EXCEED – Excellence Center for Development Cooperation Sustainable Water Management in Developing Countries

Water is among the 21st century’s key development issues. Almost one billion people worldwide do not have access to clean drinking water, whilst around one third of mankind does not have suitable sanitary facilities or wastewater treatment. The Exceed SWM Project of Braunschweig University addresses the Millennium Development Goal MDG 7/C “Ensure Environmental Sustainability – Halve by 2015 the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation”. Exceed SWM aims to develop and to transfer competencies and knowledge on sustainable water management to future experts and decision-makers in the partner countries, enabling them to shape technological and economic-political change processes through population growth and climate change. Based on the world-wide network of 35 partner universities in 18 countries on four continents, this Excellence Centre focuses on capacity building in developing and emerging countries through training of and networking between experts. A university each in Mexico, Turkey, Burkina Faso, and Vietnam coordinate the activities within their Regional Networks, whilst Braunschweig University initiates and organizes the trans-regional measures. To achieve these goals, the existing study programs at partner universities related to sustainable water management at MSc and PhD levels are analyzed and upgraded; new courses initiated for further education of scientific and technical staff at universities, enterprises, and public authorities at the respective regions. Summer schools, regional and international workshops, and expert seminars are organized for capacity building and further education. An intense exchange of students, young scientists, and academic teachers in all directions south-north, north-south, and south-south accomplishes education for capacity building. The same topics are also subject of joint teaching and research activities at Exceed member universities and the International Exceed Guest Chair and International Guest Team established at the Braunschweig University. Climate Change is a global challenge that we have to cope with, through coordinated international efforts in education for capacity building, joint R&D, and responsible trans-national and transformation politics. With its Exceed Project, Braunschweig University aims to contribute to international activities and measures in terms of higher education and research for capacity building in developing countries: http://www.exceed.tu-braunschweig.de

Sustainable urban water management is an increasingly important socio-political objective, however implementation remains ad hoc. While numerous tools and technologies have been developed to achieve sustainable urban water management, significant socio-institutional barriers remain. These impediments include, among others, institutional fragmentation, poor political leadership and technological lock-in. Exacerbated by a lack of theory and conceptual frameworks to link sustainable urban water management principles with on-ground execution, these barriers contribute to low levels of system-wide implementation capacity. Institutional capacity building is advocated in the sustainable urban water literature as a strategy to facilitate implementation; however, institutional capacity building has limited ability to provide an overview of regime operation, considered critical for enabling system-wide change. Focusing on processes, actor agency and institutions, the field of governance studies provides a useful perspective for understanding holistic regime operation and change. Yet the environmental governance literature remains contested; many scholars support a network or market governance approach while others advocate for hybrid approaches. Moreover, the governance systems needed for enabling sustainable urban water management have been given limited attention. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to develop a guiding framework for sustainable urban water governance. Through an emergent research design, systematically drawing on the perspectives of scholars and leading Australian urban water sustainability practitioners, likely attributes of a sustainable urban water management regime were identified. The attributes were focused through the lens of individual, organisational, inter-organisational relationships, and administrative and regulatory regime components. A comparison of the scholarly and practitioner perspectives, together with governance, regime and institutional literatures, explored which governance modes are most likely to enable sustainable urban water management. Overall, this investigation revealed a suite of likely sustainable urban water management regime attributes that are substantially different from traditional and contemporary practice highlighting the considerable regime change required to enable sustainable urban water management. The scholars supported a network governance approach, similar to current adaptive governance and conceptual scholarly urban water management projections, with interdependent actor relations and largely informal administrative arrangements. In comparison, the practitioners advocated hybrid governance arrangements comprising hierarchical and network modes, including a formal administrative framework, with mutually dependent and interconnected actor relationships to facilitate implementation of site specific sustainable urban water management solutions. Both scholars and practitioners supported using a variety of policy instruments, including market governance instruments. The outcomes of this investigation suggest the hybrid governance approach supported by practitioners extends current scholarship by providing detailed information on regime attributes and operation, which can provide insight for practical implementation of network governance approaches which are supported in current urban water management and adaptive governance literature. Additionally, the hybrid approach offers suggestions for successfully integrating the three ideal governance modes and reducing potential tension among the modes. In practice, the proposed framework could be used to design capacity building programs and policy initiatives drawing on mixed governance approaches. To extend this research and improve insight into regime operation and governance dynamics, future research testing the tentative sustainable urban water governance framework in other locations is required.

