Integrated Water Resources Management After 2030: An Agenda for Educators

Abstract

This paper addresses the need to improve the understanding of how integrated water resources management (IWRM) can be more effective in addressing diverse water challenges globally. The emphasis is on the use of systems methods to clarify IWRM and create support for it among the academic community for emphasis after the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) expire in 2030. The importance of using IWRM is apparent in frequent reports about challenges like access to water supply and sanitation, water-related disasters, water stresses, water pollution, and ecosystem losses. These affect the SDGs, especially Goal 6 for implementation of IWRM. Among competing paradigms for water resources management practice, IWRM has a more organized advocacy base than others, and sustaining it can support all of them. However, IWRM has been supported for more than 20 years and is still difficult to understand and criticized. Despite this, sustained support for it indicates that it meets an important need. Systems concepts of problem archetypes, skeletonization, and the concept of emergence were used to create a model to explain IWRM as a framework of institutional arrangements and a cooperative problem-solving process. A set of four synthesized problem archetypes was developed, and stakeholder analysis was used to identify key disciplines for its implementation and to identify the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed among them. These point the way for academics to develop clear explanations while retaining comprehensive perspectives of IWRM. Building and sustaining a viable academic community to support IWRM will face barriers because academics focus mainly on their disciplines where they are rewarded and recognized. This is also evident in the smaller membership bases of interdisciplinary water associations compared to disciplinary or sector-based water associations. IWRM as an organizing platform for cross-sector water resources management has a long-term future if academics focus on it and its support by international partners continues. By explaining IWRM better and marshalling greater support for it among the academic community, the same approach of clarifying ambiguous concepts and providing better ways to engage academia may help other SDG areas.

1. Introduction

The urgency of global water-related problems is evident from indicators like poor access to water supply and sanitation, water-related disasters, water stress, water pollution, and ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss [1]. These cover the range of water resources management concerns, from service provision to flood and drought risk to environmental protection. They are reported regularly [2,3], and they involve most of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in one way or another [4]. Educators have important roles to explain and support the SDGs even after they expire or are replaced after 2030, but more needs to be accomplished [5,6], even as universities face challenges in doing so [7]. For water educators, SDG 6 focuses on the implementation of integrated water resources management (IWRM), which has evolved as a concept since the 1980s. Despite its long history, as outlined in [8], IWRM’s status and future are uncertain [9]. Support to explain and promote advancement of IWRM is by the Global Water Partnership (GWP) [1] and United Nations (UN) agencies [10], among other international organizations.

Water is a complex arena with many issues and lines of work. General notions like water resources management tend to be interdisciplinary and attract different interpretations. The resulting dispersion detracts from the effectiveness of instruction and explanations of wise solutions that consider multiple facets of water resources. Moreover, water resources management lacks a centralized advocacy base, while IWRM has one that has endured among its international support base for more than two decades [1]. Sustaining IWRM will help advance all water resources management sectors going forward.

Sustaining IWRM requires that it be understood and implemented. While it attracts attention, confusion about it creates a barrier to implementing and teaching it effectively [11]. Part of the confusion is due to its complexity in explaining water as a socio-technical system, in a similar way that other socio-technical arenas exhibit complexity due to many interacting parts and interconnections [12,13,14]. Examples include public health, housing, food security, energy, and education. All such systems, including water, are most complex at generalized levels and less so at local levels where specific problems are clearer.

This paper aims at bridging the chasm between the confused version of IWRM and a clear view of it to facilitate teaching about it more effectively. For discussion purposes, IWRM is divided into a framework of institutional arrangements and a process for cooperative problem-solving [10], with explanations to be clarified via case archetypes of water management situations. This paper begins with a model to explain IWRM’s framework and process, along with its involved systems, sectors, and participants. IWRM participants with agency to solve problems are identified via stakeholder analysis. The database about IWRM is scattered, and case explanations are not well organized, so four archetypes are synthesized from them to illustrate the range of scenarios and settings. Participant roles are explained for cross-sector coordination, management decision-making, technical work, and engagement in communities. The knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) to support these roles are explained, and the core disciplines to deliver these are identified and analyzed for their likely contributions to IWRM education.

