Sustainability Assessment of indicators for integrated water resources management

Abstract

The scientific community strongly recommends the adoption of indicators for the evaluation and monitoring of progress towards sustainable development. Furthermore, international organizations consider that indicators are powerful decision-making tools. Nevertheless, the quality and reliability of the indicators depends on the application of adequate and appropriate criteria to assess them. The general objective of this study was to evaluate how indicators related to water use and management perform against a set of sustainability criteria. Our research identified 170 indicators related to water use and management. These indicators were assessed by an international panel of experts that evaluated whether they fulfil the four sustainability criteria: social, economic, environmental, and institutional. We employed an evaluation matrix that classified all indicators according to the DPSIR (Driving Forces, Pressures, States, Impacts and Responses) framework. A pilot study served to test and approve the research methodology before carrying out the full implementation. The findings of the study show that 24 indicators comply with the majority of the sustainability criteria; 59 indicators are bi-dimensional (meaning that they comply with two sustainability criteria); 86 are one-dimensional indicators (fulfilling just one of the four sustainability criteria) and one indicator do not fulfil any of the sustainability criteria.

Indicadores PER y FPEIR para el análisis de la sustentabilidad en el municipio de Cihuatlán, Jalisco, México

“…Por lo que los indicadores representan un valioso instrumento para cuantificar, simplificar y sistematizar la información relacionada con los distintos aspectos del ambiente y la interacción humana. A partir del marco PER, la Agencia de Medio Ambiente Europea creó un modelo analítico que denominó FPEIR (Fuerzas conductoras-Presión-Estado-Impacto-Respuesta) (European Environment Agency, 1999) (ver una aplicación a Palestina en Mogheir y Lubbad, 2008y Pires et al, 2016 para una aplicación a la gestión del agua). En conjunto PER y FPEIR son de utilidad en el análisis de los elementos interactuantes a nivel local en la gestión ambiental para la promoción del desarrollo sostenible tal y como se muestra en la sección de resultados.…”

Water Sustainability at the River Grande Basin, Brazil: An Approach Based on the Barometer of Sustainability

“…Indicators are powerful tools for assessing progress towards sustainable development [11]. Working with indicators is strongly recommended by researchers [12,13,14], decision-makers [15], and international institutions [16,17].…”

“…Working with indicators is strongly recommended by researchers [12,13,14], decision-makers [15], and international institutions [16,17]. The use of water-related indicators can contribute not only to improving water allocation [11] and management [10], but also in subsidizing public policy formulations [2]. Nonetheless, several possible difficulties in working with indicators are noted, as work scale, data availability, frequency, and data collection feasibility, among others, can compromise sustainability analyses.…”

Trend Analysis of Water Poverty Index for Assessment of Water Stress and Water Management Polices: A Case Study in the Hexi Corridor, China

“…Considering this, an interdisciplinary approach utilized in an integrated manner needs to be adopted to help analyze such situations [8][9][10][11]. Water use indicators are thus considered to be powerful quantitative tools for decision-making [12].…”