Systems approach to water management

The fundamental role that water resources play in human development has been highlighted in multiple ways; the United Nations SDGs underline 17 different goals and over a hundred targets to be achieved by 2030. Out of 169 SDG targets, 59 were found to have direct links and synergies with the water goal SDG6 (UN Water, 2016). Careful policy making and interventions need to be implemented to avoid conflict among sectors and tradeoffs must be well established. The Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM – since 1992) was adopted by most countries and made significant strides in formulating a good foundation for policies and synergies between stakeholders. Nevertheless, IWRM concepts need to be adaptive and revisited to achieve the Agenda 2030 targets. This policy brief introduces water management as a system of interactions between water and other vital resources including food, energy, and health among others; it presents several concepts to bring about policy coherence and quantitative protocols for a more cohesive implementation of policies and tradeoffs in the water sector and beyond.