Valuing Water for Better Governance: How To Promote Dialogue To Balance Social, Environmental, And Economic Values?
Valuing Water for Better Governance: How To Promote Dialogue To Balance Social, Environmental, And Economic Values?
This paper was sponsored by the Business and Industry CEO Panel for Water and was originally presented at the 3rd World Water Forum in March 2003.
Overview
Solving the freshwater crisis requires significantly more investment and spending in the water sector, but getting more money requires broad agreement among stakeholders. This paper suggests that a powerful way of obtaining broader agreement is to clarify through dialogues values, value differences, and common ground. Through this process, stakeholders may be willing to pay more for water systems and their governance, enabling water systems and their managers to deliver more value to people and businesses. This paper develops an initial intellectual framework for such dialogue.