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Literature review: Water quality and public health problems in developing countries

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Eni Muryani; Literature review: Water quality and public health problems in developing countries. AIP Conf. Proc. 23 November 2021; 2363 (1): 050020. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0061561

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Water’s essential function as drinking water is a significant daily intake. Contamination by microorganisms (bacteria or viruses) on water sources and drinking water supplies is a common cause in developing countries like Indonesia. This paper will discuss the sources of clean water and drinking water and their problems in developing countries; water quality and its relation to public health problems in these countries; and what efforts that can be make to improve water quality. The method used is a literature review from the latest journals. Water quality is influenced by natural processes and human activities around the water source Among developed countries, public health problems caused by low water quality, such as diarrhea, dysentery, cholera, typhus, skin itching, kidney disease, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, and other diseases the nervous system. Good water quality has a role to play in decreasing the number of disease sufferers or health issues due to drinking and the mortality rate. The efforts made to improve water quality and public health are by improving WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene) facilities and infrastructure and also WASH education.

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• Review Article
• Published: 31 January 2023

Global water resources and the role of groundwater in a resilient water future

• Bridget R. Scanlon   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1234-4199 1 ,
• Sarah Fakhreddine 1 , 2 ,
• Ashraf Rateb 1 ,
• Inge de Graaf   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7748-868X 3 ,
• Jay Famiglietti 4 ,
• Tom Gleeson 5 ,
• R. Quentin Grafton 6 ,
• Esteban Jobbagy 7 ,
• Seifu Kebede 8 ,
• Seshagiri Rao Kolusu 9 ,
• Leonard F. Konikow 10 ,
• Di Long   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9033-5039 11 ,
• Mesfin Mekonnen   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3573-9759 12 ,
• Hannes Müller Schmied 13 , 14 ,
• Abhijit Mukherjee 15 ,
• Alan MacDonald   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6636-1499 16 ,
• Robert C. Reedy 1 ,
• Mohammad Shamsudduha 17 ,
• Craig T. Simmons 18 ,
• Alex Sun 1 ,
• Richard G. Taylor 19 ,
• Karen G. Villholth 20 ,
• Charles J. Vörösmarty 21 &
• Chunmiao Zheng   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5839-1305 22  

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment volume  4 ,  pages 87–101 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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• Hydrogeology
• Water resources

An Author Correction to this article was published on 29 March 2023

This article has been updated

Water is a critical resource, but ensuring its availability faces challenges from climate extremes and human intervention. In this Review, we evaluate the current and historical evolution of water resources, considering surface water and groundwater as a single, interconnected resource. Total water storage trends have varied across regions over the past century. Satellite data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) show declining, stable and rising trends in total water storage over the past two decades in various regions globally. Groundwater monitoring provides longer-term context over the past century, showing rising water storage in northwest India, central Pakistan and the northwest United States, and declining water storage in the US High Plains and Central Valley. Climate variability causes some changes in water storage, but human intervention, particularly irrigation, is a major driver. Water-resource resilience can be increased by diversifying management strategies. These approaches include green solutions, such as forest and wetland preservation, and grey solutions, such as increasing supplies (desalination, wastewater reuse), enhancing storage in surface reservoirs and depleted aquifers, and transporting water. A diverse portfolio of these solutions, in tandem with managing groundwater and surface water as a single resource, can address human and ecosystem needs while building a resilient water system.

Net trends in total water storage data from the GRACE satellite mission range from −310 km 3 to 260 km 3 total over a 19-year record in different regions globally, caused by climate and human intervention.

Groundwater and surface water are strongly linked, with 85% of groundwater withdrawals sourced from surface water capture and reduced evapotranspiration, and the remaining 15% derived from aquifer depletion.

Climate and human interventions caused loss of ~90,000 km 2 of surface water area between 1984 and 2015, while 184,000 km 2 of new surface water area developed elsewhere, primarily through filling reservoirs.

Human intervention affects water resources directly through water use, particularly irrigation, and indirectly through land-use change, such as agricultural expansion and urbanization.

Strategies for increasing water-resource resilience include preserving and restoring forests and wetlands, and conjunctive surface water and groundwater management.

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Change history

29 march 2023.

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-023-00418-9

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B.R.S. conceptualized the review and coordinated input. S.F. reviewed many of the topics and developed some of the figures. A.R. analysed GRACE satellite data and M.S. reviewed this output. Q.G. provided input on water economics. E.J. reviewed impacts of land-use change. S.R.K. provided data on future precipitation changes. L.F.K. provided detailed information on surface water/groundwater interactions. M.M. provided data on water trade. C.J.V. provided input on green and grey solutions. All authors reviewed the paper and provided edits.

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Scanlon, B.R., Fakhreddine, S., Rateb, A. et al. Global water resources and the role of groundwater in a resilient water future. Nat Rev Earth Environ 4 , 87–101 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-022-00378-6

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A Systematic Literature Review on Water Insecurity from an Oregon Public Health Perspective

This paper systematically reviews existing United States-based water insecurity literature with the goal of understanding the evidence base for developing public health water insecurity intervention strategies in Oregon. The authors conducted the systematic literature review using an adjusted PRISMA reporting checklist to document the review process. Results find 11 public health-related water insecurity interventions including surveillance practices and indicator and policy development. Research on water insecurity health impacts and solutions is still an emerging field. Nevertheless, state agencies perceive a risk to communities from inadequate safe water and are taking steps to assess and reduce these risks. From the review, strategies include improving water affordability, carrying out community education events, documenting drought risk and water loss, and tracking improvements in safe drinking water compliance. The review finds opportunities to take varied approaches that are community-specific, partnership-based and culturally relevant. Recommendations for Oregon include characterizing communities experiencing water insecurity, assessing community needs, tracking regional water scarcity and recognizing the human right to water in Oregon.

1. Introduction

Despite the common belief that Oregon is water-rich, population- and climate-driven pressures on water insecurity are a real concern for all people in Oregon. In this paper, we define “water insecurity” as inadequate or inequitable access to clean, safe and affordable water for drinking, cooking and sanitation and hygiene. As an ideal and opposite state, “water security” describes the conditions where water quality, quantity and access are enough to protect public health.

Three key factors affecting water security include:

• Climate changes that are increasing the frequency and severity of droughts, floods, wildfires and other natural disasters. These strain our aging infrastructure and expand water insecurity threats to vulnerable communities [ 1 ].
• Social determinants that affect access to clean and safe water such as socioeconomic conditions (for example, concentrated poverty), population distribution and community engagement.
• Physical determinants of water security such as drinking water and wastewater storage, treatment and delivery systems, housing status and geographic location.

An alternative definition of “water security” refers to a water system’s ability to prevent and recover from physical security threats such as water contamination from chemical, biological and radiological agents.

Because of varied definitions of “water security,” and to highlight the relationship to public health, we use “water insecurity” as our reference term. Preventable direct health outcomes of water insecurity include water-borne illnesses, exposure to contaminants and toxins, dehydration and malnutrition. Indirect outcomes include emotional distress, depression and anxiety. Understanding water quality and quantity needs and inequities in access to safe water in Oregon is a prerequisite to developing community-specific and culturally-relevant water security policy solutions to help communities build adaptive capacity, strengthen resiliency and protect the health of all people in Oregon.

The Millennium Development Goal Report (MDG) of 2015 estimated that “663 million people worldwide use unimproved drinking water sources, including unprotected wells, springs and surface water, while 2.4 billion use unimproved sanitation [ 2 ].” Water security initiatives have focused heavily on developing countries to meet, by 2015, the Millennium Development Goal of halving those without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation [ 3 ]. Since 1990, there has been some success in meeting this goal and significant increases in improved access to drinking water and sanitation. However, marginalized groups and rural communities still have inequitable access to piped water [ 2 ].

United Nations Water, the Global Water Partnership, and the World Economic Forum are a few of the international organizations focused on global water security efforts. In 2010, the United Nations General Assembly and the Human Rights Council recognized the human right to water as part of international law and the human right to sanitation followed as a distinct right in 2015 [ 4 ]. Under these rights, all people should have physical and affordable access to enough safe water and sanitation for personal and domestic use [ 4 ]. These rights, however, do not entitle people to free water, unlimited use or a household connection. Therefore, policy development is critical to supply affordable water and sanitation services, enough water for personal and domestic uses and water and sanitation access within or near the household [ 3 ].

In the United States (U.S.), water security is critical to protect public health. Drinking water contamination disrupts water access leading to poor health outcomes from exposure and a sense of concern among communities at risk [ 5 ]. Figure 1 shows the number (928) of waterborne disease outbreaks associated with drinking water reported in the U.S. during 1971–2014, by year and cause of disease or etiology. Two or more waterborne illness cases must be linked epidemiologically to be considered an outbreak [ 5 ]. Single cases, while not investigated, contribute to the background rate of infection from waterborne disease. There have been significant increases in reporting of bacterial outbreaks of Legionella in the last decade.

Etiology of 928 drinking water—associated outbreaks, by year-United States, 1971–2014 [ 6 ].

In more recent data, Figure 2 shows the percentage of drinking water-associated outbreaks reported in the US during 2013–2014, by chief illness and cause. There were 42 such outbreaks during this 2-year period. Acute gastrointestinal illness was associated with 41% of the 42 outbreaks, acute respiratory illness with 57% of the outbreaks and other illnesses accounted for 2% of the outbreaks. All reported outbreaks accounted for at least 1006 cases of illness, 124 hospitalizations and 13 deaths [ 5 ]. Legionella accounted for all acute respiratory illness and the causes of acute gastrointestinal illness outbreaks included exposures to Cryptosporidium, Giardia, Clostridium, E. coli, Campylobacter, norovirus, cyanotoxins, nitrite and 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol (MCHM) [ 5 ].

