Challenges in upland watershed management: For what? For whom?

Water stress in many parts of the world is increasing in terms of water quantity as well as quality. Humans are at the same time causing this water stress and suffering from it. Human appropriation of surface and ground water, changes in land use and land cover, release of pollutants into the environment, and other pressures are all contributing to increased levels of water stress. The resulting degradation of water resources and lack of access to safe water threaten human well being and development, and are intimately linked to poverty in many parts of the world. Aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem structure and functioning also critically depend on availability of sufficient amounts of water and its temporal distribution. In response to the emerging water crisis, a number of initiatives have been launched over the past decades, non of which has been very successful in changing the trend of deteriorating water resources and increasing scarcity, except for individual local successes. More recently, a new holistic approach to water management has emerged, under the title Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). While this is not a panacea to all water problems, it does provide a useful framework for action, by acknowledging the complex human-environment interactions and feedbacks in the water system. IWRM is primarily addressing solutions at river basin scale. Most important in our context of ?upland watershed management? is the link between water and land management, that is expressed in the most widely used IWRM definition by GWP (2000): IWRM is a process, which promotes the coordinated development and management of water, land and related resources in order to maximize the resultant economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems.? Integrated water and land management also provides the lead theme for the following discussion of ?challenges in upland watershed management?.