The analysis uses methods of systems thinking that include the use of system archetypes, concept diagrams, and skeletonization to clarify main elements and the concept of emergence [15]. The resulting explanation of IWRM is compared to the use of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, which is also based on systems thinking and has been developed to facilitate analysis of processes for individual and collective decisions [16]. Taken together, the result of this paper is intended to be a firm explanation of how IWRM works, identification of key stakeholders and disciplines, a description of the main KSAs to advance it, and a road map for academic advancement of the concept.

2. IWRM as a Framework and a Process

Although IWRM’s definition was published more than 20 years ago and has been criticized often, it has remained unchanged [17]. It identifies the concept as a process, but explanations by the GWP emphasize its function as a framework of institutional arrangements [1]. The framework attribute also dominates the survey instrument used to assess progress on SDG 6.5.1 for IWRM’s status, as its questions do not focus on the problem-solving process other than to explain various tools for analysis [18]. The assessment instrument is based on the four pillars of IWRM defined by the GWP: enabling environment, institutions and participation, management instruments, and financing [19]. The IWRM action framework [1] lists some 87 tools in these categories, which were classified for this paper as aiming at the institutional framework or the process function. This showed 34 institutional tools and 53 process tools, with some overlap.

In its explanation of IWRM, the GWP website outlines key water problems, the governance crisis, IWRM as a claimed paradigm shift from traditional methods, sustainability principles, the history of IWRM, the action framework, and the link to water security [1]. The paradigm shift claim explains that IWRM should use a basin scale focus, coordinated and participatory governance, a multi-objective approach, and a process orientation. Of course, these attributes were also established in general water resources management practice before the IWRM concept emerged [20].

Using the GWP’s explanation, a skeletonized concept diagram (Figure 1) can illustrate how IWRM works as a framework of institutional arrangements and a collaborative problem-solving process involving agents and other stakeholders. The simplicity of the skeletonized display is intentional, as many confusing diagrams about IWRM are available in the published literature, and Figure 1 shows the main elements clearly. Although the diagram is simple, many types of problems, tools, stakeholders, and situations are represented by it.

Comparing IWRM to IAD sheds light on the centrality of the elements shown in the model. IAD also includes actors (stakeholders and agents) and institutional arrangements (norms, institutional settings, incentive structures, and rules). It is also usually illustrated with a simple diagram, which divides situations into action arenas, like the collaborative problem-solving process of IWRM [16]. While IWRM and IAD are similar, studies of them occur in separate knowledge communities. Both make extensive use of case studies to illustrate diverse situations. Diagrams to explain IAD are similar in simplicity to Figure 1.

3. Process and Stakeholders of IWRM

The action arena for IWRM situations is within a community of stakeholders whose activities can be explained by a process model to apply to scenarios of problem archetypes [21]. The community of stakeholders has interrelationships like an actual organization, and the GWP explanation aligns with a process model of a business organization. The high-level vision is the IWRM definition. The key objectives are to address water and sanitation, water-related disasters, water stress, water pollution, and ecosystem decline. Customer targets are solution strategies, and challenges are the governance crisis (not recognizing the interconnected nature of water, fragmented institutional arrangements, single-objective planning, techno-fix shortsightedness, and top–down-centric decision-making).

The process takes place as collaborative problem-solving is implemented by the actors in the community with a shared goal [22]. They are working through a networked social organization [23,24] where stakeholders band together according to their shared interest in a water issue. The networked group should comprise a learning organization [25] where mutual learning occurs through the systems concept of emergence. As the work proceeds, the actors learn more about the problem, the potential solutions, and the impacts.

The business agents are the service providers, planners, regulators, and suppliers, and the customers are the water users and beneficiaries of water-related services, including members of cooperating sectors like housing, ecosystems, agriculture, and energy. The concept of the networked organization offers responses to the governance crisis by focusing on the coupled natural/social systems inherent in its business operations. Fragmented institutional arrangements are replaced by business coordination, the business offers multi-objective products and services, and top–down management is replaced by a customer-friendly participatory approach.

The organization offers roles for all stakeholders. Those involved in the water management decision process are agents with power to influence outcomes. Other stakeholders are customers, suppliers, regulators, and other participants. Their levels of influence and power can be analyzed through stakeholder analysis, which includes identifying stakeholders, defining their attributes and interrelationships, and prioritizing their involvement in projects. To aid in this, GWP offers a stakeholder analysis tool, C3.02 [26].