Chief Illness Reported for all Drinking Water Outbreaks, and Etiologies in Outbreaks of Acute Gastrointestinal Illness (AGI), 2013–2014 [ 6 ].

Two of the 42 waterborne disease outbreaks occurred in Oregon, affecting individuals served by community water systems. In June 2013, Oregon reported 119 cases of Cryptosporidium from a lake or reservoir resulting in two hospitalizations. In the following year, four cases of Legionella associated with well water resulted in four hospitalizations and one death [ 5 ]. The number of outbreaks and illnesses is likely underreported; symptoms are usually mild and resolve quickly. This reveals significant public health concerns for those in Oregon who lack access to clean and safe community water supplies for drinking and food preparation.

The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) administers the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) and related state laws to ensure that communities on public water systems have access to drinking water that meets regulatory standards. Roughly 80% of Oregonians get their drinking water from public water systems. Oregon regulates public water systems that have four or more service connections or serve 10 or more people per day [ 7 ]. Through a partnership between OHA and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), OHA’s Drinking Water Protection Program helps protect Oregon public water system sources (streams, lakes and aquifers) from contamination. Many rural community water systems have limited capacity to withstand drought, degrading infrastructure or declining resources to support system safety and integrity [ 8 ].

OHA estimates approximately 20% of Oregonians use private domestic wells as their primary source of potable water. The private well-owner has the responsibility to maintain their well and ensure the water is safe to drink. Rural or remote residents served by private wells with low means to assure adequate supply and quality are disproportionately affected by water insecurity. This poses a public health challenge to provide well-testing resources and to educate private well owners on the importance of wellhead stewardship, well maintenance, water testing and treatment if contaminants are present at elevated levels of concern. OHA’s Domestic Well Safety Program encourages well water protection by increasing well-owner capacity to evaluate and manage contamination risks.

Water insecurity disproportionately affects populations experiencing homelessness in Oregon. In 2017, a point-in-time count (a count of homeless people on a single night) estimated that 13,953 people were experiencing homelessness in Oregon, a 6% increase since 2015 [ 9 ]. Many people experiencing homelessness rely on public facilities for sanitation and hygiene. A research team at Portland State University surveyed 550 homeless people about where they access water for sanitation and hygiene. The team found that 55% use public bathrooms at the Central Library, City Hall and the mall, 33% used freestanding public toilets on downtown sidewalks and 32% used shelter rest rooms [ 10 ]. Forty percent of those surveyed reported experiencing medical problems related to lack of hygiene including staph infections, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), endocarditis and urinary tract infections, observations which are consistent with chronic lack of sanitation and hygiene [ 10 ]. The survey results present an opportunity to further identify water access needs and public health impacts among those experiencing homelessness in all Oregon counties.

Water insecurity impacts households with poor plumbing, with wells vulnerable to flooding or with dependence on bottled water for daily use. Water insecurity also impacts those communities suffering from extended drought and those served by coastal aquifers vulnerable to sea level rise or saltwater intrusion. Oregon currently has no public health-focused water insecurity program, but partner programs within OHA such as Drinking Water Services, Domestic Well Safety Program (DWSP), Climate and Health Program and the Acute and Communicable Disease Program (ACDP) are working in this area. Despite current efforts, there is limited understanding of water insecurity risks and interventions to mitigate those risks. Public health-focused water insecurity programs, policies and practices could foster community resilience in the face of climate change, droughts, floods, wildfires, earthquakes and other natural disasters and communicable diseases related to water insecurity.

The objective of the systematic literature review was to understand the existing evidence base for developing public health policies, programs and surveillance strategies (collectively referred to as “interventions”) relating to water insecurity in Oregon. The following questions guided our literature review:

• (1) What are the existing evidence-based public health-focused water insecurity interventions?
• (2) How would one evaluate effectiveness?
• (3) What is the evidence showing the interventions have successfully mitigated risk?

We conducted a systematic literature search to collect existing documentation of evidence-based public health-focused water insecurity interventions. We followed Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines to document our literature review process [ 11 ]. Our aim was to document an evidence base for multiple interventions based on a mixture of qualitative and quantitative research. Therefore, we could feasibly produce neither an aggregate measure of effect nor a critical appraisal of studies.

2.1. Search Strategy and Screening Criteria

We looked for sources discussing water insecurity at the individual, household, community, state and national level with a public health focus. While we primarily targeted United States-based sources, we also reviewed international literature to understand the current global water insecurity political landscape and to assess the relevance and applicability of global water insecurity interventions in Oregon. We conducted the review using the ScienceDirect, PAIS Index and Nexis Uni databases to search for peer-reviewed journal articles and legislative documents. We also hand-searched the Water Security Journal from the ScienceDirect database and reference lists of relevant articles. Based upon initial search results, key informant interviews and an internet search of “university water initiatives,” we searched gray literature finding 15 separate agency and university water initiatives, their publication lists and research projects. We hand-searched the following institutions: California Water Boards, California Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, Columbia University, the Environmental Law Institute, Harvard University, Northwestern University, Stanford University, Texas A & M University, the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, the University of California Water (UC Water), the University of North Carolina, the University of Oklahoma, the University of Minnesota, West Virginia University and the World Economic Forum.

The search strategy used a combination of keywords including “water security,” “water insecurity,” “water scarcity,” “water access” “water stress,” “public health” and “surveillance.” Appendix A , Table A1 describes the complete strategy for the Water Security Journal in the ScienceDirect database. We assessed article abstracts for relevance before retrieving full texts. We used The George Washington University Himmel Health Sciences Library and the State Library of Oregon to obtain access to full-length articles.

The screening process used the following eligibility criteria:

• (1) Results for all years.
• (2) Results in the English language only.
• (3) Water insecurity-related bills, legislation, policies, journal articles, and agency publications, projects and initiatives.
• (4) Sources discussing measures to evaluate or identify water insecurity.
• (5) Sources discussing metrics for surveillance of water insecurity and public health impacts.
• (6) Sources discussing the application of indicators to identify water insecurity.
• (7) Sources documenting implementation processes, data collection methods or evaluation protocols for gathering evidence of effectiveness.
• (8) Sources currently in the implementation or evaluation phase that have documented implementation and evaluation strategies.

2.2. Data Extraction and Quality Assessment

To conduct data extraction, we made a distinction between systematic review protocols and systematic mapping protocols. The Collaboration for Environmental Evidence (CEE) provides a guideline for authors who seek to document environmental evidence [ 12 ]. During the data collection process, we used coding as suggested in the CEE’s systematic mapping guidelines to uniformly describe each intervention (see Table 1 ). We assessed the risk of bias in each study by determining whether the authors took measures to minimize selection bias and whether the study samples were prone to recall, nonresponsive, volunteer or response bias.

Study Coding Variables.

Notes: Reprinted from A methodology for systematic mapping in environmental sciences [ 12 ].

Since 1998, literature has cited at least 25 different definitions of water security [ 4 , 13 ]. The Jepson et al. household water insecurity review [ 13 ] classifies these varied definitions into 4 interdisciplinary themes: (1) human needs and development; (2) ecological sustainability; (3) geopolitics and international relations; (4) vulnerability, adaptation and risk to global change. The Jepson review further distinguishes by level (e.g., individual, household, community, country, global) and water security frame (e.g., humanitarian, vulnerability, ecosystem sustainability, geopolitics) [ 13 ]. There are over 400 peer-reviewed water security publications in the social, natural and medical sciences field, with over half appearing in the last 5 years [ 14 ]. The Cook and Bakker [ 15 ] water security literature review revealed 95 results using the search term “water security” in the Web of Science database. Of the 95 articles, the majority were water resources, environmental studies and engineering focused, while fewer than 10 articles focused on public health. Search results did not identify the number of cited definitions for water insecurity.

3.1. Study Selection

Appendix A , Table A2 shows the Literature Search Log of all searches, including the database or site, keywords used, search results and relevant results. Figure 3 shows the PRISMA Flowchart for the literature search. We assessed 2323 articles and gray literature items for relevance. After completing the screening phase, eleven results passed criteria for inclusion: eight full-text articles and three gray literature results. The articles that passed screening were found either through agency publication lists or the Elsevier Water Security Journal, while the gray literature results were found through follow-up searches originating from Nexis Uni legislative results. Out of the 15 separate agency searches, The University of North Carolina and Texas A&M University yielded results that we could include in the screening process. We grouped all results meeting criteria for inclusion into three categories which include policy, surveillance and indicators.

Prisma Flowchart of Review Results.

3.1.1. Policy

California human right to water assembly bill 685.

The literature search found one state policy meeting the search criteria and study objectives. The 2012 California Human Right to Water Assembly Bill (AB) 685 recognizes “every human being has the right to safe, clean, affordable, and accessible water adequate for human consumption, cooking, and sanitary purposes [ 16 ].” AB 685 requires that all relevant state agencies consider the policy when developing and implementing related policies and programs. Indicators and evaluation methods to monitor progress and assess achievements of the policy are still under development in partnership with the University of California Berkeley (UC Berkeley). UC Berkeley School of Law released a document called “The Human Right to Water Bill in California: An Implementation Framework for State Agencies” in May 2013, which offers a framework defining how and when state agencies should consider the human right to water [ 17 ].

