Sustainable Water Use and Management

This paper argues that values, perceptions, and attitudes affect decision making in water management and that a better understanding of water ethics will ensure more reliable management practices. A Canadian case study, focusing on the City of Toronto’s Biosolids and Residuals Master Plan (BRMP), illustrates the importance of values in water management practices. In 2007, the author served as one of a seven member expert peer review panel to evaluate the model used by consultants to recommend biosolids management upgrades at each of the city’s four wastewater treatment plants. Both the decision-making model as well as community reactions to the model and master plan revealed value judgments that ultimately affected the management process and implementation of recommendations over recent years.

One of the most challenging problems that urban areas will face in the future is adaptation to the effects of climate change, particularly with regard to local problems of water management (e.g., flooding caused by heavy rain events, degradation of urban streams, and water scarcity). Sustainable local management of stormwater calls for approaches that connect technical and ecological solutions with urban design aspects and socioeconomic factors. This in turn opens up great opportunities to advance knowledge toward the application of water-sensitive urban design (WSUD), an approach that integrates the water cycle into urban design to simultaneously minimize environmental degradation, improve aesthetic and recreational appeal, and support social cohesion. A comparative study of four case studies across Europe reveals some of the successes and limits of WSUD implemented so far and presents new considerations for future developments. Best practices on integrated management as well as concepts to re-establish natural water cycles in the urban system while ensuring water quality, river health, and sociocultural values are included. In the selected case studies, water takes a structuring role in urban development, which has been designed to serve diverse public functions and maximize environmental quality, urban renovation, resilience to change and sustainable growth.

Worldwide depletion of resources has brought many sustainability issues to the forefront including the consumption of water use for indoor purposes. Based on various studies, the third largest consumption of water occurs in buildings, mainly for flushing and personal hygiene. The United States Department of Energy and European Commission places domestic indoor water use at more than 250 L per person per day. This chapter examines the water consumption in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) and non-LEED-certified dormitories. LEED is a sustainability rating system providing guidance on incorporating sustainable design strategies in the design of buildings. LEED offers various rating levels including certified, silver, gold, and platinum out of a possible 100 base points. The varying levels are associated with target points achieved. Three LEED and six non-LEED dormitories, located in the northeast, serving over 2,000 students, were selected for this comparative study. Different categorization of dormitories by varied agencies and the inconsistency in water-use studies make isolating water consumption in dormitories problematic. Considering the fact that the International and Uniform Plumbing Codes do not require to calculate the water consumption in buildings, and engineers’ calculations have been used to create baseline water use for the nine dormitories. The perception of water consumption behavior of occupants has also been investigated through users’ surveys. Finally, a comparison among the design evaluation, actual water consumption and subjectively evaluated consumption allows highlighting water consumption in dormitories.

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) provides a framework to integrate high environmental standards for water quality and sustainable water resource management. Hydro-geological conditions typical for southwest part of Lithuania determine high concentrations of iron in the groundwater. Untreated groundwater is commonly used for every day needs by local inhabitants living in a villages (water consumption <100 m³/day). Seasonal measurements indicated high variations of total iron concentrations in groundwater. The detected annual concentration of total iron in the water wells was 3.3 mg/L. The concentrations of total iron in the tap water were some 40 % lower compared to those in the groundwater. Iron removal from the ground drinking water yields advantages with the comfort of consumers; however, it entails environmental impacts and additional costs. A comparative analysis of collective and individual household iron removal systems for the selected village has been performed to estimate possible environmental impacts and costs. For assessment of costs and environmental impacts, authors applied input–output analysis. The chosen technique for collective iron removal was non-reagent method implying oxidation of contaminants in the drinking water and their containment in the filters. For individual households, reverse osmosis filtration method was selected. The environmental benefits of using central iron removal system result in formation of almost 70 % less of solid waste, 13 % less of wastewater, and 97 % less consumption of electric energy compared to the individual iron removal facility at each household. Estimated overall cost, including purchase, installation, and operational costs, for central iron removal system is 390 Euro/year per household, the respective cost for individual household iron removal facility—1,335 Euro/year. The analysis revealed that central iron removal system has advantages in comparison with iron removal facilities at each individual household.

