ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief overview of the water policy and law reform process in South Africa before considering the difficulties in defining and assessing sustainability in water resource management. Protecting ecosystems and ensuring their integrity through sustainable water resource management was recognized as one of seven key challenges in the Ministerial Declaration of The Hague on Water Security in the twenty-first century. In the South African legislative framework, water quality management is considered under the aegis of protection of water resources, the first step of which is the classification of the resource. The National Water Act (NWA) requires that a classification system be developed and thereafter the class of all water resources must be established on a catchment basis. South Africa is one of the few nations that explicitly recognize a human right to water. Implementing participative decision making remains one of the greatest challenges to implementing sustainable water resource management.
