Integrated Water Resources Management
and the SEEAW
Ivo Havinga
United Nations Statistics Division
on behalf of
Manuel Dengo
Division for Sustainable Development
Outline
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What IWRM is
Calls for IWRM
The SEEAW’s contributions to IWRM
UN efforts in water: UN-Water,
Possible way forward
Definition of IWRM
• “A process which promotes the coordinated
development and management of water, land and
other resources, in order to maximize the resultant
economic and social welfare in an equitable
manner without compromising the sustainability of
vital ecosystems” GWP, 2000
Advantages of IWRM
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Coordinated activities rather than amalgamated programs
Top-down meeting bottom-up management
Strategic planning : targeting and prioritizing
Integrating goals rather than planning for single goals.
Proactive : identify problems before they occur
Cooperative work environment , inclusiveness
Encouraging commitment –Empowering local decision making
rather than centralizing decisions
• Providing appropriate and relevant information
• Using equitable management methods sensitive to cultural needs,
gender issues, poverty eradication…
IWRM (Cont’d)
• JPoI : designing and implementing IWRM
and water uses efficiency plans.
• In practice , IWRM must bring together a
diverse array of people who have a “stake”
in a system to collaboratively manage the
activities and impacts:
• Government entities ; municipalities;
community organizations; business and
industry organizations and other users
associations and individuals …
The SEEAW’s contributions to IWRM
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Standard
Monitoring and reporting
Indicators
Financing
Mainstreaming water policies in economic
policies
6. Integration of local, national and global policies
7. Participatory process
1. Standard
The SEEAW, by being firmly anchored to the
System of National Accounts, the internationally
accepted standard for economic statistics, allows
for
• consistent and integrated hydrological and
economic analyses (enterprise, government
households, rest of the world)
• consistent comparisons across time and space
• improvements in data quality
2. Monitoring and reporting
The SEEAW, by integrating hydrological and economic
information on water into a common framework, allows
for
• the formulation and evaluation of integrated policies
as far as social and societal aspects are included in data;
• the integration and harmonization of existing monitoring
mechanisms and the enhancement of their effectiveness
by identifying data gaps, overlaps and inconsistencies
3. Indicators
The SEEAW allows for the derivation of
precisely defined, consistent and interlinked
hydrological–economic indicators, which
can be used for
• monitoring
• analyses of possible causes of changes
(spatial, time, stakeholders)
4. Financing
The SEEAW provides basic information by
explicitly identifying
• Environmental protection expenditures
• Investment expenditures on water including public
and private investments in infrastructures
• the cost recovery of water supply and sanitation
services and through which mechanisms (taxes,
fees, water rights, etc.)
5. Mainstreaming water policies
in economic policy
The SEEAW, by linking to hydrological
information to the standard for economic
and social information, allows for
• the evaluation of priority and trade-offs
between different policies
• mainstreaming water issues into policy
decision making
6. Convergence of local, national
and international policies
The adoption of the SEEAW at local, national
and international level leads to
• the convergence of local, national and
international policies
• the harmonization of water-related decisions
made at local and river basin levels with the
achievement of broader national objectives
7. Participatory approach
The SEEAW, by integrating information collected
from different sources,
• adds values to independent data sets compiled to
meet specific policy needs
• encourages the creation of or strengthens the interinstitutional organizational framework
• ensures a transparent and rigorous data sharing
system
UN international arena in water
• UN-Water : inter-agency mechanism
formed by 26 UN entities
• UNSGAB on water and sanitation: an
independent advisory/advocacy board for
the UN Secretary-General (Not a formal
UN body or institution)
UN-Water
• In 2003, UN-Water was endorsed as the United Nations
inter-agency mechanism for follow-up of the water-related
decisions reached at the 2002 World Summit on
Sustainable Development and the Millennium
Development Goals.
• It will support Member States in their efforts to achieve
water and sanitation goals and targets.
UN-Water : Scope of Work
• UN Water's work encompasses all aspects
of freshwater, including surface and
groundwater resources and the interface
between fresh and sea water. It includes
freshwater resources, both in terms of their
quality and quantity, their development,
assessment, management, monitoring and
use (including, for example, domestic uses,
agriculture and ecosystems requirements).
UN-Water : scope 2
• The scope of the work of UN-Water also includes
sanitation - encompassing both access to and use
of sanitation by populations and the interactions
between sanitation and freshwater.
• It further includes water-related disasters,
emergencies and other extreme events and their
impact on human security.
Possible way forward
• UN Agencies and other regional agencies endorse the SEEAW as a
strong conceptual framework for hydrological-socio-economic
national and basin information in support of IWRM
• UN Agencies and other regional agencies establish a mechanism to
promote the implementation and use of the SEEAW, at the national
level, with active participation of DESA, especially for water-stressed
/ developing countries
• DESA-DSD develops an operational manual for physical water
accounting (hydrological part of water resources and of water
infrastructures) according to the SEEAW standard as part of a tool kit
for promotion and implementation
• DESA-DSD proposes to create a sub-group under UNCEEA in
support of the SEEA