Stakeholder classification is hegemonic when the entity performing the analysis has the power to determine degrees of influence of stakeholders in the water management process. It divides decision-making into a hierarchy of those with power and those to be consulted. One of the most pressing issues in water resources management is to protect the rights of those who lack paper and who need access to water resources as a human right.

At the onset of an IWRM process, problem identification must occur before the process can proceed, and there may be no designated agent to identify stakeholders. An emergent agent is required who can sense the problem and organize next steps toward a solution. In a top–down situation, the agent may have been designated by a formal authority, but no such authority may be involved, and the emergence of an agent is required as a form of self-organization of the group. Emergence in an action situation explains the system attribute of “the whole as greater than the sum of the parts” because leadership for problem-solving is created by it [27]. If no such leadership can emerge, the problem-solving process requires activation from outside the group [28].

A stakeholder classification model can use influence as a variable to consider the power, legitimacy, and urgency of involvement [29,30]. Stakeholder models are common in business studies [31] and normally portray them as showing tradeoffs in interests in an organization’s activities, like being customers, investors, employees, suppliers, governments, and communities. For the model proposed here (Figure 2), the approach explained in [29] is modified to show stakeholders classified vertically by power in determining the outcome of the IWRM process and horizontally to show influencers on one side and uses of the water resources on the other.

Levels of power among stakeholders are nuanced and distributed. The decision-making group sets policy, makes plans, organizes, decides, and is accountable to the public and regulators. The technical part of the workforce creates and conceptualizes solutions, designs, operates, and troubleshoots. Regulators enforce rules, and coordinators facilitate problem-solving through communication with all other groups.

4. Example IWRM Scenarios

Example scenarios can be used to study how stakeholders can use emergent power to address issues in the water management arenas identified by the GWP. To develop such scenarios, the issues must be parsed to focus on those where water sector actors can solve problems. In the water supply and sanitation arena, the most urgent topic of the sanitation issue is lack of access to safe sanitation like toilets, and this issue belongs more to the housing sector than the water sector. However, the linked issue of wastewater management belongs to the water sector. In the water-related disasters arena, control of the water belongs to the water sector, but land use issues and risk reduction measures like flood warning systems belong elsewhere. Ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss are environmental sector problems, but they can be represented by the water sector issues of water stress and pollution.

After clarifying these inclusions, four problem arenas that are mostly under the control of the water sector were selected to illustrate the GWP-identified water crisis:

• Water supply—to represent access to water and sanitation services;
• Flood risk management—to represent water-related disasters;
• Regional water management—to represent water stress and ecosystem degradation;
• Integrated water services management—to represent multiple water issues.

The contextual situations for the four examples were synthesized from study of cases on the GWP website and among some 800 cases presented during past years in the writer’s water management course. As mentioned, cases like these in the databases have not been quality-assured and exhibit a lack of uniformity. Claims that a case illustrates the application of IWRM only require the use of one or two management instruments, which do not indicate much integration by themselves.

The 258 GWP cases had been explained in [10] and were analyzed again. They include 101 cases from middle-income countries (MICs), 71 from low-income countries (LICs), and 38 from high-income countries (HICs), along with 39 transboundary and 9 regional or generalized policy cases. They mostly involve mixed activities, are about policy or planning (about 40% each), and they lack performance metrics or post facto assessments. Most were posted by members of the GWP community, with others from NGOs, academic and research organizations, national organizations, consultants, utilities, and UN agencies. Among them, eighteen focused on drinking water and fifteen on sanitation, with nine cases focused on both. All drinking water cases were about either LIC (7) or MIC (11) situations [2]. No cases mentioned the word wastewater, and only one mentioned sewage, although these services are important in the water pollution situations that are mentioned. Ten cases mentioned flooding. The data were inspected for cooperative approaches to regional water issues, and this yielded nine cases. Cases showing cross-sector cooperation were difficult to identify because policy-related, river basin planning, or transboundary entries were mostly about institutional arrangements and did not reflect action.

In the writer’s course, the students are assigned to identify a problem, explain it, and derive lessons learned. The cases have not been published, but each is based on published references. Of some 41 cases this year, 33 addressed the case categories of this paper: drinking water, disasters, water stress, and pollution. They were about evenly split between MICs and HICs, with LICs represented only in policy cases, like global access to drinking water.