A holistic approach to embracing the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goal (SDG-6) towards water security in Pakistan

Sustainable Water Management in Agriculture under Climate Change

To develop a sustainable and vibrant agricultural sector capable of meeting the food demands of the growing population, freshwater in agriculture must be used efficiently and effectively to ensure sustainable socio-economic development of the economy. Issues such as climate change, land degradation, water pollution and population growth among others will continue to influence sustainable water management and agricultural development in South Africa. The challenge facing South Africa is how to ensure water and food security in the face of recurring droughts, increasing urbanisation and decreasing freshwater resources. South Africa will need to understand the drivers influencing water management and agricultural development to develop improved methods for planning sustainable water management and agricultural development. This study made use of a participatory approach, which provided a valuable platform for the identification of drivers of change, their characteristics and relative importance regarding agricultural water resource management and agricultural development in South Africa through participation. The study identified and analysed 5 clusters and 37 drivers, and their relative importance in influencing water management agricultural development in South Africa. The study found that population growth; education, climate extremes, irrigation technology, land degradation, rainwater harvesting, government support, and land reform, mismanagement of public resources and net agricultural export were among the most influential drivers in agricultural water management. The implication of these results for sustainable agricultural water management is discussed.

Assessment of employees' perceptions of approaches to sustainable water management by coal and iron ore mining companies

This research aims to explore the feasibility of adopting urban symbiosis for sustainable urban water reduction and management through a bibliometric analysis of key literature. A Scopus-based systematic review was conducted to analyse journal articles related to urban symbiosis, water management, and water reduction, with a focus on their intersection towards achieving sustainability. The outcomes of the systematic review were analysed using bibliometric techniques to examine the evolution of publications, identify leading journals, and determine the authors and countries which have published the most papers on the topic. The research also conceptualised the benefits, barriers, and enablers associated with adopting urban symbiosis for water reduction and management. The findings of this study contribute to a deeper understanding of the potential implications and practical implications of urban symbiosis in the context of sustainable water management. The study contributes to the knowledge of the potential of urban symbiosis in addressing the challenges of water management in urban areas and gives insights to policymakers, urban planners, and practitioners interested in implementing sustainable water management practices in urban areas.

Management based on sustainable approaches increases the resilience of systems in which they are implemented. The following study explores the sustainability and efficiency of water management in the regions of Ukraine and the role of these factors in its resilient development. The study conducts a bibliometric analysis of sources on sustainable water management, a comprehensive assessment of water resource efficiency in the regions of Ukraine, identifies and maps regional differences, and analyzes their dynamics over the period 2016–2020. The assessment shows that almost half of the regions (48.3%) have sufficient water management efficiency, 40.8% are very high, and 10.9% are average. Most regions (79.2%) maintained the same level of water resource efficiency. The Kharkiv region was examined in-depth, revealing higher water losses during transport and municipal/household sectors than the national average. Based on the assessment’s results, a differentiated approach to sustainable water management should be taken, depending on the type of regions. For regions with a very high and sufficient level of water efficiency, strategies to maintain the achieved positions should be implemented, while for regions with an average level of efficiency, strategies to improve the respective indices should be implemented. These research findings and policy recommendations can be utilized to guide policy-makers aiming to enhance the economic mechanism of sustainable water management at regional and national levels and improve their resilience to face the intensifying challenges.

Mbay City is a lowland city flanked by rows of mountains and agricultural rice fields. This barren mountain range causes rainwater mostly flow towards the urban lowlands, as flood. The city of Mbay which consists of 3 different regional groups, namely mountains-lowlands-rice fields, encourages a sustainable water supply and management with an eco-hydraulic concept. First, it is necessary to understand the terms eco-hydraulics, sustainable water management and sustainable water supply as well. Furthermore, we can find the right innovation to handle the three distinctive areas of the different Mbay cities. Mountain areas need water conservation that applies ecological concepts, while urban plains need hydraulic handling to drain flood water from the city, and rice fields also need ecological handling so that rice fields are protected from overflowing sea water when high tide occurs. Finally, it can be said that the integrated handling of ecology and hydraulics concepts has made the city of Mbay able to manage and supply water in a sustainable manner.

