Moving beyond water centricity? Conceptualizing integrated water resources management for implementing sustainable development goals

While the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted in 2015, establishes an ambitious set of goals, targets and indicators for supporting global sustainability, greater conceptual clarity is required to measure implementation. A key UN Target (6.5) for implementing sustainable development goal (SDG) 6 is to ‘implement integrated water resources management (IWRM) at all levels’. However, we argue that the current UN emphasis on measuring its implementation through institutional indicators limits our understanding of effectiveness, while ignoring links to other SDGs. While IWRM is often interpreted to mean the integration of water-related management components at the river basin scale, conceptualizations differ significantly. Specifying the critical normative principles of IWRM, therefore, becomes important for measuring its implementation. Drawing upon pre-existing conceptualizations, we consequently identify seven core principles or dimensions (integration; scale; institutions; participation; economic valuation; equity; and, environmental/ecological protection) to re-conceptualize IWRM after the adoption of agenda 2030. These dimensions, we argue, allow more objective measurement of IWRM implementation through the development of Target 6.5 sub-indicators. They also help shift IWRM beyond its current ‘water centric’ emphasis to enhance its contribution to achieving other SDGs such as those for ending poverty, providing clean and affordable energy, achieving gender equality, protecting terrestrial ecosystems, promoting sustainable cities, combatting hunger and climate change, and strengthening the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development.