Commentary: Water Resources

Abstract

The discussion showed clearly that, while conflicting demands for competing uses of water resources crucially affect planning options, there are generally no satisfactory institutional mechanisms to enable appropriate decisions to be made for water resource allocation.’Streamflow’ defines the magnitude of the usable water resource, while its quality, at any location, depends on the uses and stresses to which it has been subjected. ‘Political’ boundaries are rarely in tune with the natural logic of flow systems, which are delineated by drainage basins. Indeed rivers often form the boundaries between management and planning authorities, and as a result the stage is set for inevitable allocation conflicts that arise from a multiplicity of different independent agents seeking to serve a wide variety of interdependent interests that affect each other - agriculture, forestry, industry, urban development, energy conservation and recreation, to mention some of the more significant uses. The key to logical planning and development is widely agreed to be integrated and comprehensive basin management, covering major drainage basins at the macro-level, and individual river basins at regional and local levels. For example, in Scotland planning might be concentrated on the Forth, Clyde, Tweed, Nith, Dee, Tay catchments whereas in Canada the logic would focus on the major basins that drain into the Pacific Ocean (containing the Columbia and Skeena Rivers), the Arctic Ocean (essentially the Mackenzie-Laird system), Hudson’s Bay, and the Atlantic Ocean (such as the vast Great Lakes/ St. Lawrence River system). In reality, planning and management in Canada are complicated by arbitrary international and provincial boundaries, generally attuned to latitude and longitude rather than natural features.