Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
integrated management of water resources they are
a useful starting point.
•
integration between different scientific and
technical disciplines to tackle multi-dimensional
problems;
•
spatial integration throughout a watershed so
that the cumulative impact of different actions
can be assessed.
Integrated Catchment Management
(ICM)
Integrated Catchment Management (also sometimes
referred to as Integrated Water Basin Management,
IWBM) is essentially a subset of IWRM. It aims
to promote an integrated approach to water and land
management but with two subtle differences:
Using this type of definition ICM can be seen as
a process that can be used to implement IWRM.
One of the key principles of ICM and IWRM is
community involvement through a participatory
approach: making sure that everybody can be
involved in resource management, not just a few
elite within a single organisation. Another key
principle of ICM and IWRM is the idea of change.
This ranges from extolling change in management
structures to cope with modern resource manage-
ment pressures to making sure the structures can
cope with more inevitable changes in the future.
ICM is promoted by UNESCO and the World
Meteorological Organisation (WMO) through the
Hydrology for the Environment, Life and Policy
(HELP) programme. Further details can be found at
www.unesco.org/water/ihp/help.
1
ICM recognises the catchment (or river basin)
as the appropriate organising unit for under-
standing and managing water-related biophysical
processes in a context that includes social,
economic and political considerations;
2
There is recognition of the spatial context of
different management actions and in particular
the importance of cumulative effect within a
catchment.
By defining a river catchment as the appropriate
organising unit for managing biophysical processes
there is a recognition that hydrological pathways
are important and these provide an appropriate
management, as well as biophysical, boundary.
Cumulative effect refers to the way in which many
small actions may individually have very little
impact but when combined the impact may be
large. This is true for a river catchment system
where individual point discharges of pollution may
be small but when accumulated within the river
they may be enough to cross an environmental
threshold.
Fenemor
et al
. (2006) have defined the word
'integrated' in an ICM context using three different
connotations:
Community
expectations
ICM
Research
knowledge
Government
policy
•
integration between the local community,
science and policy so that the community is
linked into the planning and execution of both
science and policy and scientific research is
being carried out in an environment close-linked
into policy requirements and vice versa (see
Figure 8.5);
Figure 8.5
The integrating nature of ICM within
the context of science, local community and
governance.