3.1.2. Surveillance

There were seven surveillance studies meeting criteria for inclusion addressing water insecurity at the household, community, regional and or state level. For this review, we define surveillance as public health data collection and analysis to identify water access needs, to identify populations experiencing water insecurity and to note existing public health inequities.

Household Water Insecurity Studies

Two studies assessed water insecurity at the household level, with a focus on poor communities in both international and US-based communities. The Global Household Water Insecurity Study at Northwestern University, launched in 2017, identifies households with high, medium and low water insecurity using the Household Water Insecurity Experiences (HWISE) Scale [ 18 ]. It is currently implemented as a cross-culturally validated tool in 23 low-and middle-income countries [ 18 ]. The HWISE Scale is designed to assess risks of adverse outcomes associated with household water insecurity (HWI), to target scarce resources and to measure impacts of interventions and policies on HWI [ 18 ]. Approximately 250 participants were randomly selected per site to complete the household water insecurity surveys. The survey included 32 interview questions about water insecurity (for example, socio-demography, water quality, quantity, accessibility, reliability and utility, food insecurity, perceived stress and infant feeding). While the project offers a comprehensive guidebook and rationale for conducting a HWISE study, the project is still underway with no results to assess the effectiveness of the intervention. Ongoing data collection is viewable on the study site until a final scale and study is published [ 18 ].

The Jepson household water security study [ 19 ] took place in colonias, which are low-income communities along the US-Mexico border. The study focused on Hidalgo County, Texas, where the researchers conducted 71 household surveys over four weeks in 2012 [ 19 ]. The study used key terms such as “water security” and “household water security”, which encompass three dimensions: water access, water quality acceptability and water affect [ 19 ]. Water affect is the “emotional, cultural, and subjective experiences of water” [ 19 ]. The aim was to gather water security perspectives of colonias residents using qualitative research and experiential surveys. The study developed a scalogram, which is a cumulative scale incorporating each of the three dimensions of household water security mentioned. At the time of the study, all households surveyed had a water service connection. Researchers selected 11 colonias communities through random sampling using the Texas state colonia classification system [ 19 ]. The system classified six border counties according to infrastructure-based assessments of high, moderate, low and unknown health risk [ 19 ]. The scale scores to classified households as: (1) Water Secure; (2) Marginally Water Secure; (3) Marginally Water Insecure; (4) Water Insecure. The study found that “only 10% are water secure, 35% are marginally water secure, 31% are marginally water insecure, and 24% are water insecure [ 19 ].” This study offers the perspective of marginalized communities who are experiencing water insecurity.

Socioeconomic Status, Race/Ethnicity, and Risk of Unsafe Drinking Water Study

The Switzer and Teodoro study analyzed direct and indirect relationships between racial or ethnic populations, socioeconomic status (SES) and Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) compliance [ 20 ]. The study compared two regression models, one noninteractive model assessing the effect of race and ethnicity on SDWA compliance and one interactive model including SES as conditional variable. The comparison strengthened the evidence for a conditional relationship between SES and race and ethnicity. Results indicate that SES is proportional to compliance and ethnicity (Hispanic) is inversely proportional to compliance. There was no significant relationship between race (black) and compliance. When Switzer and Teodoro included SES as an interactive term (descriptor of the population), the effects of increasing community race and ethnicity on drinking water violations declined as SES increased. Low SES communities with racial and ethnic minorities (Hispanic and black) face greater risk of unsafe drinking water [ 20 ].

Municipal Water Service Access Study

The Gibson et al. study [ 21 ] used property tax data in Wake County, North Carolina to quantify the percentage of residences with community water service in each census block. The study provides the first systematic identification of communities on the fringes of towns in Wake County, North Carolina, lacking access to municipal water service. Researchers conducted the study to test the hypothesis that race may play a role in access to community water service in areas at the fringes of North Carolina cities [ 21 ]. To determine if race was a significant predictor of water service access in census blocks at the fringes of North Carolina towns, researchers conducted logistic regression analysis [ 21 ]. The study showed that increases in the African American population proportion within a census block correlated with an increase in the odds of exclusion from municipal water service [ 21 ].

Water Service Reliability Study

The Pierce and Jimenez study [ 22 ] used 2011 housing data to find disparities in water service reliability among mobile home communities. Researchers hypothesized that households receiving water service from small systems (defined in this study as systems not regulated by Safe Drinking Water Act, or those systems that serve fewer than 15 connections or 25 people) experience more interruptions in service than larger systems. Further, small potentially unregulated systems are less likely to be properly maintained and thus are prone to gaps in service. The study analyzed water reliability across three housing types: standalone mobile homes, mobile homes in park communities and all other housing units. Researchers administered surveys with questions on household socioeconomics, tenancy arrangements, housing quality, costs, relocation behaviors and location [ 22 ]. Results showed that mobile home park residents experience nearly twice the number of service gaps of residents of standalone mobile homes and nearly three times as many as residents in all other housing unit types. Units receiving water from a small system had 3 times higher odds of experiencing a water shutoff than other units [ 22 ]. More research is needed to illuminate the underlying reasons for these differences; however, it is likely that gains in water security are more feasible in mobile home parks than among standalone mobile homes. Residing in a rural area within a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) was more strongly associated with unreliable water service than location in a non-MSA rural area.

Water Scarcity Variability and Exceedance/Compliance Mapping Tools

Two studies conducted water insecurity surveillance through the development and use of mapping tools. The Mekonnen and Hoekstra study [ 23 ] measured global water scarcity monthly with remote sensing at high resolution (30 × 30 arc min). Water scarcity is the ratio of water consumption over water availability. Researchers adopted an environmental flow standard that 80% of natural runoff is needed to meet environmental needs, leaving 20% which can be considered as water available for human use without affecting the integrity of downstream water-dependent ecosystems and livelihoods [ 23 ]. Results show that 4 billion people worldwide experience severe water scarcity during part of the year and 1.8 to 2.9 billion people experience severe water scarcity for 4 to 6 months each year [ 23 ].

The California State Water Resources Control Board recently published the Human Right to Water Portal [ 24 ]. The Portal includes a data mapping resource showing public water system compliance and violations information in California [ 25 ]. The tool uses available data to identify the water system number and name, the regulating agency, the county, the service connections, city, zip code, compliance status and the violation details (type of contamination).

3.1.3. Indicators

Water poverty index studies.

One of the most widely used indicators relating to water and human development is the Water Poverty Index (WPI), first applied at the community level by Sullivan, et al. [ 26 ]. The WPI integrates information about local water resources, access to water, capacity to manage water, uses of water and ecological integrity to determine risks and priorities of water conditions at the community level. The WPI takes a value of 0–100, with 100 being the best situation (low level of water poverty) and 0 being the worst (high level of water poverty).

Sullivan, et al. [ 26 ] demonstrated the value of the WPI as applied to twelve international community pilot sites in South Africa, Tanzania and Sri Lanka. This study identified WPI index values for each community through the administration of 1521 household surveys. Results quantified strengths and weaknesses related to water resources for each pilot site. The WPI provided a cogent, transparent way to communicate the complexities of local water issues and their impacts on local communities.

Korc and Ford [ 27 ] applied the WPI model in 131 households along the border colonias of west Texas. The WPI indicators include:

• Resources (capacity of water systems and water quality of suppliers in a colonia),
• Access (access to drinking water and sanitation, and institutional or technical capacity of water suppliers in a colonia),
• Capacity (cost of water, household annual income and drinking water tank maintenance in a colonia) and,
• Environmental (septic tank certification and septic tank maintenance in a colonia) [ 27 ].

To create a colonia-level WPI, the study matched a water, sanitation and safety dataset from a 2010 Texas Department of State Health Services community-based survey on colonias with water supplier compliance and enforcement information. Researchers combined the WPI components using a weighted average method, with the weightings indicating the importance of a particular WPI component [ 27 ]. Results identified the neediest of the studied colonias and showed that improvements in any of the 4 indicators would benefit that community. Results also identified specific needed improvements for the other colonias studied, allowing for more focused community resources [ 27 ].

A Framework for Evaluating California’s Human Right to Water

On January 3, 2019, the California Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment announced the release of a draft of A Framework and Tool for Evaluating California’s Progress in Achieving the Human Right to Water [ 28 ]. The Framework offers a systematic approach for evaluating California’s AB 685 law, using 13 indicators which quantify drinking water quality, accessibility and affordability across the state’s community water systems [ 28 ]. Individual systems get an overall score in each indicator area. Implementation and evaluation of AB 685 is an ongoing process, with important considerations such as changes in policy and methods to assess water access, quality, and affordability [ 28 ].

3.2. Risk of Bias and Critical Appraisal

Since our review does not seek studies with intervention and outcome measures of a clinical nature, and includes a variety of results (e.g., policy, indicator and surveillance tools), we cannot determine risk of bias across studies. We critically appraised the descriptive [ 18 , 19 , 26 , 27 ] and correlational studies [ 20 , 21 , 22 ] using a modified Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) checklist [ 29 ]. Four sources are not applicable to the critical appraisal framework [ 16 , 23 , 25 , 28 ]. Responses in Table 2 indicates that all descriptive and correlational studies present strong internal validity, detailed results and relevant and valuable research.

Critical Appraisal of Descriptive and Correlational Studies.

Notes: Key: Response options: Y = Yes; CT= Can’t tell; N = No; NA = Not applicable. Adapted from Critical Appraisal Skills Programme. CASP (Qualitative) Checklist [ 29 ].

