New Water Policy and Practice Volume 1, Number 1 - Fall 2014 | Page 42

New Water Policy and Practice - Volume 1, Number 1 - Fall 2014

Transboundary Wastewater Management Under Conditions of Inadequate Infrastructure and Political Complexity: the Need for Decentralized Approaches
Clive LipchinA
In this opinion editorial, New Water Policy and Practice International Advisory Board member Dr Clive Lipchin (Director of the Center for Transboundary Water Management, Arava Institute for Environmental Studies,
Israel) discusses the need for decentralized approaches to transboundary
wastewater management under conditions of inadequate infrastructure and political complexity. Clive focuses on the need for local approaches, stressing the relevance of community level management approaches
and, using the Israel-Palestine context in Gaza as a case example, calls
for adaptation to socio-political challenges to find long-lasting solutions.
Keywords: transboundary wastewater management; decentralized approaches; political complexity; stakeholder engagement; Israeli-Palestinian context

O

ver 2.4 billion people worldwide
lack sufficient wastewater treatment infrastructure, primarily due
to the high costs of building and operating
centralized wastewater treatment facilities, limited local expertise, and the lack
of sound wastewater management policies
(Massoud, Tarhini, and Nasr 2009). Poor
wastewater management results in pollution
of raw sewage to surface water and groundwater. In addition to severe environmental
degradation, the public health impacts of
water pollution are urgent and widespread
across the globe; over two million people
die each year due to contaminated water
supplies (WHO 2012). To mitigate threats
to the environment and public health, coordinated wastewater treatment is essential.

Decentralized, regional strategies or

national regulatory approaches represent
wastewater management options that may
be appropriate for different sociopolitical
contexts. In recent years, an integrated water
resources management (IWRM) approach
has dominated the discourse. IWRM is a
set of principles that integrates social and
hydrological factors to promote holistic
and sustainable management of water resources (Moriarty et al. 2010).1 However,
taking into account that implementation
of a comprehensive, integrated model may
be impractical, recent applications have focused on applying IWRM principles at an
appropriate level, from the international
level to the community level (Butterworth
et al. 2010). The methods selected should fit
the given situation; inappropriate projects
that do not result in useful outcomes can be

A

Director, Center for Transboundary Water Management, Arava Institute; Co-authored by Tamee Albrecht,
Natasha Westheimer, Jennifer Holzer.
1
For more background on IWRM, see Global Water Partnership (GWP) 2000 and World Bank 2003.
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