To develop four examples, two were included from low- or middle-income countries and two from high-income countries. All examples are assumed to occur in governance settings based on the rule of law in democratic systems. Income distributions are important determinants of governance challenges [32]. In LIC and MIC settings, they show many living at subsistence levels and small middle classes. The HIC settings are assumed to be like those identified by the World Bank and include the US, Europe, and several countries in Asia [33].

The synthesized scenario of access to water supply and drinking water occurs in a large LIC or MIC city. Current water services can be improved to elevate access levels, water quality, reliability, and affordability. The goal is to transform the status quo to better levels of social justice and operational performance. Decision-makers are at the policy and executive levels, and the decision framework is based on national laws about safe water and public services. The process will involve a study to develop a long-range plan for strategic improvement.

The flood risk scenario addresses the disasters category and is set in a medium-sized LIC or MIC city with many people living in portions of flood plains. Frequent and uncontrolled flooding wreaks damage, injury, and misery on the vulnerable populations. Although public funds are limited, the goal is to develop a comprehensive and integrated approach to flood risk reduction with a realistic implementation plan. Local public works engineers and planners have been tasked to carry out all that is possible in difficult situations.

The case for water stress has a regional focus and occurs in a HIC setting where water users are placing too many demands on the available supplies, the aquifers are depleted, the streams are stressed during low flow periods, and coordination and regulation are needed among the players. As a result of the water stresses, ecosystems are threatened. This is a common pool problem that occurs in many places where no management agency has been instituted [34].

The integrated multi-sector water services scenario is to develop a comprehensive plan for a large city in a HIC. The Los Angeles (California) One Water 2024 Plan was selected as a model with a collaborative approach to the management of surface water, groundwater, potable water, wastewater, recycled water, dry weather runoff, and stormwater. These link to other sectors like sanitation, urban farming, energy, and health. The need is to respond to drought, sustainability challenges, new water quality regulations, and climate change. The planning process involved city departments and regional agencies in collaboration with other stakeholders [35].

Data to facilitate later discussion of the four cases are summarized in

Table 1. Summary data for example scenarios.

	Water Supply	Flood Risk Management	Regional Water Management	Cross-Sector IWRM Issue
Main issue	Poor access to safe and effective water services. A plan is required to increase access and improve water safety and service delivery.	Flood losses are too high, especially among vulnerable groups. A realistic plan to address the issue with multiple measures is required.	Excessive water demand. Aquifer depletion, streams stressed. Ecosystem deterioration. Common pool management required.	Comprehensive plan needed among water services and linked sectors. Making plans work long term requires focused implementation.
Setting	Utility in large city of a LIC or MIC	Flood agency in medium city of a LIC or MIC	Emergent management authority in a HIC region	Cross-sector plan in large city of HIC
Business processes	Strategic planning Organization Implementation	Program development and implementation	Institutional development and management planning	Integrated planning and implementation
Key problems	Poverty and finance Commitment needed Stakeholder trust needed Technical management	Complexity Uncertain solutions Lack of control Citizen education Poverty and housing Engagement needed	Organizational development needed Stakeholder buy-in and trust. Rules and enforcement needed	Vision and political leadership needed Planning challenges Implementation over long term
Main needs Ranked	Commitment Trust Finance PWM Reduce poverty	Gain control Feasible plan Citizen education Engineering	Build trust Convince people Analysis Organization	Vision Polit leadership Planning skills Follow through

. The main needs to make IWRM successful in the four cases shown in the last row were derived from the study of many cases by the writer and his students, and they can be anecdotally illustrated in individual cases. For the water supply case, the needs are to sustain the commitment of governance authorities, to build trust among water users, to find the necessary funding to expand services, to administer the utility effectively, and to reduce poverty so water users can help to fund the services. For the flood case, the need is to gain control over socio-economic variables like land use, to develop a feasible plan, to educate citizens, and to implement solid engineering solutions. The regional water management case involves the users of a stream or aquifer, and they will require trust in the authorities to be convinced of the need and approach of the solution with good analysis and to develop an appropriate and successful organization. The cross-sector case requires a visionary approach to the integration of public services, political leadership to galvanize action, planning skills to develop the programs, and a program for follow-through to ensure that the effort is not stalled.

