Abstract
Water security demands guaranteeing economic, social and environmental sustainability and simultaneously addressing the diversity of risks and threats related to water. Various frameworks have been suggested to support water security assessment. They are typically based on indexes enabling national comparisons; these may, however, oversimplify complex and often contested water issues. We developed a structured and systemic way to assess water security and its future trends via a participatory process. The framework establishes a criteria hierarchy for water security, consisting of four main themes: the state of the water environment; human health and well-being; the sustainability of livelihoods; and the stability, functions and responsibility of society. The framework further enables the analysis of relationships between the water security criteria as well as between water, energy and food security. The framework was applied to a national water security assessment of Finland in 2018 and 2030. Our experience indicates that using the framework collaboratively with stakeholders provides a meaningful way to improve understanding and to facilitate discussion about the state of water security and the actions needed for its improvement.
Highlights
Water security is described as the overall aim for water resources management by a growing number of actors and organisations [1,2,3,4]
The assessment of linkages in the water–energy–food security nexus was bi-directional so that for each water security criterion, we identified whether it has an impact on food/energy security, and whether food/energy security has an impact on this particular water security criterion
We have presented a comprehensive framework and an Excel tool to assess water security in Finland
Summary
Water security is described as the overall aim for water resources management by a growing number of actors and organisations [1,2,3,4]. While water security was mostly used to describe specific human security concerns or to set general visions in the 1990s to early 2000s [5], more recently it has been increasingly used to make explicit the actual goals to be achieved with better water resources management [6]. Those goals can be contested and are open to debate between different stakeholders, but water security as a concept has provided a frame for their negotiation [7,8]. Water security is linked to the broader foundations of societal security
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