PowerPoint Presentation

[Audio] This is a brief introductory presentation of an alternative to current Water Management frameworks. The aim is to introduce the starting concepts of Sefficiency in Sequity paradigm with Reasonable decision-making processes..

[Audio] A couple of the references are given here..

[Audio] Public policies, such as water policies, should obey certain basic principles, such as, transparency, Sustainability, Stakeholder involvement, Rule of Law, and equity and efficiency..

[Audio] One of these is sustainability, such as sustainable policies for proper management of water systems..

[Audio] Sustainability means balancing social including political, economic, and environmental needs of a water system. All these dimensions must be integrated into making decisions, into coming up with a solution..

[Audio] There is a confusion of what a water system is. It should be realised that there are two broad and interconnected types of water systems. One is called a Water Use System, such as a factory, farm, city, or region. And the other is a Water Resource System, such as a River or aquifer. These videos are about the management of WUSs..

[Audio] Now a WUS has three Pillars: water quantity, water quality and water benefits, in other words that values that a system gets from a combination of the first two Pillars. These three must somehow be integrated in coming up with a proper water management..

[Audio] Let us briefly look at the methodologies and approaches that are being employed for the management of a WUS. Probably the most famous one is IWRM - Integrated Water Resources Management. Let us look at the name itself and ask two questions. First question: this approach integrates what? Currently, it integrates water with many other domains of human activities (land, ecosystems, energy, etc.). In such an integration, water is not and cannot be a priority – even if the objective of the analysis is water management, because political and economic realities have given priority to other systems, such as, land, energy and ecosystems. Second question: is IWRM an approach to manage water uses (i.e., a WUS) or water resources as the name says. There is no clear distinction in this approach, which can lead to flaws. In these videos, I will develop the outline of an approach that explicitly gives priority to water management of a WUS. In doing so, it is crucial to understand three pairs of ideas and their integration: adaptation and mitigation, supply and demand, descriptive and performance. These promote solutions for example to reduce or eliminate water poverty, water scarcity and water pollution..

[Audio] The 1st pair of concepts of Sefficiency in Sequity is Adaptation and Mitigation, which are mostly confusing in the water journals and books. Adaptation refers to the measures taken to manage the limited availability of appropriate water. This means that a human activity is a function of water: (…)=H(water) Such a management – an adaptive management - must promote, as its priority, sustainable development of the scarce water itself in space-time. Mitigation, on the other hand, refers to the measures taken to reduce the underlying causes of water scarcity, such as, food production and other economic activities, climate change and population. Water=G(…) Our focus is H… but what is it?.

[Audio] Considering sustainable development (i.e., Society, Economy and Environment – SEE), Adaptation and Mitigation can be written as Water policy decisions = G (SEE) SEE policy decisions = H (water) This means that mitigation defines water system as a function of other systems, and adaptation defines any other system as a function of water system. In this context, we equate H to sustainable equity or Sequity, which "means a fair share considering the water needs and the ability to use the water efficiently" (Dellapenna) This is a fundamental definition in adaptation as will be recognised..

[Audio] The 2nd pair of concepts of Sefficiency in Sequity is Water Supply and Demand or water IN and OUT. Consequently, these two different water quantities of a WUS must be distinguished. 1st one is called Water Use, which is Total water supply (or water inflow, or water input), 2nd one is called Water Consumption, which is Part of water demand (or outflow or output). And it is the amount of outflow that cannot be reused by the same WUS during a time interval. (ex: ET, water transfer out of a WUS, water consumed to produce meat, food, and other products).

[Audio] Let us continue with water quantity. The generic schematics of any WUS is as you, and it has 9 Water Path Types: 4 inflows (the reds) and 5 outflows (the blacks). VU and VD are the waters in the source, in this case a river. PP is total precipitation. OS is water from other sources, such as groundwater. ET is evapotranspiration, which is a consumptive water. NR is other consumptive waters. RP and RF are the returns. The equalities on the right hand side are easy to follow. There is one common assumption about the last equality: total Inflow is equal to total Outflow. This is water balance and only happens during a time interval, such as a year or a plant season, that safely can be assumed that change of storage of WUS is negligible. This water balance equation is crucial for Sequity development, as will be seen later..

[Audio] The 3rd pair of concepts of Sefficiency in Sequity is descriptive or performance. Almost all the studies in the world focus on the description of a WUS, which is, of course, important. Here we focus on the performance of a WUS, which has received less attention. We define two types of performance measures: Aggregative and Distributive. Briefly, for measuring the aggregative performance, the Sefficiency, i.e., Sustainable efficiency index of a WUS is developed (as will be seen later), with a target of 100%, which, of course, never reaches it. For measuring the distributive performance, Sequity, i.e., Sustainable equity (as mentioned before) of a WUS is developed. I already defined it, and here let us take a brief look at its Targets. They are defined as the maximum and minimum values of an indicator of interest for the adequate functioning of the members of a WUS, such as a household, a factory or a farm. This indicator of interest, most of the time is defined as to be the amount of water allocated to a member of a WUS in a period of time. For example, what is the minimum and what is the maximum amount of water that should be allocated to a factory, a neighbourhood or a farm. Anyhow, the complexity of Sequity will be dealt with in its own presentation..

[Audio] Reasonable decision-making will have its own explanations. It is enough to mention that at least the information given here should somehow be integrated. It is complex, but reasonable decision-making is being done everyday all over the world in courts and tribunals..

[Audio] Sustainable water management is complex and has various dimensions. The following three concepts reflect such complexity, they are Sefficiency, Sequity, and Reasonable Decisions. These are available as youtube videos or clicking the "presentations" link in the following webpage:.