Global Water Governance: An Overview

Abstract

This chapter distinguishes water management from water governance. It provides an overview of international water management from the UN Conference on Water in Mar del Plata to projects of global water governance that began in earnest in 2000. It emphasizes the important role that programs of integrated water resources management (IWRM) played during the 1990s, the problems and potential of which significantly shaped the challenges taken up by global water governance. Through this historical overview, the chapter defines and explains the specific attention that water governance gives to the social and political structures of decision making. As the result of the significant role of IWRM, existing structures of international water management connected water governance to programs of sustainability that aim to maximize outcomes across the triple-bottom line of environmental, economic, and social well-being. The chapter identifies the liberal compromise of sustainable development and the ways in which liberal notions of political and social order have both compelled and constrained notions of sustainable development.