ABSTRACT
This chapter has therefore shown how the rising environmental concern – highlighted in Rio and Dublin, and materialised in the so-called Dublin Principles – has brought water issues to the fore, and given rise to corresponding new global actors, such as in particular the WWC, the GWP and the WCD. Environment, indeed, has appeared as the new and main concern since the early 1990s. In the water sector, this means that there is a shift from developmental concerns to seeing water as a resource that has to be properly managed, and in particular managed under economic principles. The pressures and challenges in the global water sector and the corresponding sense of urgency reinforce this call for a managerial and economic approach. In short, there is indeed a need to better allocate, utilise and manage water resources both globally and locally, a claim made particularly strongly by the newly emerging actors such as the WWC and the GWP. All other international actors, in particular those in the UN system, are now increasingly being forced to redefine themselves in light of this new situation and discourse.
