Water Resources: Provision, Distribution and Sustainable Production

Abstract

This chapter attempts to develop an alternative framework based on the human–nature nexus in order to comprehend the sustainable governance of water and water resources. Given the water system is complex in nature, the chapter first divides water resources into two categories such as (a) freshwater ecosystem and (b) marine ecosystem. Subsequently, it focuses on various case studies of governance failures in the context of Bangladesh—a developing country—under the two ecosystem categories. It has probed the problem of provisioning to describe the inequality in access to groundwater resources facilitated by the commodification process. The exploration into the wetland resource depletion has demonstrated the failure of governance under the conditions of institutional fragility and power politics. Moreover, the case of governance disputes over transboundary water has highlighted the political contestation over water rights. Finally, the challenges of governing marine (e.g., fisheries) resources sustainably have been examined considering the factors of institutional fragility and technological incapacity.