In order to balance between financial and social constraints of water and respond to competing for water requirements, it is important to sustain and manage essential water systems. Therefore, this paper aims to evaluate sustainable water management in specific sectors: urban, agricultural, and environmental and addresses questions, such as (1) how is sustainable water management described and assessed? (2) what challenges occur in sustainable water development in different sectors? (3) which aspects/elements of sustainable water developments are important in agricultural and urban water management? and (4) how do different countries improve sustainable water management? Depending on the complexity of water systems, water users and sources of water, techniques for estimating performances of water management can be simple (such as indicator techniques) or complex (such as several models). The techniques are analyzed in this study. The findings from implementing sustainable water management suggest that all water users consider which source of water (e.g., usable and reusable) is more suitable to use. They also state that increasing agricultural water use efficiency can significantly reduce total water consumption, which can lead to global food security. In addition, results showed that the level of local infrastructure conditions and financial capabilities are more important in sustainable water management than is the level of regional development.

A comparative analysis of irrigation related issues and effectiveness of water policies in India and Australia is conducted to help share the learning from each other’s experience in sustainable irrigation management. Keeping in pace with the global trend of implementing a sustainable water management program, India has adopted the concept of participatory irrigation management (PIM) while Australia has adopted irrigation management transfer (IMT) program. PIM in India is regarded as experimentation in diverse socio-economic settings with mixed results while IMT in Australia has achieved a high level of water use efficiency. Australian irrigation industry is currently driven by market mechanisms where water trading is expected to lead to greater efficiency. However, there are concerns that sole reliance on water use (or economic) efficiency objective may conflict with the objectives of social equity and ecological sustainability. Similar to Australia, there is an opportunity for water markets in India. However, conflict in the objectives of efficiency, equity and sustainability constrain the debate of establishing water markets in India. The comparative analysis indicates that despite both countries have a common goal of sustainable water management, their strategies differ. Nevertheless, India can emulate many of the Australian experiences in water policy reforms, entitlements, institutional arrangements, and corporate style of management while Australia can adopt the best Indian traditions of decentralized participatory and community management for sustainable irrigation water management.

Poor water management doesn't just lead to water scarcity; it is also driving a health crisis in Namibia. The aim of this study was to generate solid, applicable, evidence-based insights that will inform and enhance the present community water management policy and practice in a way that markedly improves community health. This study adopted a qualitative research approach. Sixteen participants selected using purposive sampling. Four participants answered semi structured questionnaires and twelve were interviewed. Data was analysed using thematic analysis. On the impact of sustainable water management, the study found social, economic and environmental protection as benefits to the community. On support provided by government, the study found effective support in some areas and failure in other areas. Specifically, delays, budget dry up, ineffective engagement of the grassroots community and selective development were found as short comings by government. These barriers were established to be the major causes of ineffective sustainable water management. Health and quality were found to exist in areas where there is clean water, while most rural places that are far away from institutions were found to use unsafe water. Therefore, the study revealed that sustainable water management practices are promoting health in a few areas of the region, with a larger part left out. The exclusion of these areas implies that, Namibia will not be able to achieve Sustainable Development Goal six. The study recommended inclusive engagement of the community and adoption of contextualised interventions to promote sustainable water management. In addition, the study recommended benchmarking to create opportunities to learn from the best. Furthermore, realistic robust strategic planning was indicated as necessary to help leadership in prioritizing sustainable water management projects. Moreover, a stakeholder integrated approach is recommended, to enhance synergetic benefits and taking all on board.

