４５７：ビスワス健在でさらに吠える！！

有名なビスワスのIWRMに対する辛辣な見解は既にこのブログでも何回か紹介している。奥さんも国際水資源学会の会長になり学会そのものの衰退を招いたが、もうあれから３年ほど経ったか。

それはさておき、第５回世界水フォーラムではビスワスが参加したかどうか不明であった。彼も当然更なる一撃を考えていただろう。その結果が今日分かった。

彼と彼の奥さん（スペインの組織に移ったようだ）らが纏めた、

Water Management in 2020
and Beyond

が今年出版された。まだ本は手に入れていないが、序文を下記ご紹介しよう。IWRMに対する相変わらずの批判が２行ほどある。IWRMなんていう略語は当然無視だ。彼もまだまだお元気のようだ。切れ味の鋭いコメントをご堪能あれ。本自体はアマゾンで買おう。国際キリスト教大学の高橋一生先生の論文もある。

As the eminent Danish physicist and Nobel Laureate Niles Bohr had noted, “Prediction
is very difficult, especially of the future”. While forecasting the future reliably
is an extremely complex and difficult process, one issue can be predicted with complete certainty: the world beyond 2020 will be vastly different to what it is today.

However, what is not possible to prophesise with any degree of certainty is how the
world will differ beyond 2020 compared to what it is today.

The changes we are likely to see during the next two decades are likely to be
far ranging and far reaching, and these changes will come concurrently from different
parts of the world, from different sectors and disciplines, from academic and
business communities, from NGOs and civil society as a whole, and from changing
social attitudes and perceptions.

There will be many drivers of change, some known but others unknown. Even for the known drivers, it will be very difficult to predict their overall impacts in terms of the timings of their onsets, magnitudes, and spatial distributions. Making reliable forecasts will be further complicated due to many other factors: speed,
extent, and impacts of globalisation and free trade; governance of institutions
(national, regional, and international, as well as public, private, and civil society
organisations) and the efficiency of their functioning; formulation and implementation of national and international policies; acceleration of information and communication revolution; advances in knowledge; changes in public perceptions and expectations, etc.

The water sector is an integral component of the global system, and thus, it will
not be immune to these changes. On the contrary, it will be influenced in a variety
of ways by the future global changes. Many of these changes will originate from
non-water sectors, or from non-water-related issues, on which the water profession
will have no, or at best limited, say or control. This will make water management
beyond 2020 an exceedingly complex task with a complexity that is highly likely to
increase with time.

In spite of the rhetoric of the past two decades that business-as-usual is no longer
an option for efficient water management in the future, the fact remains that the
profession in general believes, at least implicitly, that future changes will be mostly incremental. Consequently, current practices need to be gradually improved to take care of the expected future changes. In other words, business-unusual solutions may not be necessary, perhaps because most may believe that such responses cannot be
developed within a medium-term timeframe.

Customarily, water professionals have mostly ignored the global forces that are
somewhat external to the water sector, even though these are likely to shape water
use, availability patterns (both in terms of quantity and quality), and management
practices in the future in many significant ways. For example, water professionals
continue to ignore the various water-related implications of globalisation and free
trade, even though these developments are likely to unleash forces that may have
radical impacts on water use, availability, and requirement patterns in many different countries of the world, irrespective of their current levels of economic development or sophistication in water management and use of latest technological advances.

Some of these impacts are already visible in numerous countries, ranging from the
United States to Japan and from China to Mexico. The impacts of these unleashed
forces are only likely to increase in the future.

Current and potential impacts of globalisation and free trade on the water sector
have been consistently ignored by the water profession, as well as national and
international institutions that deal with water. Nor has there been any attempt to
discuss them seriously at major international water events like World Water Fora
or Stockholm Water Symposia. Furthermore, there are no visible signs that this situation, although unacceptable, is likely to change in any significant manner in the foreseeable future. Instead, considerable emphasis continues to be placed on “same old stuff” (SOS) like integrated water resources management and integrated river basin management: paradigms that have yet to be operationalised after more than half a century of rhetoric and expenditure of hundreds of million of dollars. While considerable emphasis is still being placed on the issues that have long passed their “sell by” dates, the profession continues to neglect, or even totally ignore, major developments in areas like biotechnology, desalination, information and communication, population trends, aging, and immigration, even though developments in these areas are likely to affect the water security of many nations in the near future.

