ABSTRACT
One of the major trends to have marked past decades is certainly environmental degradation. Such environmental degradation is of course strongly related to the much larger dynamics of industrial development and modernisation. As such, the overall concern with environmental issues and problems cannot be separated from a broader critical look at Western-style society and its expansion globally. In short, there exists, in our view, an ultimately unsolvable tension between further industrial development and expansion on the one hand and environmental protection on the other. Water not only illustrates, but moreover is at the core of this tension: water came into the global limelight primarily because of environmental concerns, yet at the same time water has become an object of technological and managerial solutions to solve the environmental problem so created. As we will see in this chapter, the major reforms initiated in the water sector all stem from increased environmental preoccupations. As with other sectors, such as climate change, the awareness of water problems came late and in some parts of the world the
The purpose of this chapter is to offer an understanding of how water is currently being approached by the different actors involved, focusing primarily on international actors. It is our assumption that the way these actors see the water problem significantly influences how water will be approached in the future. In order to develop this understanding, we proceed in four separate steps: in a first section, we will trace the history of the international concern about water, mainly to show that water became a concern in the wake of overall environmental problems. Quite logically, we will thus focus on the historical events and conferences that have catalysed the need for international co-operation among states, but also among international organisations, development agencies and water specialists. The socalled ‘Dublin Principles’ appear to us to be the cornerstone around which the different international approaches to solving the global water problems crystallise. Indeed, the Dublin principles today summarise the currently existing international consensus on water policies to be followed at international, regional, national and local level. As such, these Dublin principles are, in our view, the lowest common denominator the different actors can agree to, rather than a particularly original and innovative approach to a newly emerging global concern. In fact, the core message of the Dublin principles is quite simple and says that water needs to be better managed, especially along economic principles, if sustainable development is ever going to be reached.
