REFLECTIONS ON INTEGRATION

Previous chapters have given examples of where water and environmental decisions have been made independently of one another, with unanticipated consequences both for environmental quality and human water use. Each chapter has also examined responses that sought to harmonize specific aspects of water management and environmental policy – in different types of water bodies, such as lakes, rivers, and aquifers; and in different types of human action, such as agricultural, domestic, and industrial water use. In several places it is noted how these responses have sought to “integrate” previously separate water uses, management systems, and environmental impacts.

This final chapter reflects more broadly upon integrative approaches to water management and environmental policy, discusses three current examples in watershed management, adaptive environmental management, and global environmental change; and speculates on the prospects for further integration.

In so doing, it builds upon and draws together the findings from earlier chapters. It builds, for example, upon observations in the third chapter about the unfolding recognition of environmental effects of water use, by recalling where and how recognition has contributed to the development of integrative approaches, such as the progression from single purpose/single means to multiple purpose/multiple means water development. Historic experiments with integrated approaches include selected examples of watershed, metropolitan, river basin, and national planning.

The previous chapter on decision making examined how individual and collective processes of choice have addressed increasingly complex situations.