Water Resources Management - Practices of Irrigation and On-farm Water Management - page 177

system. No manager of water resources has the luxury of waiting until all these
questions are answered. But those involved in managing the resources can still
work toward increasingly sustainable levels of development and management. This
includes learning how to get more from our resources and how to produce less waste
that degrades these resources. New ideas and new technology will have to be devel-
oped to achieve increased economically efficient recycling and the use of recycled
materials. Management approaches that are more nonstructural and compatible with
the environmental and ecological life support systems must be identified. Better
ways of planning, developing, upgrading, maintaining, and paying for the infrastruc-
ture that permits effective and efficient resource management and provides needed
services must also be defined. For water resource managers, considerations of sus-
tainability challenge is to develop and use better methods for explicitly considering
the possible needs and expectations of future generations along with our own. We
must develop and use better methods of identifying development paths that keep
more options open for future populations to meet their own and their descendants'
needs and expectations.
Finally we must create better ways of identifying and quantifying the amounts
and distribution of benefits and costs when considering trade-offs in resource use
and consumption among current and future generations as well as among differ-
ent populations within a given generation. In striving for sustainable development
of a river basin's water and related land resources, the effectiveness of any mecha-
nism devised to realize that goal depends ultimately on the quality of the individuals
entrusted with pursuing it. Engineers, economists, ecologists, planners, and profes-
sionals must be involved, but they can be only part of that involvement. Professionals
must work within the social infrastructure of a community or region. Successful
collaboration with an informed and involved public can lead to more socially
compatible uses of resources and to more creative, appropriate, and hence sustain-
able uses of technology for addressing a community's or region's water resource
problems or needs.
5.4.4 Strategies to Achieve Sustainability
The following strategies may be useful toward achieving a sustainable water
management system:
5.4.4.1 Integrated Management of Water
Given the linkage between surface and subsurface water-related activities, the whole
river basin should be considered by water-development policies. River basin author-
ities should be established with authority over inter-sectoral allocation of water,
enforcement of water quality standards, arbitration in disputes, and compensation
procedures. Water policies should encompass groundwater, surface water, and direct
use of rainfall.