4. Discussion: IWRM and the sustainable development agenda – an impetus for IWRM reform
Conflict and security have not been central to the IWRM agenda. The current holistic design IWRM tends to provide universal recommendations as a way of synthesizing best practices and practical wisdoms. In doing so, it ignores local context and might lead to reform failures, superficial implementation or adverse results like resistance, conflicts and inequalities. These emerging issues are rather new to the sustainable development agenda which IWRM pursues. Since its early days, IWRM can be been understood as the manifestation of the sustainability paradigm in the water sector (Biswas, 2008). The IWRM design is one to achieve the societal principles of economic efficiency, social equity and environmental sustainability by realizing three elements, one for each goal: management instruments (allocation, information and assessment instruments), enabling environment (policies, legislations based on collective decision-making) and institutional framework (decentralization, river basins and private–public participation reforms) (Jønch-Clausen and Fugl, 2001). Thus, IWRM followed the sustainable development definition at that time based on three pillars, which was cornered by the Brundland report of 1987 and finally adopted by the Rio conference of 1992. IWRM's emphasis on sustainable development is arguably one key reason behind its popularity. IWRM has been adopted by the UN as part of its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and was high on the agenda of the Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 (Bandaragoda and Babel, 2010). It was also a guiding concept for the European Union's Water Framework Directive.