4. Discussion

4.1. summary of evidence and potential utility in oregon.

Our literature catalog Appendix A , Table A3 shows that current public health-related water insecurity interventions are limited and mainly consist of surveillance practices (for example, surveys) with some water insecurity mapping and indicator strategies. There are few water insecurity policies that seek to promote public health and health equity. Study findings may be difficult to find due to varied definitions and uses of water insecurity and water security. However, research and development are most likely limited by the relatively recent emergence of water insecurity as a field of study. Knowledge is still emerging on how to quantify water insecurity to assess community needs and develop effective interventions to mitigate risk. In Table 3 , we present intervention feasibility (ability/likelihood to complete the intervention successfully in Oregon) and relevance (intervention importance or significance for Oregon).

Relevance and Feasibility of Interventions in Oregon.

Given the United Nations’ and California’s Human Right to Water Laws, we see increasing global, national and regional efforts to achieve access to safe, sufficient and affordable water for all people. With California’s Framework and Tool for Evaluating California’s Progress in Achieving the Human Right to Water [ 28 ], policymakers and public health professionals have a model for tracking progress towards state water security goals. While the Framework was designed to assess progress of California’s AB 685, it can be adapted in other states to evaluate existing water policy efforts. Since California is the only U.S. state thus far to declare a human right to water, it is too early to determine the full impact of the Framework indicators.

The two household water insecurity studies [ 18 , 19 ] measure multiple aspects of water insecurity to assess what is experienced at the household level. Resulting information offers policymakers well-rounded data to apply an integrated approach to designing water insecurity interventions. The Household Water Insecurity Experiences (HWISE) Scale equips researchers with a tool to identify the magnitude of household water insecurity, the associated health risks and effects on wellbeing, changes over time and intervention effectiveness [ 18 ]. The HWISE study offers a complete guidebook for research teams, however, the large-scale study design has high resource and time demands not suitable for projects with significant budget and time constraints.

The colonias experiential survey and scales integrate the point of view of marginalized communities experiencing water insecurity, supplying qualitative data and quantitative analysis to classify varied levels of water insecurity and water security. The three scalograms (water access, water quality acceptability and water affect) together offer information on multiple dimensions of water insecurity and capture psycho-social dimensions (for example, emotional distress) often overlooked in water insecurity measurements [ 19 ]. The scale is reproducible, since survey questions are general and prompt the participant to share their own unique experience. The scale is most applicable to low-income and unincorporated peri-urban and rural communities connected to water services, but the scale can be adapted to assess communities not connected to water services as well.

For instance, water insecurity scalograms can be applied to rural communities with individual surface water domestic withdrawals in Oregon (for example, Siltcoos Lake). The risk of selection bias for both studies is low since researchers used random sampling to identify participants. Both studies used primary and secondary data offering a mix of qualitative and quantitative information.

Two studies investigated the relationship between race and ethnicity and water insecurity [ 20 , 21 ]. Switzer and Teodoro [ 20 ] revealed a statistically significant negative relationship between race/ethnicity and Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) compliance in communities with exceptionally low socioeconomic status (SES). The study controlled for a possible confounder (SES) by comparing a non-interactive regression model (race and ethnicity and SDWA compliance) to an interactive model (race and ethnicity and SDWA with SES as a confounding variable). Since this is the only study found which assesses these interactions, we cannot assume that there will be a negative relationship between race and ethnicity and SDWA compliance in all low SES communities. Oregon, and other states interested in this issue, would have to determine if these relationships reflect what is experienced in local communities. The Gibson et al. study [ 21 ] indicated that increases in the African American population proportion within a census block correlated with an increase in the odds of exclusion from municipal water service. Both studies’ use of secondary data (for example, census records and SDWA data) present a financially feasible approach to identifying water insecurity disparities. Results present an opportunity to identify and investigate further the disparities in access to water in similar communities in Oregon.

The Pierce and Jimenez study [ 22 ] compared water service reliability of households on small water systems not regulated by the federal Safe Drinking Water Act with households on larger systems. Results show that mobile home park residents are 2–3 times as likely as others to experience gaps in water service [ 22 ]. Researchers used surveys and secondary data (for example, U.S. census and American Housing Survey data) to identify disparities in water service reliability; therefore, it is feasible to conduct a similar study in Oregon. However, current American Housing Survey data are limited to a combined (Portland, Beaverton and Vancouver) metropolitan area dataset so comparable data are needed. Conducting a similar study would provide baseline data to show the prevalence of water reliability in Oregon communities on small water systems.

The Mekonnen and Hoekstra [ 23 ] study on water scarcity variability mapping and the California Water Boards’ exceedance/compliance mapping tool offer water insecurity surveillance tools for both small and large-scale tracking. While the study aimed to reveal large-scale impact, researchers can use remote sensing to assess water scarcity regionally. Researchers interested in modeling water scarcity can use data from domestic water supply institutes and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Water Use Data for the Nation [ 30 ] database to measure water consumption of domestic water supply. Surface runoff modeling at catchment or grid level can measure water availability. The California Water Boards’ exceedance/compliance mapping tool [ 25 ] is the first of three drinking water mapping tools available to track progress toward the human right to water. Once complete, the two additional maps will provide methods for tracking water affordability and water accessibility and other important dimensions of water insecurity. With existing Oregon data (for example, water system names and numbers, regulating agencies, service connections, compliance status and violations) it is possible to create a similar mapping tool of public water systems. One limitation to California’s exceedance/compliance mapping tool is the exclusion of private water systems, small state-regulated water systems and private wells. Since California’s exceedance/compliance tool only maps public water systems, Oregon would need to assess alternatives to tracking data on other water systems of interest in the state.

The Korc and Ford [ 27 ] and Sullivan et al. [ 26 ] studies present the Water Poverty Index (WPI) as a water management tool that considers many aspects of water management including data on water resources, access, use, socio-economic capacity and water quality [ 31 ]. Although the WPI calculation process requires multiple data sets, the multi-step process is simple with examples of the standard WPI equation available to researchers [ 26 ]. Selecting indicators from available data will capture a more informed picture of the five components of the index. The Korc and Ford [ 27 ] study used existing datasets from three sources: the 2010 Texas Department of State Health Services (TDSHS) community-based survey, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEP) water supplier inspections and the Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS). Researchers can still derive approximate WPI results with missing data, however, this may reduce the comparability between locations [ 26 ].

4.2. Review Limitations

Currently, there is no database or centralized source compiling a list of agencies and academic entities with water insecurity initiatives. Since we hand-searched state-and university-based water initiatives, it was difficult to determine if we found all existing initiatives and risk of search bias exists. Much of current literature used “water security” as a key term, yielding more relevant results than “water insecurity”. Most results excluded from the review were conceptual studies discussing varied definitions of water security. This presented challenges with identifying proper search terms and sources specifically addressing a public health perspective and quantifiable solutions. While “water insecurity”, “water security”, “the human right to water”, “household water insecurity”, “water poverty index”, “water scarcity”, “water stress”, “water service reliability” and “water access” surfaced as key terms in our literature results, it is possible that other key terms are used to encompass water insecurity. These challenges suggest that water insecurity is still an emerging topic with limited publications.

4.3. Key Informant Interviews

At various stages of our systematic review process we interviewed key informants actively involved in solving today’s water insecurity issues in California, Washington and Oregon. Discussions in Oregon focused on natural resources agencies, since activities within the public health system (Oregon Health Authority programs regulating public water systems and carrying out education and outreach to private domestic well owners) are already known to the authors. Key informant interviews contributed to the robustness of key words and search terms allowing us to refine our review, expand our understanding of relevant policies and begin identifying potential public health-focused water insecurity interventions. Below are the key activities discussed during the interviews.

California’s Human Right to Water Law followed mobilization of multiple communities and nongovernmental organizations focused on water justice. These communities recognized inequities in access to safe drinking water. California is assessing water security needs, setting goals, developing resources, improving water affordability and tracking progress. Washington State is pursuing water insecurity interventions through community education events, drought risk assessment, water loss detection and utility rate capping. Washington’s activities look at water insecurity outside of the regulatory context and aim to increase awareness of the value of water and importance of water conservation. “Water insecurity” is not a widely used term in California or Washington, but both states are developing interventions to meet the unique water needs of their communities.

There are recent and ongoing efforts among Oregon natural resource agencies, led by the Oregon Water Resources Department (OWRD), to develop an Integrated Water Resources Strategy, gain a better understanding of the quantity and quality of water in aquifers, prepare for droughts, engage local communities in place-based planning and develop a 100-year vision for water in Oregon. To capture groundwater-level data and climatic and seasonal impacts on aquifers, OWRD continues to develop observation wells throughout the state and in basin study sites. OWRD has completed basin studies in the Deschutes, Willamette and Klamath basins to understand the relationship between and availability of groundwater and surface water. These studies produce information about the geology of the basins and the volume of groundwater recharge, discharge and storage [ 32 ]. In response to the 2015 drought, partner agencies of Oregon’s Integrated Water Resources Strategy conducted a survey across the state asking participants about their drought response and what actions should be taken to be better prepared for future droughts [ 32 ].

Oregon Department of Environmental Quality’s (DEQ) drinking water source protection program [ 33 ] assists public water systems and communities with protecting their sources of drinking water (streams, lakes and aquifers) from contamination. DEQ conducts and updates source water assessments for public water systems and develops surface water and groundwater resource guides to provide technical assistance, funding information and other resources to public water systems in Oregon.