Education for sustainable development (ESD) aims at enabling people to make a contribution to sustainable development. Its central educational goal is the development of sustainability key competencies. Water is one of the bases of life on earth and so an important topic for ESD. ESD can help to increase the awareness of water issues and to promote the careful use of water resources. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the relevance of water as a topic for ESD and to show the approaches and methods that can be used in ESD to raise awareness of the importance of natural resources and develop competencies for the sustainable development of our global society. The International Decade “Water for Life” can be seen as a good context for these educational objectives.

This paper reports on water security issues in Asia that has long-term security implications for Australia. Asia’s water problems are severe with one in five people not having access to safe drinking water. Water security is defined as the availability of an acceptable quantity and quality of water for health, livelihoods, ecosystems and production, coupled with an acceptable level of water-related risks to people, environments and economies. It is a function of access to adequate quantities and acceptable quality, for human and environmental users. This analysis shows many Asian countries will face greater challenges than present from population explosion, shifts of populations from rural to urban areas, pollution of water resources and over-abstraction of groundwater. These challenges will be compounded by the effects of climate change over the next 50 years. It is then necessary to mobilise technologies, techniques, skills and research to aid security issues in Asia now. Otherwise, population growth, rapid urbanisation and climate change issues will worsen placing strong demands on water resources, thus creating water refugees, and this will affect countries close to Asia such as Australia. Reducing water’s destructive potential and increasing its productive potential is a central challenge and goal for the sake of future generations in Asia and Australia.

In many sub-Saharan countries, studies indicate that water scarcity is caused by institutional and political factors. However, despite implementation of a decentralized and integrated approach in water governance, additional water stress from climate-related impacts now threaten to fuel water insecurity. Borrowing from social network theory, this chapter seeks to investigate how synergy among water governance actors influences adaptation status in rural Kenya. Network data from Loitokitok district in southern Kenya is collected using the saturation sampling method and analyzed for density, structural holes, and suitable brokers. Results indicate that rural water security is augmented mainly by individual rain water harvest, effective irrigation techniques, community-based water-point protection, and intermittent capacity building. However, the integrated governance strategy fails to aid interconnective and coordinative actions among actors thus hindering spread of adaptation strategies to the wider community and results in independent implementation of water conservation measures. Consequently, we call for deliberate linkage among local stakeholders to upscale adaptation measures and enhance water security in Kenya.

Water is the main limiting factor in crop production in the hot and dry summer period within arid and semiarid regions such as Balkh region, Afghanistan. Due to lack of irrigation water infrastructure and information about how much water should be applied at the field level given different levels of water availability, the individual farmer lacks information about the sustainability of the water supply, crop production, and how much net income he would get from this production. Thus, the main research question is how to find ways to optimize the use of water given different shortages in water availability at the farm level in Balkh, Afghanistan. The research uses a linear programming (LP) model to assess the economic impact of net returns given four different water availability scenarios at the farm level. The main result among others is that water value increases as the water availability decreases as expected. Water is binding in all scenarios, and harvesting labor is the most used input as water, and other resources/inputs become scarcer in the farmer’s mixed crop production.

Water is the most essential natural resource for sustainable development of human society as well as the most vital source for viability of human and natural systems. However, natural water resources had been threaten by increase of temperature due to global warming and improper usage, causing health problems both for human and aquatic environment. On the other hand, global water consumption has increased because of growth in population and increase of the per capita water use. To make adjustments to the water utilization, the need is allocating limited water resources and increasing local water use efficiency. Sustainability is a relative concept that must be applied in an environment undergoing multiple changes that are occurring over different temporal and spatial scales. Contrary to the popular belief, Turkey is not a water-rich country. Turkey depends on its water resource systems for survival and welfare. Therefore, new studies have been forced in the rehabilitation and sustainable usage of water sources recently in the world. In this paper, information about their current state and future projections is given based on many published data.

Effective and efficient water management systems require a comprehensive understanding of anthropogenic pressures on the water environment. Developing a broader systems perspective and extended information systems is therefore essential to systematically explore interlinks between anthropogenic activities and impaired waters at an appropriate scale. For this purpose, this paper identifies information dilemmas in contemporary water monitoring and management from an anthropogenic metabolic point of view. The European Drivers-Pressures-State of the Environment-Impacts-Responses (DPSIR) framework was used as a basis for classifying and discussing two approaches to water management, namely state/impacts-oriented and pressure-oriented. The results indicate that current water monitoring and management are mainly state/impacts-oriented, based on observed pollutants in environmental monitoring and/or on biodiversity changes in ecological monitoring. This approach often results in end-of-pipe solutions and reactive responses to combat water problems. To complement this traditional state/impacts-oriented approach, we suggest moving toward an anthropogenic metabolism-based and pressure-oriented (AM/PO) approach to aid in alleviating human-induced pressures on the water environment in a more proactive way. The AM/PO ideas can equally be applied to water-centric sustainable urbanization planning and evaluation in a broader context.

