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Integrated Water Resource Management

Integrated Water Resource Management is a way to collectively develop and enforce an island-wide water plan integrating water users’ agriculture, tourism, and ecosystems and water sources. IWRM focuses on catchment level and can include a wide variety of measures to improve or decrease the amount of water in the system, depending on needs. Central to IWRM is joint factfinding, expertise and consultation, recycling, reduced use and replenishment of water. It is important to have of stakeholder involvement (including non-human actors) and a participatory approach to water management involving users at all levels. 

Feasibility & Local Applicability

IWRM management can be applied everywhere but has most benefit in places here there is high withdrawal (which can be managed) rather than low availability of water (which cannot be influenced).

Equity Considerations

  • IWRM as a tool for stakeholder inclusion can continue to have post-independence water centralization aimed to address the neglect and marginalization of large sections of the population on the grounds of colour and race. This can channel politication of water as water services have become politicized, including providing accountability of service providers.
  • Sanitation Gap: access to and investment in acceptable wastewater treatment systems is limited. IWRM can help setup funding schemes for this gap.
  • Limited action has been taken regarding gender in water affairs in the Caribbean context.

Vulnerability Considerations

  • Groundwater threats: Groundwater aquifers face threats from overexploitation, leading to increased salinity in coastal areas, and contamination from inappropriate sewage disposal in urban areas.
  • Surface Water Degradation: The conversion of catchments for development and agriculture threatens streamflows, resulting in higher peak flows, downstream flooding, and a general decrease in base streamflows. 
  • Source to Sea Imperative: given the close interconnection between land and sea, IWRM can adopt a 'source to sea' approach as an integrating framework because land and water use directly affect the health of marine resources.

Costs

Not measurable as an individual measure but rather as overall government spending on water provisioning, treatment. This makes cost-benefits a complex analyses, as it involves all water providers and users. Costs are high, as monitoring, policies, and enforcement need to be implemented but are generally worth it through improved water efficiency and returns of economic uses of the water. 

Case studies & Examples

Literature

Adaptation Options Overzicht