There is no question that the future water-related issues of the world are likely
to be very different from those that were witnessed in the past or are being encountered at present. While historical knowledge and past experience are always useful, identifying, analysing, and solving water problems of the future will require new insights, additional skills, innovative approaches, adaptable mindsets, and proactive institutions. It will also require a holistic approach that can successfully coordinate energy, food, environment, and industrial policies of a nation, all of which have intimate linkages to water. Each will affect the others and, in turn, will be affected by the others. These will not be zero-sum games: considerable compromises and tradeoffs have to be made, based not only on techno-economic and environmental terms but also on sociopolitical considerations, which may often vary from one country to another or even from one region to another in the same country.

Since the world is changing very rapidly, water management practices and processes
beyond 2020 must change as well. Status quo, with only incremental changes, that is generally preferred by most institutions and professions, is no longer an option. The nature and type of future water problems should be objectively and carefully analysed in the light of expected global changes from inside the water sector as well as outside the sector, which are likely to affect it. Past forecasts and recent trends may no longer shed any meaningful light on the coming, new, turbulent environment in the world of water, which will somehow have to accommodate diversified, sometimes even opposing, requirements reflecting different needs and
interests of various stakeholders, political processes, and institutional requirements.

The situation will be further complicated by rapid technological changes, accelerated
globalisation, and relentless economic competition between countries and within countries, all of which are likely to have direct and indirect water-related ramifications.

In this future-oriented book, some of the world’s leading authorities discuss many
of the opportunities and challenges that the water profession may be expected to
face beyond the year 2020. Many of the driving forces that are likely to affect water
management beyond 2020 will still be traditional, like population and urbanisation.
However, their implications are likely to be very different to what have been witnessed in the past, or are being observed at present. There will be new challenges due to non-traditional drivers like globalisation, free trade, HIV/AIDS, climate change, technological developments in areas like desalination and biotechnology, and increasing intersectoral linkages between water, food, energy, and environmental securities, which will make efficient and equitable water management more complex than ever before. These and other related issues are discussed at some length in this book.

As we move further into the twenty-first century, a clear vision of the future and
how this vision can be achieved to serve humanity better will be needed. It will be
important to discern what societies value most, which in turn will determine and
drive their unique visions of the future. Taking these steps in a timely and costeffective and socially acceptable manner will not be an easy task, especially as the precedents available at present are very few and somewhat restricted in their scopes.

However, it will be an essential requirement for the water profession in the future.
In our view, there is now a revolution taking place in the area of water management,
even though most observers may not be aware of it. In the wake of this revolution,
long-held concepts and models of water management are likely to undergo accelerated evolution, and some are likely to disappear altogether. Never before in the history of water have such profound changes taken place within such a short timeframe as we are likely to witness during the next two or three decades. It will thus be necessary to determine how best our water systems can be planned and managed so that they benefit society as a whole very significantly and on a long-term basis. This will be a major challenge, perhaps even the most difficult and complex challenge the water profession has had to face. Nevertheless, it is a challenge that the water profession must meet successfully.

In order to initiate a global dialogue on water management beyond 2020, the
International Centre of Water and Environment (CIAMA-La Alfranca), in cooperation
with the Water Institute of Aragon, Third World Centre for Water Management of Mexico, International Water Resources Association, and Sasakawa Peace Foundation
of the United States, invited 30 leading international experts from various
water-related fields to meet in Zaragoza to discuss future-oriented issues associated
with water management. The present book is based on the invited papers that were
very specifically commissioned for this invitation-only workshop.We are especially
grateful to Mr. Fernando Otal, Secretary General of the Water Institute of Aragon,
for all his support that made the Zaragoza workshop possible.

According to an African proverb, tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today. We earnestly hope that the process that was initiated in Zaragoza was the beginning of a process that will help the water profession to understand, define, and appreciate the nature and type of water problems of the future. At the end of the
process, we hope we shall have a series of cost-effective, socially acceptable, and
environmentally friendly solutions to well-defined water problems of the future.