Ways of knowing water: integrated water resources management and water security as complementary discourses

Abstract

In the past decade, water security has emerged as a new discourse in water governance challenging the more traditional dominant discourse of integrated water resources management (IWRM). This review article applies the &lsquoways of knowing&rsquo approach to study the relationship between these two discourses. In doing so, we uncover how IWRM has been narrowly construed as a prescriptive way of knowing water based largely on technical&ndashscientific knowledge, while water security represents a discursive way of knowing water with a greater consideration of human values, ethics and power. We argue that these two ways of knowing are complementary rather than conflicting. As both discourses are pursued at multiple levels, the practical way of knowing will emerge to represent how these concepts interact in a specific policy context.