Emergence of Integrated Water Resources Management: Measuring implementation in Vietnam

Recently, the changes in laws and regulations, such as the revised Law on Water Resources in 2012, have sought to provide a legal framework for the internationally recognized practices of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) in Vietnam. With IWRM being a novel approach for Vietnam, it would be interesting to evaluate how well water resources plans are adhering to the principles of IWRM, to learn and further tailor these principles to the Vietnamese situation. Practical approaches on how to measure the extent to which water management plans are adhering to the principles of IWRM are incomplete. They can only be used after full executing of the plan or focus, such as the ecosystem services framework, only on the sustainability of the plan itself not on the process of establishing it. We present a framework to measure the process aspects of IWRM with the constructs Integration, Participation, Gender Inclusion and Adaptation. The framework is illustrated with examples from Vietnam and directions for further research are given