As mentioned, the solutions shown will not apply universally. They are intended to be skeletonized archetypes of solution strategies that will apply to many situations, which are themselves archetypes of the population of many possible scenarios with similar attributes and water management variables.

5. Assigning Roles and Responsibilities for IWRM Situations

The synthesis of situations shown in the four archetype examples can aid in role identification, which is challenging in published IWRM cases that are not prepared and quality-assured by peer review as in schools of public policy and administration, which are the logical homes for them. Perhaps the best example of these is shown by some 73 cases about water at the John F. Kennedy School of Government site [36]. These cases are typically about organizational issues, are presented in detail, and have undergone critical review. In comparison, GWP cases are often very short, may comprise a government or consulting report, and have not been reviewed with rigor.

The challenge of quality assurance in cases is addressed here by assigning a logical focus of responsibility for each problem archetype. These designations are based on a skeletonization approach because the situations are expected to recur often. This enables the responsibility for problem-solving to be associated with the KSAs needed to prepare the agents. It also provides a tool to work on the problem of stove-piped organizational arrangements among water scenarios, which has been shown to be problematic for disaster preparedness [37], development settings [38], and to reduce the effectiveness of programs in other sectors as well. For example, a study of programs in Illinois found that lack of cooperation among helping agencies posed a significant barrier to welfare reform [39].

The stakeholder analysis explained earlier showed generic roles, which were used to create six categories of agents. The decision-making group comprises political, public administration, and financial participation elements. Use of the term political refers to the process of making governance effective and does not refer to scheming for political advantage [40]. Such a political role requires vision, values, commitment, and the capability to convince people to act, as well as to understand issues well enough to lead.

Public administration is supportive of politics because its skill sets of organizational development, policy development, and operations management are needed to ensure the sustainability of programs. Public administrators must also foster stakeholder involvement and address linked issues across sectors, as well as organize enforcement programs for regulation and policy. Financial managers must analyze needs, develop feasible funding strategies, and explain financial management strategies.

Engineering, sciences, and planning are combined in a technical group due to a lack of distinct boundaries between their roles in IWRM. Technical inputs include engineering, various analysis methods, and urban planning, among others. Participants must study and understand situations, exercise good public works management and utility management skills, understand the complexity of issues, and develop rules to ensure that system goals can be achieved, as well as exercise planning skills for systems that link together.

The engagement category represents stakeholder participation and the need to build public support and trust through collective action and effective communication. It involves facilitation, coordination, working with broad groups of stakeholders, fostering citizen education, and working with sectoral engagement forces such as public health, nutrition, and public safety. The added category of culture is related to and includes the social and behavioral issues that must be considered, and it responds to criticisms that IWRM is hegemonic and does not consider the real needs and preferences of people [41]. While the culture category is somewhat intangible, it is critical to foster a sense of trust among stakeholders and a willingness to work together.

Analysis of the four situations pointed to different levels of agency and power of each of the six role categories, and one role was assigned as the primary driver of success or failure for each situation. The last row of Table 1 is copied here as

Table 2. Main roles for success in four archetype IWRM situations.

Water Supply/ Drinking Water	Flood Risk Management	Water Management	Cross-Sector IWRM Issue
Commitment (P) *	Gain control (P)	Build trust (E)	Shared vision (P)
Trust (E)	Feasible plan (A)	Analysis (T)	Political leadership (P)
Finance (P)	Citizen education (E)	Organization (A)	Planning skills (T)
PWM (T)	Engineering (T)	Convince people (P)	Follow through (A)

Notes: * Abbreviations for the roles. P = political; A = public administration; T = technical; E = engagement; C = culture; F = finance and economics.

to facilitate discussion. The requisites for success and the roles shown in the table are listed in order of priority.

The rankings are intended to enlighten understanding of the decision processes, although they may shift in individual cases. In three of the four categories, political skill is considered first because the necessary commitment cannot be mobilized to find solutions without it. For example, in the case of water supply, setting goals is relatively easy compared to the political issues of raising funding, increasing public trust, and sustaining work over the long term. On the other hand, work among common pool water management cases relied more heavily on engagement and technical explanations about the co-benefits of cooperation. Success will require rules and cooperation among users of surface and groundwater systems in a regional system. For flood risk management, political skill to gain control of the situation is a top priority, as many errant forces will be at play. Involved organizations are fragmented among many local governments, districts, state and national agencies, and civic organizations [42]. For the cross-sector case, forging a shared vision among agencies requires political skill.

