Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
(CBD, 2010a), which includes,
inter alia
, river
systems. Yet perhaps the 'water community'
and the 'ecosystem community' failing to make
effective common cause distinguishes the 1990s
with policy actions and activities proceeding in
separate areas of research, development and
implementation, despite the adoption of IWRM in
1977.
The WCED also established the Commission on
Sustainable Development (CSD) (CSD, 2010), a
body managed by the UN Secretariat in New York.
It aims to cover the spectrum of activities relating
to sustainable development, and meets annually.
Water in various ways has been considered by the
CSD from time to time, in 2004-2005 explicitly
so. Disappointingly, the CSD has not produced any
radical new thinking on sustainable development
or conservation generally, and certainly not with
respect to rivers.
Within the UN system as a whole programmes
(and the key thinking underlying them) remain
separated. Even within organizations, for example
UNESCO, the existence of two programmes from
the era of the 1970s, the International Hydrological
Programme (IHP) and the Man and Biosphere
Programme (MAB) continue to have separate
governing bodies, and often duplicate effort and
work. Promotion of an ecotones activity, very
much directed at rivers, and a programme on
ecohydrology is tending to blur that separation, and
promote the value of an integrated approach.
2000 saw the Second World Water Forum,
held at a very high level and reinforcing very
strongly the need for integrated approaches.
The Ministerial Declaration (WWC, 2000) called
for 'institutional, technological, and financial
innovations'. In Johannesburg in 2002, 10 years
after the WCED in Rio, the World Summit
on Sustainable Development (WSSD) produced a
wide-ranging Plan of Implementation (UNDESA,
2002). This contained the following reference to
rivers: 'Develop and implement national/regional
strategies, plans and programmes with regard to
integrated river basin, watershed and groundwater
management' - bringing rivers and groundwaters
into clear juxtaposition, and again emphasizing the
need for integrated management.
In Europe in the same year the EC Water
Framework Directive (WFD) was adopted (Council
of the European Communities, 2000), echoing
again the need for integrated management through
a requirement to produce river basin management
plans. The WFD has a focus on ecosystem
management, and the maintenance of ecosystem
status of relevant water bodies, including rivers.
Boon and Lee (2005) discussed the relationship
between ecological status and conservation value,
and concluded that the WFD can contribute to
nature conservation. They also advocated the need
to consider the commonplace as well as the rare,
and the need for a landscape perspective as well
as one on protected areas - a theme which will
become more important in the coming decades.
Following WSSD, the UN System established
UN-Water in 2003, with a scope encompassing
all aspects of fresh water, including surface and
groundwater resources and the interface between
fresh water and sea water (UNWATER, 2010). UN-
Water has 26 members from the UN System and
civil society and was an important contributor to
the third World Water Forum held in Kyoto, 2003.
Further World Water Forums followed rapidly in
2006 (Mexico) and 2009 (Turkey).
This necessarily short review illustrates that
the number of meetings is increasing, while the
time between meetings is decreasing. Yet the
conclusions of meetings are often worryingly
similar, and there is little practical action as
rivers and other aquatic systems show increasing
degradation. That IWRM could be agreed in 1977,
and yet is still being discussed (rather than being
implemented) in 2010 is a condemnation of these
international processes.
Natural landscapes
In the course of journeying through the
institutional landscapes, it is apparent that
terminology and concepts have changed, and new
perspectives, new paradigms have arisen. IWRM
is an obvious case in point, but others include the
term 'biodiversity' itself, the concept of ecosystem
services,
concepts
in
landscape
ecology,
novel
