Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 4
Environmental Flow Allocation as a
Practical Aspect of IWRM
Jay O'Keeffe
UNESCO-IHE, Institute for Water Education, The Netherlands
Introduction
bodies by 2015. This built on the ground-breaking
South African Water Act No. 38 of 1998, which
introduced the Ecological Reserve - the water
quantity and quality required for the protection of
those aquatic ecosystems on which people depend.
This legislation has been followed by similar
requirements in Kenya and Tanzania among a
number of other African countries. Countries as
diverse as China, Mexico, Bosnia and Ecuador are
busy overhauling their water policy and legislation
so as to include requirements for environmental
protection. The Indian government has recently
created the Ganga River Basin Authority, the first
such body in the country, to protect the resources
of its mother river.
Despite this welcome global recognition of
the need to use natural resources sustainably,
the implementation of such policies has lagged
far behind the intention. UNESCO (2010) lists
a catalogue of degradation, quoting Global
Biodiversity Outlook 3 (2010): 'Not a single
government claims
...
that the 2010 Biodiversity
Target has been completely met at the national
level'. The Living Planet Index has continued to
decline in most aspects since 1990, with fresh
water generally, and tropical fresh waters in
particular showing the fastest decline of any
ecosystem. Freshwater ecosystems in temperate
regions have improved marginally since 1970,
albeit from a fairly degraded baseline. However,
worldwide,
The 1990 York conference came at a critical
time in the development of conservation
globally - two years later the Rio Declaration
on Environment and Development and the
Convention on Biological Diversity embedded the
world's determination to prioritize the protection
of biodiversity, and marked a watershed, not so
much in developing new ideas, but in collecting
existing thinking on conservation and channelling
it into government policy and the management
of natural resources. The topic that resulted from
the 1990 conference (Boon
et al
., 1992) reflects
the emerging ideas in river conservation that
were to coalesce into the philosophy of Integrated
Water Resource Management (IWRM) which
is now the dominant paradigm underpinning
water resource management in many parts of
the world: the extent to which rivers can recover
after stress and disturbance; legislative constraints
and public support; the need for a holistic, whole
catchment approach; and the dynamic condition
of river systems. Since 1990 there has been an
explosion of policy and legislation developed
so as to include environmental issues. Perhaps
the best known, and a model for many more
recent policy developments, is the European
Union's Water Framework Directive (adopted
in October 2000), requiring member countries
to achieve 'good' conditions for all their water
the integrity of
river ecosystems