6. KSAs Required to Support the IWRM Roles

KSAs required for capacity-building were developed for each role and responsibility in the cases, and the home discipline for each role was identified (

Table 3. Roles, disciplines, and KSAs for IWRM scenarios.

Roles	Disciplines	KSAs
Political	Political science	Ability to understand situations Commitment to needed solutions Visioning Communication and trust building Business skills
Public administration	Public administration	Organizational development Planning Administrative management Program assessment
Financial	Public finance and economics	Financing Funding source selection Public sector economic issues Understanding of poverty alleviation
Technical	Engineering Sciences Planning	Analysis Planning Operations management
Engagement	Communication and public relations	Understand collective action Trust building Foster cooperation Citizen education
Culture	Behavioral sciences	Understand all human needs

). Some roles, like decision-making, are difficult to assign to only one discipline, other than a broad one, like management, or a hybrid/interdisciplinary category like decision science. The KSAs could be requisites for other public sector problems as well as IWRM, and the unique features of the water sector must be considered.

The six disciplinary areas represent additional skeletonization because of overlap and lack of merit for including too much detail in the discussion. Law is not included because the judicial function and regulatory tools are constraints rather than supporters of collective problem-solving.

The KSAs of the six disciplinary groups can be identified through their mainline organizations, although lists of them are normally quite broad. Political science requires KSAs for understanding political institutions, processes, and actors in a variety of settings, using power ethically, and engaging in thorough problem-solving, collective action, and collaborative decision-making [43]. Public administration requires managing public programs and policies, having insight into decision-making that shapes communities and operations of government agencies, and ensuring efficient delivery of public services [44]. Public finance is embodied in it, but special knowledge of financing mechanisms and funding sources is needed [45]. Public economics is added to the finance category to ensure that water decisions consider issues like household affordability of services. Engineering and sciences are very broad, with civil and environmental engineering being a mainline engineering category [46] and watershed science being the mainline science category using disciplines like chemistry, biology, and geology [47]. Planning is more focused on collective action because it is interdisciplinary and addresses issues like IWRM [48].

KSAs for communication and public relations are essential for IWRM, as well as other public sector problems. They seem underrepresented in the IWRM management instruments but are likely embedded at least partially in tools like water diplomacy [49]. New methods for communication are being piloted in the emerging field of public deliberation, which has goals to develop legitimate policy decisions that are feasible, inclusive, and balanced, as well as to foster buy-in and trust in governing institutions [50,51,52]. Behavioral sciences span many areas, and for IWRM, they can be represented by social and cultural anthropology, where practitioners embed in communities to observe belief systems and social structures [53].

None of the discipline groups can claim principal ownership of IWRM, which is a common feature of interdisciplinary problem spaces. To probe this dilemma, each disciplinary group was analyzed to identify its main perspective on water resources issues. Not surprisingly, each group sees its KSAs as applying to many issues, with water management among them. Political scientists see water problems as like other public sector problems, and public administrators see water issues as like those addressed across government organizations. Communication and public relations specialists see the same needs for water issues as to engage the public in other arenas. The engineering and sciences include niche groups that are involved with water issues, and planning has a more deliberate focus on coordinated teams, although these are for planning and not for problem-solving. Public finance and economics specialists see water as a generic public finance issue and one of many factors in poverty. Behavioral sciences see hegemonic methods like IWRM as problematic across sectors.

These fragmented perspectives about water show that the IWRM community of interest comprises dispersed cells of professionals within the disciplines. Even in the cells, IWRM is likely secondary to the main discipline areas of the participants. This result is also evident in interdisciplinary water resources associations, which have fewer members than focused associations in the water sector. Data on current memberships are difficult to obtain, but from experience and available data, the writer estimates that the American Water Resources Association has around 2000 members, whereas the American Water Works Association has around 50,000 members. On the international front, the International Water Resources Association has about 5000 members, but many do not pay dues. The variation among these water associations shows the diversity of the water sector and why lumping it into one category for capacity building is problematic [54].