4.4. Recommendations

The following recommendations are based on key informant interview findings and current water insecurity literature, policies and practices (2003–2019) that aim to identify public health inequities in access to safe, accessible and affordable water. Our goal is to inform public health agencies, water resources management agencies and policymakers about water insecurity inequities and interventions to make the most informed decisions to mitigate risk.

4.4.1. Characterize Populations Experiencing Inequities in Access to Water

Prior to identifying water insecurity needs, state agencies must recognize which communities are experiencing water access disparities. Agencies should study census and property tax data to identify, describe and quantify inequities in access to water. This will help us understand racial and ethnic disparities and water access needs among marginalized communities (for example, communities with no or disconnected water service and communities along the fringes of municipal water service lines). Mapping Oregon water systems as done in California’s Exceedance/Compliance mapping tool [ 25 ], and considering inclusion of water system advisories, will help us understand water availability and water quality among populations served by these systems. For instance, we can map communities that have open or recurring water advisories. Both approaches will focus risk mitigation activities, such as improving well construction, updating infrastructure, educating private well owners on well maintenance and groundwater stewardship and educating communities on drought awareness and water conservation.

4.4.2. Identify Water Insecurity Needs

Assessing water insecurity experiences and needs at the household level using the Household Water Insecurity (HWI) approach [ 19 ] will find water-insecure households and communities and help us understand the impacts water insecurity has on daily life, health perceptions and psychosocial well-being. Researchers can distribute and analyze HWI surveys using the Community Assessment for Public Health Emergency Response (CASPER) technique, a quantitative and evidence-based needs assessment approach [ 34 ]. Although this approach is resource-heavy, data acquired from the first recommendation will reveal target communities for its application and baseline data to support funding requests. Qualitative data from the HWI surveys paired with existing quantitative data (for example, water quality data, service interruptions and water-borne illness rates) will produce valuable information about the unobserved experiences of communities in mobile home parks, communities with individual surface water domestic withdrawals and communities with private wells.

The Water Poverty Index (WPI) identifies more than one influencing factor (that is, Resource, Access, Capacity, Use and Environment) of water insecurity, which provides an interdisciplinary picture of the water situation in a given region [ 31 ]. The WPI, and its integration of existing data and the physical, social, economic and environmental issues, can be an effective and feasible tool for water managers in Oregon to develop sustainable water resources. Application of the WPI in Oregon communities will require resources to collect data, analyze multiple data sets and calculate the WPI. A research team could conduct a household-level study, such as Jepson’s HWI [ 19 ], in conjunction with a WPI study or use data from a previously conducted household survey.

Oregon Housing and Community Services (OHCS) developed a Manufactured Home Park Directory map, which includes the locations of all active manufactured homes (including mobile homes), marked census track boundaries, county names, park size or number of manufactured homes and owner contact information [ 35 ]. To assess water service reliability in manufactured/mobile home parks, American Housing Survey (AHS) questions [ 22 ] can integrate into HWI survey studies to capture physical housing quality attributes, housing costs and tenancy arrangements, relocation behaviors and water cutoff or service interruption rates. This approach would quantify the needs of low socioeconomic status (SES) and marginalized communities, identifying inequities in access and health impacts of water insecurity. Currently, AHS data in Oregon are limited to the Portland-Beaverton-Vancouver metropolitan areas, however it is possible to match some manufactured/mobile home parks in the OHCS Manufactured Home Park Directory map with mobile home parks and corresponding water connections through the Drinking Water Data Online inventory [ 36 ]. There may be opportunities to work with partners to fill critical data gaps and provide more transparency to water insecurity in marginalized communities.

4.4.3. Track Water Scarcity Variability

Oregon can implement strategies to better understand how climate change and seasonal variability impacts water availability and drought risk by applying Mekonnen and Hoekstra’s water scarcity modeling approach. Researchers can measure water scarcity as the ratio of water consumption over water availability. The U.S. Geological Survey provides water-use data per county, including domestic self-supplied groundwater and surface water withdrawals measured in Mgal/d (million gallons per day). Water availability is measurable through surface runoff modeling at the catchment or grid level [ 23 ]. Oregon should consider updating or developing surface runoff water modeling and aquifer modeling at the catchment or grid level. Water scarcity mapping results will support Oregon’s Integrated Water Resources Strategy by monitoring and quantifying water consumption and availability in relation to climate change and drought patterns. Results can also aid the mobilization of place-based water planning efforts in regions found to be experiencing water scarcity.

4.4.4. Pursue the Human Right to Water

Adopt a state policy, such as the human right to water, that would encourage an interdisciplinary collaboration between public health agencies, water resources management agencies, academia and policymakers to establish accessible, safe and affordable water as a priority in future policy decisions. Resulting data from the preceding recommendations (for example, water insecurity experiences, water access and demographics, water quality and availability mapping and service reliability) will inform future policy decisions.

5. Conclusions

Water insecurity as an emerging field opens many opportunities to raise awareness of the evolving and confounding effects to public health, as well as understand how to mitigate and manage risks of human and ecologic impacts. The current evidence base for making policy- and program-development decisions is limited, but there are feasible and relevant intervention options to begin assessing water insecurity needs in Oregon. Work around California’s Human Right to Water and related mapping tool, and additional applications of the Household Water Insecurity Survey by researchers over the next few years will help to grow the evidence base. The United Nations and California establishment of the human right to water suggests policymakers and public health professionals are placing a greater importance on environmental justice and water insecurity internationally and in the US. Meetings with US-based key informants revealed that water insecurity policy and intervention development is underway, but each state interviewed (OR, WA, CA) is pursuing its own approach. While approaches may differ and cater to specific state-based needs, there is great opportunity to learn about varied approaches through continued collaboration. By using mixed methods to collect information at system, community, regional and statewide scales Oregon will be better prepared to develop water insecurity policy solutions that are community-specific and culturally relevant.

Acknowledgments

We want to thank David Tipping, Carolina Balazs, Brenda Bateman, Kimberly Moore, Gabriela Goldfarb, David Emme and Ali Hamade for their shared time, knowledge and resources. This publication was supported by the Cooperative Agreement Numbers 1 NUE1EH001347 and 5 NUE2EH001330, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Department of Health and Human Services.

Search Strategy for One Database.

Literature Search Log.

Literature Catalogue: Characteristics of Studies Included in the Water Security Systematic Review (2003–2018).

Author Contributions

This study has been developed with the contribution of all its authors. Conceptualization, C.C.; methodology, C.S., C.C; validation, C.S., C.C.; formal analysis, C.S.; investigation, C.S.; data curation, C.S.; writing—original draft preparation, C.S.; writing—review and editing, C.S., C.C.; visualization, C.S.; supervision, C.C.; project administration, C.C.; funding acquisition, C.C. The final draft of the paper was circulated to all authors for revision and for approval for submission. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

This research was funded by the Center for Disease Control, Cooperative Agreement Numbers 1 NUE1EH001347 and 5 NUE2EH001330. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Department of Health and Human Services.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

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Research Article

Water resource management: IWRM strategies for improved water management. A systematic review of case studies of East, West and Southern Africa

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliations Soil, Crop, and Climate Sciences, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa, School of Engineering, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, Varmac Consulting Engineers, Scottsville, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Civil & Structural Engineering, Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology, Kakamega, Kenya

Roles Conceptualization, Methodology, Supervision, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Soil, Crop, and Climate Sciences, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa

Roles Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Agriculture and Engineering Services, Irrigation Engineering Section, Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria

• Tinashe Lindel Dirwai, 
• Edwin Kimutai Kanda, 
• Aidan Senzanje, 
• Toyin Isiaka Busari

• Published: May 25, 2021
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236903
• Reader Comments

The analytical study systematically reviewed the evidence about the IWRM strategy model. The study analysed the IWRM strategy, policy advances and practical implications it had, since inception on effective water management in East, West and Southern Africa.

The study adopted the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-analysis Protocols (PRISMA-P) and the scoping literature review approach. The study searched selected databases for peer-reviewed articles, books, and grey literature. DistillerSR software was used for article screening. A constructionist thematic analysis was employed to extract recurring themes amongst the regions.

The systematic literature review detailed the adoption, policy revisions and emerging policy trends and issues (or considerations) on IWRM in East, West and Southern Africa. Thematic analysis derived four cross-cutting themes that contributed to IWRM strategy implementation and adoption. The identified four themes were donor effect, water scarcity, transboundary water resources, and policy approach. The output further posited questions on the prospects, including whether IWRM has been a success or failure within the African water resource management fraternity.

Citation: Dirwai TL, Kanda EK, Senzanje A, Busari TI (2021) Water resource management: IWRM strategies for improved water management. A systematic review of case studies of East, West and Southern Africa. PLoS ONE 16(5): e0236903. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236903

Editor: Sergio Villamayor-Tomas, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, SPAIN

Received: July 12, 2020; Accepted: May 2, 2021; Published: May 25, 2021

Copyright: © 2021 Dirwai et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper.

Funding: This study was supported by the National Research Foundation (NRF) in the form of a grant awarded to TLD (131377) and VarMac Consulting Engineers in the form of a salary for TLD. The specific roles of the authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section. The funders had no additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have read the journal’s policy and have the following potential competing interests: TLD is a paid employee of VarMac Consulting Engineers. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products associated with this research to declare.