Smart water management, driven by the integration of photovoltaic (PV)- powered pumps and the Internet of Things (IoT), represents a revolutionary approach to address the challenges of sustainable water resource management. This chapter explores the concept of "Smart Water Management: PV-Powered Pumps and IoT Integration," highlighting the transformative potential of combining solar energy with intelligent data-driven decision-making in water pumping systems. The chapter begins by tracing the evolution of water management practices, emphasizing the need for more sustainable and efficient approaches in the face of increasing water demands, population growth, and climate change. According to the United Nations World Water Development Report 2021, an estimated 2.2 billion people lack access to safely managed drinking water services, underscoring the urgency of sustainable water management solutions. It then focuses on the advantages of PV-powered pumps over conventional fossil fuel-based alternatives, including reduced carbon emissions, cost- effectiveness, and energy independence. Advancements in PV technology and its potential applications in smart water management are also discussed. The World Health Organization estimates that around 485,000 people die each year from diarrhea, primarily due to unsafe drinking water and poor sanitation, highlighting the need for improved water quality monitoring and management. The pivotal role of the Internet of Things in smart water management is explored, highlighting how IoT integrationelevates water pumping systems to new levels of intelligence and efficiency. Real- time data collection, remote monitoring, predictive maintenance, and adaptive control mechanisms empower stakeholders with valuable insights for optimizing water usage and ensuring system reliability. Efficient water distribution and consumption, critical elements of smart water management, are addressed through IoT-enabled sensors and data analytics. Case studies demonstrate successful implementations of IoT-driven smart water distribution projects across various sectors. The chapter also delves into how IoT- enabled water quality monitoring enhances safety and supports environmental conservation efforts. Smart water management's impact on resilience and disaster management is examined, showcasing its ability to facilitate rapid response and recovery during emergencies. A study by the International Energy Agency (IEA) indicates that the deployment of solar PV for water pumping applications has the potential to save around3.6 billion liters of diesel fuel and avoid nearly 10 million tonnes of CO2emissions annually by 2030.Furthermore, the integration of PV-powered pumps with urban infrastructure and smart grids is explored to optimize water resources and enhance sustainable urban water management. The United Nations projects that by 2050, 68% of the world's population will reside in urban areas, further exacerbating water challenges. Smart water management powered by PV and IoT technologies offers a scalable and efficient approach to address the growing water demands of urbanization. The chapter concludes by discussing the policy and governance aspects necessary for scaling up smart water management practices. Regulatory frameworks, incentives, and public-private partnerships play a crucial role in fostering widespread adoption of PV-powered pumps and IoT integration for sustainable water management. In summary, "Smart Water Management: PV-Powered Pumps and IoT Integration" holds the promise of transforming water management practices. Leveraging solar energy and intelligent data-driven decision-making, smart water management enhances efficiency, conserves water resources, and mitigates environmental impact. Embracing this paradigm shift is vital in ensuring water security and resilience in the face of global water challenges and environmental concerns.

The business risks experienced by clean water companies include losses and decreased loyalty of water users. This risk occurs due to the absence of accountability, reliability, and transparency in sustainable clean water management. It can be overcome by implementing water accounting. This narrative review explains a sustainable water management model using a water accounting approach. The narrative review method consists of compilation, tabulation, comparison of research results, and summarizing. The literature review study collected articles from accredited journal sites (Sinta, Emerald, Science Direct). After searching for research keywords criteria, 29 articles were taken as samples. The results show that water accounting, in addition to reducing business risk for clean water service providers, also supports sustainable water management. Water accounting components such as gross inflow, net inflow, available water, water depletion, and outflow provide transparent and accountable information. The components of water accounting can analyze water use, scarcity, and productivity to predict the need for clean water because the amount of water discharge produced and used in one day can be known with certainty. Management and community commitment are needed to realize sustainable groundwater use conservation to ensure that the community enjoys the long-term supply of clean water.

Water is an essential natural resource for human life. It is the engine for economic, social, and cultural development. While its availability is influenced by population increase and climate change, its sustainable management is mainly a function of behavioural and technological factors. This paper assesses sustainable indoor water management in Mkwawa University College of Education, Tanzania. It involved a cross-sectional research approach, where the data were collected using questionnaires, field observations, and documentary review methods. Results revealed a sort of unsustainable indoor water management emanating mainly from behavioural and technological factors. Behavioural factors include the use of the bucket for bathing instead of showers (80%) , spending more than 15 minutes in bathing using showers (43%) , and reluctance to report water leakages to responsible authorities (16%) . Technological factors included the lack of water-efficient appliances such as low flow showerheads, toilets, and faucets. It was also found that out of the 769 water appliances observed in the toilets, bathrooms, and laundries, 21% were not working, and 20% were leaking; leading to the use of unsustainable gadgets for the former, and water loss for the latter. Water outage was the main challenge facing students in the College. While behavioural change is recommended to students to minimise water use, the College should install water-efficient appliances and increase water storage facilities for sustainable indoor water management.