The challenge presented to IWRM by the fragmented perspectives are an important reason that it, as well as concepts such as water resources management and even an organized water community are sometimes considered as idealistic and hegemonic, while blocking more just approaches to meeting water-related needs [55,56]. IWRM offers a pathway to bypass these problems if it can be understood and taught well.

7. Conclusions: A Road Map to Teach About IWRM

This paper illustrated the use of systems concepts such as problem archetypes, skeletonization, and application of the concept of emergence to create an explanatory model to facilitate teaching about IWRM’s framework and process with clarity and effectiveness. This model involves unavoidable complexities among the systems, sectors, and participants in IWRM, but the stakeholder analysis, the problem archetypes, and role assignments among disciplines can highlight the KSAs needed to enlighten our view and provide a road map for academic advancement of IWRM and the SDGs.

This work is needed because, although IWRM’s definition was published more than 20 years ago, it still attracts criticism and many different perspectives. IWRM is hard to explain, but it offers a comprehensive way to explain the many dimensions of managing water for sustainable development. Despite its challenges, sustained support for it and discussion within the international community and among leaders indicate strong conceptual appeal and a sense that something like IWRM is needed. Its messy problem space is also experienced by other complex societal arenas, with water having the added complexity of its connectivity with other sectors. The messiness can be addressed by systems thinking, but this can seem academic, and stakeholders may lack interest. Clearer explanations are needed while sustaining the comprehensive approaches embodied in IWRM.

The opportunity for academics is to develop ways to present clearer explanations while retaining the comprehensive perspectives. This requires informed discussions based on a common understanding that IWRM is a set of explanations and tools that provide a framework of institutional arrangements and a multi-stakeholder process for site-specific problems. This framework and process can be adapted to different settings and scenarios as needed, and case study explanations are needed to show how this can be carried out.

The academic community is the logical venue to develop clearer explanations and the learning materials for capacity-building to prepare leaders, but few programs include IWRM in their curricula. Domain disciplines like political science and engineering focus on basic principles and tools, and while niche interdisciplinary fields like systems engineering and planning could take on IWRM as an interdisciplinary and systemic field, they are distracted by many other issues as well and are unlikely to focus on it.

The way to infuse IWRM into instruction more effectively could begin with disciplines framing it consistently using the clear explanations and using case examples to show how tools in their domains can be applied to it. The cases can be honed to become like those handled in graduate schools of business or public affairs. In natural and built environment courses, IWRM examples can show the centrality of water across the issue areas. Engineering can explain creative solutions, and science fields can demonstrate analysis methods. In social science disciplines, examples can explain how institutional development and public deliberation can facilitate solutions to shared problems for the common good. Political science can explain the roles of political leaders, management teachers can illustrate how tools for organization and finance work, communications educators can explain how to raise trust and participation levels, and behavioral scientists can explain the roles of disenfranchised groups.

The most difficult challenge is to build and sustain a viable community of practice for IWRM. Academics focus mainly on their disciplines where they are rewarded and recognized. They have relevant domain knowledge, but they may not choose IWRM examples. To formulate practical, real-world IWRM examples, they need to be incentivized and to gain familiarity with cross-sector water issues. The confused conceptual explanations of IWRM and the messy condition of posted cases should be addressed to improve the incentives and equipping of instructors. The instruction can be aimed at water sector professionals, who can in turn advise the decision-makers about solution pathways when they lack awareness and are distracted by many other issues.

With its many challenges, it is worth asking if IWRM as an organizing platform for cross-sector water resources management has a long-term future. Does it add value, and can we expect that the concept and support for it will endure, or will IWRM lose appeal and be supported only by a few participants and some international donors? The concept has advanced, and its sponsors have assembled a good collection of tools, but IWRM faces headwinds that must be confronted to sustain it. Perhaps the strongest argument to support the continuation of IWRM as a flagship for the water resources management knowledge arena is that it has a centralized advocacy base that has endured among its international partners for more than two decades, and sustaining it will advance the broader water resources management community going forward.

The challenges facing IWRM require a sustained campaign and not a short-term fix. By explaining it better and marshalling greater support for it among the academic community, the stage will be set for positive dialogue and support for it going forward. The same approach of clarifying ambiguous concepts and providing better ways to engage academia may also be helpful in other SDG areas.