1 Introduction

Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is a concept that is meant to foster effective water resource management. GWP [ 1 ] defined it as “the process which promotes the coordinated development and management of water, land and related resources, to maximise the resultant economic and social welfare equitably without compromising the sustainability of vital systems”. A holistic approach, in the form of the Dublin statement on Water and Sustainable Development (DSWSD), emerged and it became the backbone of IWRM principles.

According to Solanes and Gonzalez-Villarreal [ 2 ] the Dublin priciples are: “ (1) Freshwater is a finite and vulnerable resource , essential to sustain life , development and the environment; (2) Water development and management should be based on a participatory approach , involving users , planners and policy-makers at all levels , (3) Women play a central part in the provision , management , and safeguarding of water , and (4) Water has an economic value in all its competing uses , and should be recognised as an economic good .” The seamless conflation of the DSWSD and the Agenda 21 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992 further strengthened the IWRM discourse and facilitated the policy approach of IWRM [ 3 , 4 ]. Since its inception the IWRM policy has been the holy grail of water resource management in Africa, Asia, and Europe to mention a few. For policy diffusion, countries were required to develop an IWRM policy blueprints for effective water use [ 5 ].

This review sought to unveil the innovative IWRM strategy approach by critically examining its genesis, implementation, adoption and the main drivers in in East, Southern and West Africa. Secondary to this, the study endeavoured to determine whether the IWRM implementation has been a success or failure. The choice of East, West and Southern Africa was influenced by the regional dynamics of Sub-Saharan Africa which have unique problems in water resources management and the hydropolitical diversity in this region. The isolated cases provide a holistic representation t the implementation dynamics of IWRM. In addition, sub-Sahara Africa was the laboratory for IWRM with Zimbabwe and South Africa being the early implementers [ 6 ]. Apart from the IWRM strategy being a social experiment in sub-Sahara, there exists a gap on an overarching review on the performance and aggregated outcomes of the IWRM adopters in the continent. The selection of the countries of interest was based on the authors geo-locations and their expert experiences with the IWRM strategy in their respective localities. The study sought to draw trends, similarities, and potential differences in the drivers involved in achieving the desired IWRM outcome.

IWRM strategy approach and implementation are ideally linked to individual country’s developmental policies [ 7 ]. Southern Africa (Zimbabwe and South Africa) is the biggest adopter of the water resource management strategy and produced differed uptake patterns [ 8 ]. In East Africa, Tanzania,Uganda and Kenya also adopted the IWRM strategy, whilst in West Africa, Burkina Faso latently adopted the IWRM strategy in 1992 [ 4 ] and in Ghana, customary and traditional water laws transformed into latent IWRM practices [ 9 ].

Various initiatives were put in place to aid the adoption of IWRM in sub-Sahara Africa. For example, Tanzania benefited from donor funds and World Bank programmes that sought to alleviate poverty and promote environmental flows. The World Bank radically upscaled and remodelled IWRM in Tanzania through the River Basin Management—Smallholder Irrigation Improvement Programme (RBM-SIIP) [ 10 ]. The government of Uganda’s efforts of liberalising the markets, opening democratic space and decentralising the country attracted donor funds that drove the IWRM strategy agenda. The long-standing engagement between Uganda and the Nordic Fresh Water initiative helped in the diffusion of IWRM strategy in the country. Finally, in West Africa, Burkina Faso and Ghana made significant strides in operationalising the IWRM strategy by adopting the West Africa Water Resources Policy (WAWRP). A massive sense of agency coupled with deliberate government efforts drove the adoption status of Burkina Faso.

Total policy diffusion can be achieved when the practice or idea has supporting enablers. Innovation is key in developing plocies that altersocietal orthodox policy paths that fuel hindrance and consequently in-effective water governance [ 11 ]. Acknowledging the political nature of water (water governance and transboundary catchments issues) is the motivation to legislate water-driven and people-driven innovative policy [ 12 ]. Water policy reform should acknowledge the differing interests’ groups of the water users and its multi-utility nature; thus, diffusion channels should be tailored accordingly, avoiding the ‘one size fits all’ fallacy. IWRM as an innovative strategy approach diffused from the global stage to Africa and each regional block adopted the approach at different times under different circumstances.

The rest of this paper is outlined as follows; section 2 presents the conceptual framework adopted and the subsequent methodology. Section 3 presents the results and discussion. The discussion is structured around innovation driver in each respective region. Thereafter, sub-section 3.4 presents the prospect of IWRM in the East, West and Southern Africa regions. Lastly, the paper presents the conclusion.

2 Methodology

2.1 conceptual framework and methodology.

The analytical framework applied in the study is based on the water innovation frames by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) [ 13 ]. The UNDESA [ 13 ], classified water frames into three distinct categories namely water management strategies (e.g., IWRM), water infrastructure and water services. The former partly involves IWRM strategies and the latter encompasses economic water usage such as agriculture, energy production and industrial applications [ 12 ].

The literature review identified research gaps that informed the employed search strategy. The literature that qualified for inclusion was thoroughly analysed and discussed. The aggregated outcomes were used for excerpt extraction in the thematic analysis.

2.2 Literature handling

The study performed a systematic review as guided by the Arksey and O’Malley [ 14 ] approach. The approach details methods on how to scope, gather, screen and report literature. The study further employed a constructionist thematic analysis to extract common recurring themes amongst the regions.

2.2.1 Eligibility criteria.

Eligibility criteria followed an adapted SPICE (Setting, Perspective, Intervention, Comparison and Evaluation) structure ( Table 1 ). The SPICE structure informed the study’s search strategy ( Table 2 ) and the subsequent formulation of the inclusion-exclusion criteria ( Table 3 ). The evidence search was conducted from the following databases: Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, UKZN-EFWE, CABI, JSTOR, African Journals Online (AJOL), Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), J-Gate, SciELO and WorldCat for peer-reviewed articles, books, and grey literature. The study did not emphasize publication date as recommended by Moffa, Cronk [ 15 ]. Databases selection was based on their comprehensive and over-arching nature in terms of information archiving. It is worth mentioning that the search strategy was continuously revised by trial and error until the databases yielded the maximum number of articles for screening.

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2.2.2 Search strategy.

The search strategy or query execution [ 16 ] utilised Boolean operators ( OR & AND ). The dynamic nature of the search strategy required the authors to change the search terms and strategy, for example, if digital databases did not yield the expected search items the study would manually search for information sources. The search queries included a string of search terms summarised in Table 2 .

2.2.3 Selection process.

DistillerSR © software was used for article screening. Online data capturing forms were created in the DistillerSR © software and two authors performed the article scoring process that eventully led to article screening. The screening was based on the article title, abstract and locality. The study employed a two-phase screening process [ 17 ], the first phase screened according to title and the second phase screened according to abstract and keywords. During the screening process, studies that the matched information in the left column of Table 3 we included in the literature review syntheses, whilst those that matched the exclusion list were discarded.

2.3 Thematic analysis

The review also adopted the thematic analysis approach by Braun and Clarke [ 18 ] to extract, code, and select candidate converging themes for the systematic review. The selected lieterature was subjected to qualitative analysis to capture recurring themes amongst the selected regions (East, West and Southern Africa). Data extracts from the respective regional analysis were formulated into theoretical themes. Thereafter, the extracted data was coded according to the extracted patterns from the information source to constitute a theme. It is worth mentioning that the authors used their discretion to extract and code for themes.

3 Results and discussion

Data charting comprised of the PRISMA flow-chart ( Fig 1 ). The study utilised 80 out of 183 records (n = 37, 46%) for East Africa, (n = 37, 46%) for Southern Africa, and (n = 6, 8%) for West Africa.

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3.1 Case studies

The introduction of IWRM in the East African region was initiated in 1998 by the water ministers in the Nile basin states due to the need for addressing the concerns raised by the riparian states. These water sector reforms revolved around the Dublin principles initiated by the UN in 1992 [ 20 ]. In 1999, Kenya developed the national water policy and the enabling legislation, the Water Act 2002 was enacted [ 21 ]. The Act was replaced by the Water Act 2016 which established the Water Resources Authority (WRA) as the body mandated to manage water resources in line with the IWRM principles and Water Resource Users Association (WRUA) as the lowest (local) level of water management [ 22 ].

Similarly, Uganda developed the national water policy in 1999 to manage, and develop the available water resources in an integrated and sustainable manner [ 23 ]. The National Water Policy further provides for the promotion of water supply for modernized agriculture [ 24 ]. Tanzania’s water policy of 2002 espouses IWRM principles, and its implementation is based on a raft of legal, economic, administrative, technical, regulatory and participatory instruments [ 25 ]. The National Irrigation Policy (NIP), 2010 and the National Irrigation Act, 2013 provides the legal basis for the involvement of different actors on a private-public partnership basis [ 26 ].

West Africa possesses an unregistered IWRM strategy that is espoused in the West Africa Water Resources Policy (WAWRP) of 2008. The WAWRP is founded on the following legal principles; (a) “promote, coordinate and ensure the implementation of a regional water resource policy in West Africa, in accordance with the mission and policies of Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)and (b) “harmonization and coordination of national policies and the promotion of programmes, projects and activities, especially in the field of agriculture and natural resources”. The founding legal basis resonates with the Dublin principles.

