The Ingenieur Vol. 65 Water Power | Page 28

INGENIEUR channelization; inter-basin raw water transfers (Barrow, 1998) which depend on different sectors and users. Likewise, river basin management involves controlling pollutant flow, water utilisation, and land use. All of these must be coordinated within a river basin both on the upstream and downstream side by considering the entire basin ecosystem as a whole unit as well as accounting for the impact of socio-economic interventions. Towards Community Based Water Resources Management In many cases, IWRM in developed countries is often motivated by local water-related issues within the catchment area. Sometimes, it is not recognised or termed as IWRM (Jeffery and Gearey, 2006). For example, the northern part of Thailand is a very good example where community based on wetlands management has been introduced by the Thai Government to safeguard the vulnerable wetlands ecosystem in order to maximise the local social-economic (Trisurat, 2006). In fact, community based natural resources management has a similar philosophy to IWRM in promoting stakeholder participation through power sharing management and responsibility between Government and local communities. For example Kakadu National Park, the World He