ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the role of information and monitoring in water management and stresses the importance of specifying information needs to improve the production of information. Starting off with the global water management challenges it will introduce the policy process and the role of information therein. It will also explain the nature of the water information gap and the implications this has for assessing policy makers’ information needs. Understanding the policy process and the role played in it by information is essential to be able to link information production to this process. Finally, the chapter will discuss the nature of policy problems and how they can be structured. After studying this chapter the reader will be able to: • Explain the nature of the water information gap • Explain the policy making process and the policy life-cycle • Explain the role of information in the policy making process
1.1.1 The Global Water Management Challenge Water is an essential natural resource with limited availability. There is plenty of water on the Earth and in the ground, but it is not distributed evenly over the Earth’s surface and in time. Many people have too little water to grow their crops, while on the other hand floods frequently threaten lives and harvests. Also, the quality of the available water is often poor and access to safe drinking water is lacking. Besides this, natural systems like the Aral Sea and other examples are under severe pressure from (often competing) human demands[1-4]. Water
management, or when put in a broader context, water governance[5, 6], should be able to manage these issues.