The WAWRP design actors were ECOWAS, Union Economique et Monétaire Ouest Africaine (UEMOA), and Comité Permanent Inter-État de Llutte Contre la Sécheresse au Sahel (CILSS). CILSS is the technical arm of ECOWAS and UEMOA. The institutional collaboration was driven by the fact that West Africa needed a sound water policy for improved regional integration and maximised economic gains. ECOWAS established the Water Resources Coordination Centre (WRCC) to (a) oversee and monitor the region’s water resources and management activities and (b) to act as an executive organ of the Permanent Framework for Coordination and Monitoring (PFCM) of IRWM [ 27 ].

The inception and triggers of IWRM in West Africa can be traced back to the General Act of Berlin in 1885 which, among other things, dictated water resources use of the Congo and Niger rivers [ 28 ]. A multiplicity of agreements around shared watercourses in West Africa led to the realisation of the IWRM policy approach. For example, the Senegal River Basin (SRB) Development Mission facilitated collaboration between Senegal and Mauritania in managing the SRB. Another noteworthy agreement was Ruling C/REG.9/7/97, a regional plan to fight floating plants in the ECOWAS countries [ 28 ]. GWP (2003) categorised the West African countries according to the level of adoption into three distinct groups namely; (a) Group A comprised of countries with the capacity to develop and adopt the IWRM approach (Burkina Faso and Ghana), (b) Group B comprised of countries needing “light support” to unroll the IWRM plan (Benin, Mali, Nigeria, and Togo), and (3) Group C comprised of laggards which needed significant support to establish an IWRM plan (Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Sierra Leone).

Southern African Development Community (SADC) regional bloc has over 15 shared transboundary river basins (For detailed basin and catchment arrangement in SADC see [ 29 ]). SADC member states established the Protocol on Shared Water Systems (PSWS) which meant to encourage sustainable water resources utilisation and management. The PSWS was perceived to strengthen regional integration [ 30 ]. The regional bloc formulated the Regional Strategic Action Plans (RSAPs) that sought to promote an integrated water resources development plan. The action initiative mimicked IWRM principles and the shared water resources initiatives acted as a catalyst for the genesis of IWRM in Southern Africa [ 31 ]. SADC houses the Waternet and the GWP-SA research and innovation hubs upon which SADC’s IWRM adoption was anchored on. Besides the availability of trained water experts in the region who were willing to experiment with the IWRM policy approach, water scarcity fuelled by climate change prompted the region’s adoption of the IWRM policy approach at the local level.

3.2 Diffusion drivers of IWRM in East, West and Southern Africa

3.2.1 water scarcity..

The adoption of IWRM in East Africa was necessitated by water scarcity which is experienced by the countries in the region, which formed the need for adoption of prudent water resources management strategies as envisaged under the Dublin principles which was championed indirectly, according to Allouche [ 5 ], by the World Bank. Specifically, the need to give incentives and disincentives in water use sectors to encourage water conservation.

Kenya is a water-scarce country with per capita water availability of 586 m 3 in 2010 and projected to 393 m 3 in 2030 [ 32 ]. Uganda is endowed with water resources, however, it is projected that the country will be water-stressed by 2020 which could be compounded by climate variability and change, rapid urbanization, economic and population growth [ 33 ].

Using water scarcity was in essence coercing countries to adopt the IWRM principles with the irrigation sector, the contributor of the largest proportion of water withdrawals, becoming the major culprit [ 5 ]. The researchers opine that the effects of water scarcity in the region can be countered by adopting IWRM strategy, but adaptively to suit the local context and thus, persuasive rather than coercive, is the appropriate term. Indeed, as put forward by Van der Zaag [ 34 ], IWRM is not an option but it is a necessity and therefore, countries need to align their water policies and practices in line with it.

West African climatic conditions pose a threat on the utilisation of the limited water resource. Water resource utilisation is marred by erratic rainfalls and primarily a lack of water resources management know-how [ 27 ]. Countries in the Sahelian regions are characterised by semi-arid climatic conditions. Thus, dry climatic conditions account as an IWRM strategy driver to ensure maximised water use efficiency. Although the region acknowledges the need for adopting the IWRM strategy, they have varied adoption statuses (GWP, 2003).

Southern African countries also face serious water scarcity problems. Rainfall in South Africa is low and unevenly distributed with about 9% translating to useful runoff making the country one of the most water scarce countries in the world [ 35 ]. Generally, SADC countries experience water scarcity resulting in conflicts due to increasing pressure on the fresh water resources [ 36 ]. Thus, the researched opine that water scarcity pushed the region to adopt the IWRM strategy inorder to mitigate the looming effects of climate change on surface water availainility.

3.2.2 Trans-boundary water resources.

Water resources flow downstream indiscriminately across villages, locations, regions and nations/states and therefore necessitates co-operation. The upstream and downstream relationships among communities, people and countries created by the water is asymmetrical in that the actions upstream tend to affect the downstream riparian and not the other way round [ 34 ]. In East Africa, the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) and the Lake Victoria Basin Commission (LVBC) plays a critical component in promoting the IWRM at regional level [ 20 ].

The Nile River system is the single largest factor driving the IWRM in the region. Lake Victoria, the source of the Nile River is shared by the three East African states of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Irrigation schemes in Sudan and Egypt rely exclusively on the waters of River Nile and are therefore apprehensive of the actions of upstream states notably Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi. The source of contention is the asymmetrical water needs and allocation which was enshrined in the Sudan–Egypt treaty of 1959 [ 37 ]. All the riparian countries in the Nile basin have agricultural-based economies and thus irrigation is the cornerstone of food security [ 38 ]. Therefore, there was the need for the establishment of basin-wide co-operation which led to the formation of NBI in 1999 with a vision to achieve sustainable socio-economic development through the equitable utilisation of the Nile water resources [ 39 ].

The Mara River is another trans-boundary river which is shared between Tanzania and Kenya and the basin forms the habitat for the Maasai Mara National Reserve and Serengeti National Park in Kenya and Tanzania, respectively, which is prominent for the annual wildlife migration. Kenya has 65% of the upper part of the basin, any development on the upstream, such as hydropower or water diversion, will reduce the water quantities and therefore affect the Serengeti ecosystem and the livelihoods of people in Tanzania [ 40 ]. The LVBC, under the East African Community, developed the Mara River Basin-wide—Water Allocation Plan (MRB-WAP) to help in water demand management and protection of the Mara ecosystem [ 41 ]. The mandate of the LVBC is to implement IWRM in Lake Victoria Basin riparian countries [ 20 ].

Other shared water basins include the Malakisi-Malaba-Sio River basin shared between Uganda and Kenya and the Kagera River basin traversing Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. The two river basins form part of the Upper Nile system and are governed through the LVBC and the NBI.

The universal transboundary nature of water creates dynamics that warrant cooperation for improved water use. West Africa has 25 transboundary watercourses and only 6 are under agreed management and regulation. The situation is compounded by the fact that 20 watercourses lack strategic river-basin management instruments [ 28 ]. Unregistered rules and the asymmetrical variations associated with watercourses warranted the introduction of the IWRM principle to set equitable water sharing protocols and promote environmental flows (e-flows). The various acts signed represent an evolutionary treaty development that combines th efforts of riparian states to better manage the shared water resources (for detailed basin configuration in West Africa see [ 42 ]). Hence, adoption of the IWRM strategy driven WAWRP of 2008 ensured the coordinanted and harmonised regional water usage mechanisms.

The SADC region has 13 major transboundary river basins which calls for development of agreements on how to handle the shared water resources with the contraints of varying levels of economic development and priorities among the member states. The multi-lateral and bi-lateral agreeements on shared water resources in the SADC is hampered by the hydropolitics where economic power dynamics favour South Africa as in the case of the Orange-Senqu basin [ 43 ].

3.2.3 Donor influence.

The World Bank has been pushing for IWRM principles in the East Africa through the NBI and by pressurising Egypt to agree to co-operate with the upstream riparian countries in the Nile basin [ 38 ]. In the early 1990s, the World Bank had aligned its funding policies to include sustainable water resources management [ 44 ].

In Tanzania, Norway, through NORAD, played a key role in implementing IWRM by promoting water projects including hydropower schemes [ 45 ]. Indeed the transformation of the agricultural sector in Tanzania through Kilimo Kwanza policy of 2009 which emphasised on the commercialization of agriculture including irrigation was driven by foreign donors such as the USAID and UK’s DFID [ 26 ].

In Uganda, however, the reforms in the water sector were initiated devoid of external influence [ 46 ]. However, this assertion is countered by Allouche [ 5 ] who pointed that Uganda had become a ‘darling’ of the donor countries in the early 1990s and that DANIDA helped to develop the Master Water Plan and the country was keen to show a willingness to develop policy instruments favourable to the donor. East African countries are developing economies and therefore most of their development plans are supported by external agencies, which to some extent come with subtle ‘conditions’ such as free-market economies. In fact imposition of tariffs and other economic instruments used to implement IWRM in water supply and irrigation is a market-based approach which was favoured by the World Bank and other development agencies.

Donor aid cannot be downplayed in pushing for IWRM diffusion in low-income aid-dependent countries of West Africa. GoBF [ 47 ] reported that from the period 1996–2001, more than 80% of water-related projects were donor funded. Cherlet and Venot [ 48 ] also found that almost 90% of the water investments in Mali were funded outside the government apparatus. It can, therefore, be argued that donor-aid plays a pivotal and central role in diffusing policy and innovation in aid-depended countries because of the incentive nature it provides for the low-income countries in the sub-Sahara region.

