Negotiate: reaching agreements over water

Abstract

Managing water has been a source of challenge, innovation and advancement for societies since ancient times. This is evident in the elegantly engineered water infrastructure from millennia and centuries past that is still visible, and sometimes still in use at locations across the world. Most tangibly, water management has been an engineering problem, demanding technical solutions. Implementation has been achieved by institutions able to control the investments, knowledge and decisions needed to harness benefits from water. Allowing such a ‘technocratic’ approach to water management to predominate has a downside, however. It masks the true complexity of water.