Managing waters across boundaries, wetland assessment & reforming water governance

1. Share: Managing waters across boundaries

This publication provides an overview of the world’s shared water resources and insights for managing these resources. Using case studies from around the world, it describes the benefits to be gained from cooperation and the challenges of constructing legal frameworks, institutions, management processes and financing and partnership strategies to govern transboundary waters equitably and sustainably.

2. Assess : Integrated Wetland Assessment Toolkit

For billions of people throughout the world, especially the rural poor, wetlands are critical for livelihoods, providing vital supplies of water, food and materials as well as ecological services. Wetlands are, however, suffering from extreme levels of degradation with estimates putting wetland loss and drainage in some parts of the world at more than 50%. Such a high level of wetland degradation not only results in a tragic loss of the wetland species but is also impacting heavily on those people whose livelihoods depend upon wetlands. There are also significant losses to national and regional economies resulting from the loss of hydrological services, such as flood control and water purification, and of material goods such as those provided through fisheries.

3. Rule: reforming water governance

This toolkit will introduce readers to the central role played by policy, law and institutions in designing and implementing good governance for water resources. It will guide users through approaches to reforming water governance, including useful mechanisms for incorporating environmental considerations into water laws and policies. It is intended for use by water professionals, working in water management, who do not have a law background.

4. Conserve: Conservation for a new era

Conversation alone cannot deliver conservation on the ground. Not even good conversation. Good conservation outcomes need hard work, mainly in the field. A conservationist’s life is long hours of travelling to get there, longer hours of observation, even longer hours of analysis, deep thought and synthesis – and then more hours in the laboratory and the library, documenting and communicating. This does not mean that a life in conservation is tedious; on the contrary, its very nature is fun – but its primary fun is in nature.

Nevertheless, as for all professions, advancement of knowledge in conservation depends on sharing, critiquing, questioning, refining and honing ideas from research and for action through interaction with colleagues and peers from related and other disciplines. Modern communications have revolutionized the possibilities for such sharing but ultimately there is no substitute for physical encounters where researchers and practitioners can meet and exchange information on what they are doing.

Information Provided by Carol Lombard, Department of Social Development Population Website