ABSTRACT
Water stewardship is primarily concerned with patterns of behaviour in the context of managing a scarce, and shared, resource. The Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) has been at the forefront of efforts to engage different groups to advance this inherently collaborative approach to managing shared water resources. Water ethics can be understood either as a starting point for engaging different groups in water stewardship, or a prerequisite for achieving the aims that water stewardship strives to accomplish, or both. Over the last decade, it has become increasingly apparent that water presents a major risk factor for society, the economy and the environment. In natural resource management, the traditional role of governments has been to legislate, regulate and enforce up to a minimum compliance standard. The Nature Conservancy (TNC) had been exploring the concept of 'blue water certification' and the Pacific Institute had been combining expertise on water and research standard systems.
