Towards integrated water resource management: a conceptual framework

A workshop paper on integrated water resource management in Zimbabwe.This chapter suggests that integrated water resource management debate needs to be taken beyond its prima facie grounds if the concept is to yield fruit. According to the Collins Concise Dictionary Plus, integrate means to make or be made into a whole. If this is applied to the subject at hand, the question becomes what constitutes integrated water resource management? Stated differently, what exactly is being integrated in integrated water resource management? The task of the chapter is not just to argue for integrated water resource management but to sketch a conceptual framework. A conceptual framework can be regarded as a template incorporating (a set of) ideas about how a subject can be visualized and operationalized. A useful conceptual framework, we suggest, needs to come to grips with both theoretical and practical issues.Special thanks are due to the Netherlands Organization for International Cooperation in Higher Education (NUFFIC), The Hague, for providing financial support towards the hosting of the workshop upon which this book is based. NUFFIC also met part of the publication costs. The two coordinating committees of the Zimbabwe Programme on Women, Extension, Sociology and Irrigation (ZIMWESI), a NUFFIC-funded inter-university exchange programme in research and training between the University of Zimbabwe and Wageningen Agricultural University deserve special mention for the moral support they gave us