The series “Urban Water and Sanitation Services; An IWRM Approach”, published in June 2006 by the Global Water Partnership (GWP) Secretariat in Stockholm has been created to disseminate the papers written by Judith A. Rees and commissioned by the Technical Committee (TEC) to address the conceptual agenda. Issues and sub-issues with them, such as the understanding and definition of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), water for food security, public-private partnerships, and water as an economic good have been addressed in these papers.

In this paper is an attempt will be made to consider IWRM approaches to urban water management in a broader way. While appropriate management tools considered, attention has focused on institutional design, decision-making scale, governance and the critical question of implementation practice. The paper must go beyond the physical boundaries of urbanised space to recognise both the resource pull exerted by cities and intersectoral competition for such resources and the two-way flow of negative externalities or opportunity costs between urban water services and other parts of the national economy, society and environment.

Attention has paid first to the need for an IWRM approach and the dimensions of such an approach. The need has to be considered not only in terms of the escalating demands placed on urban water, sanitation and drainage services themselves, but also must recognize the role of the urban sector in meeting national economic development, poverty reduction, health and environmental policy goals. The question of decision-making scale addressed, with consideration given to the potential tensions between the scales best suited to meet such different policy objectives as operating efficiency, the efficient allocation of resources; people centred provision, customer and environmental protection. Further there has a discussion both of the potential advantages of unbundled operational functions and the need for any such unbundled systems to work within a clear strategic and regulatory framework.

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