The popular and academic media are rife with calls to sustainably manage our water resources and to ‘solve our water problems.’ Yet, evidence suggests that throughout history, our efforts to ‘solve’ water problems have simply generated new problems. Humans have drained swamps to solve problems of disease and land shortage. This subsequently reduced water supply and increased flooding in many areas. Humans dammed rivers to solve problems related to energy and irrigation, thereby reducing ecosystem resiliency. Humans established a water-based sewerage system to solve problems of aesthetics and health and as a result increased water consumption and created a dependency on massive infrastructure. The insistence on solutions may exacerbate rather than alleviate negative conditions, in part, because it discourages decision-makers and citizens from accepting long-term responsibility for managing water to sustain ourselves. The authors argue that addressing water problems requires a cognitive shift to recognize the concept of ‘wicked problems’ and to subsequently change discourse about water to resist the idea of solutions.

In Finland, 1 million inhabitants of the population (5.4 million) live in sparsely populated areas. Since 2004, the Finnish legislation requires that every house outside the municipal sewer networks must have a water purification system that meets the minimum purification requirements for phosphorus, nitrogen, and organic matter. Existing dwellings were given an adaptation period of ten years, during which they would have to make the necessary investments. In our study, we focused on making research on the functionality of small-scale purification systems in 30 different households and on dissemination of information about the purification systems and the legislation to concerned property owners. The purification performance of the plants was monitored by traditional sampling and continuous on-line water quality sondes. The study was focused at determining how much the fluctuations in the incoming wastewater quality affect the purification performance. The main results showed that the small-scale purification systems function generally well if they are properly installed and regularly maintained. Unfortunately, this is not often the case. Several recommendations on how to prevent faults in installation of the systems and how to encourage property owners to maintain their systems were made.

The present study analyzes the interrelations of the education, research, society, and policy nexus on sustainable water use and agriculture in semiarid regions of Tunisia. The selected region of Tunisia is one of the most water-stressed regions in northern Africa, strongly exporting fruits and vegetables to European mainland whereas at the same time strongly lacking water resources and reducing production of food for its own growing population. Water scarcity is the major problem in the agriculture of semiarid regions. Along with the population growth, water resources (qualitatively and quantitatively) for food production is exposed to severe strains and has become an important topic for science and politics as well as for the general public in these countries as well as globally. Natural water resources in Tunisia are faced with serious problems related to their quantity and quality (Mekki et al. 2013). Only 8.4 % of the total shallow groundwater has salinity levels that do not exceed 1.5 g/L (Benjemaa et al. 1999). Thus, there is also a lack of fresh drinking water for the population, caused by the extensive use of deep and fossil ground water by agriculture. Due to the lack of conventional water resources, water of marginal quality is used for agricultural irrigation.

Access to safe drinking water is already a very serious issue for large urban populations in fast-growing economies such as India. This is further being impacted by climate change, leading to increase in water-related diseases. In regions where water is already scarce, integrated urban planning especially of water resources in conjunction with other sectors such as energy and taking health into consideration is urgently needed. The case study Leh Town, the capital of the Ladakh Region, is located in an ecologically vulnerable semi-arid region of the Himalayas and is undergoing very rapid transformation due to tourism and economic growth. Huge increase in water demand coupled with inadequate water supply and wastewater management are augmenting already serious environmental issues. In 2012–2013, we mapped point sources of water pollution using geographic information systems (GIS), analysed medical data and conducted questionnaire surveys of 200 households and ca. 300 hotels and guesthouses. Our study finds that occurrences of diarrhoea in Leh seem to have increased in the past decade, which may be related to groundwater pollution. Further, over 80 % of the water demand is currently being supplied from groundwater resources without regulation, so that these may be being depleted faster than their rate of recharge. This study discusses using GIS to support urban planning decision-making and advocates a partially decentralized sewage system for water resources conservation in Leh.

