Water management institutions for more resilient societies

The management of water resources under conditions of uncertainty and scarcity is a fundamental determinant of the ability of societies to withstand unexpected shocks and extreme events. Conventional approaches to water resource planning aim to create reliable supplies. Practitioners often fail to identify their contribution to the broader goal of achieving social resilience rather than just technical system reliability. Recent work on understanding resilience in socio-ecological systems as well as on the management of 'common pool' natural resources such as water suggests that the contribution of planning processes to social resilience may in its turn contribute to the achievement of the narrow goal of system reliability. To illustrate this, the development of the water resource infrastructure system that underpins the South African economy is described with particular attention to the institutional processes that guide project selection and system operation.