This paper served as a background paper to the European Report on Development 2011/2012: Confronting scarcity: Managing water, energy and land for inclusive and sustainable growth. The European Report on Development was prepared by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in partnership with the...

Water resource management is poorly understood and defined since the characteristics of water resources and their use are locally specific and differ widely from place to place. Beyond that, water as a renewable natural resource does not fall into conventional analytical paradigms. It is an...

The water crisis that has confronted Cape Town this summer should be of concern to all professional engineers in the field of water management. How was such a critical situation allowed to develop in one of South Africa’s largest cities? What can we learn from this process?

An understanding of the politics of the water sector during the first decade of South Africa's democracy requires an engagement with a series of parallel debates. There is a technical debate about the nature of the water supply challenge. There is an institutional politics around budget...