A socio-ecological framework supporting catchment-scale water resource stewardship

Everard, Mark

Abstract

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd The need to adapt human resource demands to the renewable capacities of ecosystems is widely acknowledged and has been transposed into multiple international and national commitments and strategies. This need is intensified by the contemporary öfull world’ and increasing human numbers, urbanisation and climate change. However, resource exploitation models, markets and legacy regulations still tend to perpetuate an öempty world’ model, separating societal demands from environmental capacity. Water resource management exemplifies many natural resource challenges. Choice of water management technologies still tends to maximise the efficiency of resource extraction and diversion to areas of high demand and economic influence, without necessarily prioritising the sustainability of the foundational natural capital of catchment ecosystems and the multiple benefits they provide to a diversity of co-dependents. Setting the impacts of technology choices within the conceptual framework of catchment ecosystem services forms a novel basis for recognising the often overlooked or disregarded externalities of differing types of water management techniques. It also provides insights into means to mitigate and sustainably hybridise qualitatively differing water management approaches to safeguard, and ideally to rebuild where degraded, the capacities of catchments to meet human needs on an enduring and equitable basis.

Citation

Everard, M. (2019). A socio-ecological framework supporting catchment-scale water resource stewardship. Environmental Science and Policy, 91, 50-59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2018.10.017

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 25, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Nov 2, 2018
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2019
• Deposit Date: Oct 29, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 3, 2019
• Journal: Environmental Science and Policy
• Print ISSN: 1462-9011
• Electronic ISSN: 1873-6416
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 91
• Pages: 50-59
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2018.10.017
• Keywords: catchment, water management, Banas, Rajasthan, community-based, socio-ecological systems
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/854449
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2018.10.017