Water and sustainable development

The never-ending exploitation of natural resources after the industrial revolution has caused irreversible damage to our environment and life. This vast resource deployment was expected to finally decelerate after the emergence of the Sustainable Development paradigm in the late 1980s. The concept of sustainable development aims to balance the tradeoff between supply and the needs of societies to also preserve the needs of future generations. Nonrenewable resources, especially water, have been at the heart of sustainable development goals. Sustainable Water Management (SWM) is an essential component of sustainable development. To achieve SWM, various water management challenges, in both developing and developed countries, should be addressed by attracting stakeholders to invest in water system efficiency and improvement projects, as well as by recycling and reusing water. To assess sustainable management policies and practices, evaluation of performance metrices – such as the Water Resources Sustainability Index, reliability, resiliency and vulnerability, and the Stability Index – is imperative. A cost-efficient policy should also facilitate the attainment of sustainability in all socioeconomic, and environmental sectors.