Much of India’s agricultural production is reliant on groundwater for irrigation, which has led to declining water tables. Rainwater harvesting (RWH), the small-scale collection and storage of run-off to augment groundwater stores through recharge, is an important supply-side management tool to sustain this precious resource. Understanding the impact of RWH is crucial to ensure that the net effect on groundwater and the watershed water balance is positive both locally and within a watershed. Using a case study of a watershed in rural Rajasthan, the Arvari River, this chapter describes the hydrological impacts of RWH for groundwater recharge carried out by the local community and a non-government organisation (NGO). The chapter first defines RWH and its potential to change the water balance. It then describes the field- and watershed-scale impacts of RWH in the Arvari River watershed. Finally, the chapter explores the operation of the local community watershed organisation that supports demand-side water management. This study shows that for sustainable management of groundwater, RWH construction must be balanced with groundwater demand management.

The water resources of southeastern Minnesota, USA, have been exploited by humans for the past two centuries. The region’s sedimentary (karst) geology holds vast underground aquifers with high-quality drinking water. Springs and seeps percolate from these aquifers in valleys to produce hundreds of kilometers of coldwater trout streams. Citizens in the region place high values on these surface and groundwater resources, protecting them from potential harm by becoming informed about threats and organizing in protest over resource contamination and perceived overuse. Agriculture, ethanol production, silica sand mining and processing, and urban development have all threatened the area’s water resources and prompted citizen action. Recent regional studies have examined long-term trends in water quality, surveyed citizen attitudes and values, and made recommendations for monitoring and protecting both surface and groundwaters in southeastern Minnesota. A culture of water stewardship will continue to grow in this region, serving as a good model to follow wherever sustainable water management practices are being developed.

Sustainability of water and its use in quality and quantity and in time and space is closely related not only to technical, technological, and economic aspects and influences but also to social, religious, and cultural aspects and influences. A close balance of both groups of variables is important to maintaining sustainable efficient, safe, and renewable water supply, social equity, public health, and ecosystem as well as minimizing water pollution and depletion. In this chapter, emphasis will be given to (1) detailing the influences on water sustainability and use from humanistic origin such as gender equality, involvement, and participation, unwise water use and overuse, colonization, unilateralism, and conflicts, religion and faith guidance, shortsightedness in water policies and strategies, cultural traditions and customs, and human rights and the ethic of care, and (2) proposing adaptation actions to minimize and/or reverse influences under (3) such as adapting measures for maintaining balance of water availability and use, rethinking water policies and strategies, adapting measures for public involvement and participation in water service decision making including women, adapting behavioral change measures for maintaining cultural traditions and customs and respecting related faith guidance, adapting measures for maintaining equity, equality, and justice in water use and allocation, and adapting measures for minimizing and/or resolving conflicts and disagreement related to water and its use.

This paper describes the scientific background, main elements and final results of the WATERPRAXIS project, which was implemented in 2009–2012 under the Interreg IVB Baltic Sea Region Programme 2007–2013 between seven coastal countries of the Baltic Sea Region (BSR). The special focus of this project was on the reduction of excessive nutrient loads to the Baltic Sea through support in implementation of cost- and eco-efficient water protection measures in the region. The rationale behind the WATERPRAXIS project was the need to tackle the continuing eutrophication of the Baltic Sea, a phenomenon which concerns scientists and governments alike. The clear dependencies between the bad quality of river waters flowing into the sea and its ecological state are well known and are already reflected in the European Union (EU) Water Framework Directive (WFD) (Schernewski et al. in J Coast Conserv 12(2):53–66, 2008). The EU WFD requires large-scale river basin management plans (RBMP) to be developed and implemented for each river basin district, aiming to achieve at least good ecological status in all European water bodies, including coastal seas, by 2015. However, this idealistic approach is hindered in practice by several barriers, in particular the large cover of RBMP and lack of good examples of the best local practices in river basin management. The WATERPRAXIS project tried to overcome these challenges and offer examples of successful water management initiatives from several countries around the Baltic Sea (Ulvi 2011). As a concrete output of the project, four different investment plans which realise water protection measures were implemented in Poland, Lithuania, Denmark and Finland.

This paper presents an analysis of the subject sustainable water use and discusses its many ramifications. It also introduces two projects being undertaken at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, which aim to put the principles of sustainable water management into practice.