Water as a source of innovation in environmental policy and management

Abstract

As the 50th anniversary of the Stockholm United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, and 30th anniversary of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro, were celebrated in June 2022, we take the opportunity to consider the influences of water in approaches to environmental governance and management. These environmental management approaches are not exclusive to water research and management, but have been highly influential, to the benefit of other sectors. These pioneering Stockholm and Rio de Janeiro international conventions had a major role in setting worldwide directions for sustainable development, climate change, recognition of Indigenous peoples, impact assessment, biological diversity, and Agenda 21 (about local development), and on many other topics such as forest management, aspects of wildlife, fish stocks, and arresting desertification. Despite much emphasis on rational planning, the Stockholm conference also offered some seeds of bottom-up management, and strengthening institutions especially for the less industrialised countries (United Nations 1973, Action plan for the human environment, recommendation 7). The anniversary conference, Stockholm +50, co-hosted by Sweden and Kenya, has emphasised the global interconnectedness of the environment, and the ‘triple crisis’ of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. The Presidents, in their concluding plenary address, highlighted re-energising commitments and relationships, system-wide change in the way our current system works to contribute to a healthy planet, and accelerating system-wide transformations in high impact sectors (Stockholm+50 Presidents final remarks to plenary 2022). This highlights much greater attention to systemic connections than was present 50, even 30, years ago. Nevertheless, although water is recognised in other major international initiatives (especially the International Decade for Action on Water for Sustainable Development 2018–2028, and two of the Sustainable Development Goals), the seminal Stockholm, Rio de Janeiro, and Stockholm+50 conferences have placed relatively little emphasis on water beyond the human needs perspective of drinking water and sanitation. Water has particular characteristics that have helped to drive directions and innovations in environmental management, policy and governance. Water is the most fundamental of human needs, in that an individual human can survive only a few days without it. It is also crucial to plant and animal life, part of atmospheric processes, and essential to life within soils. Water for sanitation is vital to human health. Water is also integral to many production processes, in primary and secondary industry, and hence to livelihoods and economies. Water moves across rather than being limited within specific parcels of land. Typically rivers cross the lands of many owners or managers, and quite a number cross jurisdictions, including international boundaries. In other words, rivers are seldom under single ownership and control. While river courses have somewhat fixed locations (changing over time owing to hydrological processes), the water in them moves, and quantities vary seasonally and over