-based field data collection system for environmental assessment/Srikantha Herath, Nguyen Hoa Binh, Venkatesh Raghavan, Hoang Minh Hien, Nguyen Dinh Hoa and Nguyen Truong Xuan. 8. New directions in the development of decision support systems for water resources management/Kazimierz A. Salewicz. III. Efforts by international organizations: 9. Improving public involvement and governance for transboundary water systems: process tools used by the global environment facility/Alfred M. Duda and Juha I. Uitto. 10. Public participation and governance: a Mekong River basin perspective/Prachoom Chomchai. Index.
"More than a billion people lack sufficient clean water to meet their basic needs; 27 nations don\'t have enough water and another 16 are \'water stressed\'. The UN predicts that rising demand for water will threaten human and ecological health over the next generation. As public health, development, economics and nature suffer, governments are becoming more aware of the need to ensure access to clean water.
This book examines approaches and techniques for getting the public more involved in improving water resources management in order to improve decision-making and problem-solving. The authors identify conventional and emerging mechanisms, approaches and practices for successfully engaging users and other stake-holders. Benefits include raising the profiles of otherwise marginalised water users and improving their access to clean water resources on a sustainable basis.
The knowledge that is crucial for water management is distributed across governments, non-governmental organizations and the water users themselves. In most circumstances, water management aims to address these diverse interests by integrating usage across hydrologically meaningful units, such as watersheds. But the authors also explore issues like transboundary flows, multiple basins, inter-basin transfers, and virtual water transfers which can necessitate a broader perspective and new techniques."