Southern Africa’s experience with western donors including the World Bank in terms of IWRM adoption favoured the urban areas and neglected rural areas (see [ 8 ]). The National Water Act drafting process in South africa was a multi-stakeholder and intersectoral activity that brought in international consultancies. Notable IWRM drivers were Department of International Development—UK (DFID), Danish Danida, and Deustsche Gesellschaft fur Zusammernarbeit (GIZ). The DFID was instrumental in water reform allocation law whilst the GIZ and Danida were active in experimental work in the catchments [ 3 ]. On the contrary, in Zimbabwe, a lack of access to international funding and fleeting donor aid exacerbated the policy uptake as such the anticipated implementation, operationalisation and continuous feedback mechanism for policy revision and administering process was never realised.

3.2.4 Government intervention and pro-active citizenry.

This was predomint in West Africa. For example the Burkinabe government exhibited political goodwill such that in 1995 the government brought together two separate ministries into one ministry of Environment and Water thus enabling coherent policy formulation and giving the ministry one voice to speak on water matters. The dynamic innovation arena (where policy players interact) allows continuous policy revision and redesign thus water policy reform diffusion, and policy frameworks are in a perpetual state of shifting. For example, in the 1990s the Burkinabe government was engaged in several water-related projects and was continuously experimenting with local governance and privatization (from donors) [ 1 ]. This policy shift according to Gupta [ 49 ] qualifies as an innovation driver.

Burkina Faso and Mali’s adoption story is accentuated by heightened agency, the individual enthusiasm on influencing the outcome facilitated policy diffusion and can be argued to be a potential innovation diffusion driver for the IWRM policy approach in the region. The individual policy diffusion fuelled by an enthusiastic citizenry was a sure method that effectively diffused awareness around the IWRM innovation and acted as a driver of the IWRM practices in the region. Individual strategies were honed in smallholder farming institutions to diffuse the IWRM practice and drawing from the Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith [ 50 ] advocacy coalition theory, having individuals with common agendas promoted the transfer and diffusion of water reforms in parts of West Africa.

3.2.5 Legal, political and institutional incoherence.

This was a major factor which dictated the pace of IWRM implementation in Southern Africa. For example, the Fast Track Land Reform (FTLR) programme in Zimbabwe disaggregated the large-scale commercial farms and created smallholder farming [ 51 ], consequently influencing and dictating IWRM policy path. The FTLR programme had a negative impact on the spread and uptake of IWRM. A series of poor economic performance and poor policy design compounded the limited diffusion and the adoption of IWRM practices at local levels in Zimbabwe. The FTLR programme compounded the innovation diffusion process as the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA) lost account of who harvested how much at the newly created smallholder farms. Thus, water access imbalance ensured, and ecological sustainability was compromised.

Policy incoherence was a major factor in poor IWRM diffusion and adoption, for example, the government did not synchronise the land and water reforms thus it meant at any given point in time there was a budget for one reform agenda [ 8 ] and the land reform agenda would take precedence because of political rent-seeking. IWRM in its nature couples growth to the coordinated consumption of finite resources, hence the circular approach cannot be easily realised because finte resources are at the core of the strategy’s existence.

South Africa’s transition from Integrated Catchment Management (ICM) strategies to the IWRM strategy, hindered the operationalisation and diffusion of the IWRM strategy [ 52 ]. Despite acknowledging the “integration”, researchers argued that the word lacked a clear-cut definition thus failing to establish a common ground for water’s multi-purpose use [ 53 ]. For maximised adoption of a practice, incremental innovation is required, which was Danida’s agenda in the quest to drive IWRM in South Africa. According to Wehn and Montalvo [ 54 ] incremental innovation “is characterised by marginal changes and occurs in mature circumstances”,

Land reform in South Africa is characterised by (a) redistribution which seeks to transfer land from the white minority on a willing buyer willing seller basis, (b) restitution which rights the discriminatory 1913 land laws that saw natives evicted from their ancestral land, and (c) land tenure that provides tenure to the occupants of the homelands. This new pattern created a new breed of smallholder farmers that are, more often than not, excluded from diffusion and water governance channels [ 55 ]. In addition, researchers argue that a farm once owned by one white farmer is owned by multiple landowners with different cultural backgrounds and, more often than not, IWRM strategy is met with resistance [ 56 ]. Another challenge posed by multi-cultural water users is the interpretation and translation of innovations.

To foster water as an economic good aspect of IWRM the licensing system was enacted in South Africa. The phenomenon was described by van Koppen (2012) as paper water precedes water, thus the disadvantaged black smallholder farmers could not afford paper water which consequently limits access to water. The licensing system can be interpreted as stifling the smallholder sector and hence negative attitudes develop and hinder effective policy diffusion. Another issue that negatively impacted adoption was that issuing a license was subject to farmers possessing storage facilities. The smallholder farmers lack resources hence the requirement for obtaining a license excluded the small players in favour of the large-scale commercial farmers. This consequently maintains the historically skewed status-quo, where “big players” keep winning. Van Koppen [ 57 ] and Denby, Movik [ 58 ] argue the shift from local water rights system to state-based water system have created bottlenecks making it hard for smallholder farmers to obtain “paper water” and subsequently “wet water”. The state-based system is characterised by bureaucracies and local norms are in perpetual change, hence denying the IWRM innovation policy approach stability efficiency.

A lack of political will and pragmatism amplified the poor adoption and operationalisation of IWRM, a poorly performing economy and fleeing donor agencies resulted in less funding for water-related project. Political shenanigans created an imbalance that resulted in two forms of water i.e., water as an economic good vs. water as a social good [ 59 ]. Manzungu [ 60 ] argued post-colonial Zimbabwe continuously failed to develop a peoples-oriented water reform policy. In a bid to correct historical wrongs by availing subsidised water to the vulnerable and support the new social order, the initiative goes against the neo-liberalism approach that defines the “water as an economic good” [ 61 ] which is a founding principle of IWRM.

Water redistribution in South Africa has been fraught with political and technical issues, for example, the Water Allocation Reform of 2003 failed to reconcile the apartheid disparity hence the equity component of IWRM was compromised. IWRM suffered another setback caused by the governing party when they introduced radical innovations that sought to shift from the socialist to neoliberal water resource use approach. The radical innovation through the government benefited the large-scale commercial farmers at the expense of the black smallholder farming community [ 53 ].

3.3 Systematic comparison of findings on East, West and Southern Africa

Data extracts from the respective regional analysis were formulated into theoretical candidate themes. The thematic analysis extracted recurring themes common to all the three regions. An independent reviwer performed the subjective thematic analysis and the authors performed the review on the blind thematic analysis outcome. The analysis performed a data extraction exercise and formulated codes ( Fig 2 ). Themes were then generated from the coded data extracts to create a thematic map. It is worth mentioning that the data extracts were phrases/statement from with in the literature review.

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3.3.1 Donor aid and policy approach.

Donor activity invariably influenced the policy path that individual countries took. The three regions had significant support from donors to drive the IWRM strategy. Zimbabwe experienced a different fate. The political climate caused an exodus of donor support from the nation, which consequently caused a laggard. The absence of donor support was at the backdrop of the two formulated water acts namely National Water Act [ 62 ] and the Zimbabwe National Water Authority Act of 1998 [ 63 ], which were meant to promote equitable water provision amongst the population. This highlights the latent adoption of IWRM strategy. The 2008/2009 cholera outbreak raised alarm and facilitated the return of donor activity in Zimbabwe’s water sector. The availability of donor support motivated the redrafting of a water clause in the 2013 constitution that espoused the IWRM strategy to water management [ 64 ].

Whilst Mehta, Alba [ 64 ] argue that South Africa enjoyed minimal donor support it cannot be downplayed how much donor influence impacted the IWRM strategy adoption. For instance, the Water Allocation Reform (WAR) was drafted with the aid of the UK Department of International Development. The WAR fundamentals are informed by IWRM principles. The economic structural programmes spearheaded by The World Bank and the IMF were active in facilitating the diffusion of the IWRM strategy in Kenya and Uganda. Uganda made strides because of a long-standing relationship with donor nations. The Uganda—donor relationship dates back to early 1990 where Uganda was elected to be the NBI secretariat, this in itself evidence of commitment to water policy reform [ 4 , 65 ]. Donor aid acts as an incentive and augments the low African goverments’ budgets, as such proper accountability and usage of the funds ensures that more funds come in for projected water related projects.

3.3.2 Transboundary water resources.

The Nile River system is the single largest factor driving the IWRM in the region since it is shared across several upstream and downetream nations. Irrigation schemes in Sudan and Egypt rely exclusively on the waters of River Nile and are therefore apprehensive of the actions of upstream states notably Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi. The source of contention is the asymmetrical water needs and allocation which was enshrined in the Sudan–Egypt treaty of 1959 [ 37 ]. Over time, the upstream countried demanded equitable share of the Nile waters and this led to the establishment of NBI. In Eastern Africa, the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) and the Lake Victoria Basin Commission (LVBC) plays a critical component in promoting the IWRM at regional level [ 20 ]. The LVBC is deeply intertwined with the East African Community (EAC) and thus has more political clout to implement policies regarding utilization of the Lake Victoria waters [ 66 ]. This, therefore, implies that for NBI to succeed, it must have a mandate and political goodwill from the member countries.

The conflicts around the utilization of the Nile water resources persists due to the treaty of 1959 which led to the signing of Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA) by a number of the Nile basin countries, with the notable exceptions of Egypt, Sudan and South Sudan [ 67 ]. The CFA was signed between 2010 and 2011 and establishes the principle that each Nile Basin state has the right to use, within its territory, the waters of the Nile River Basin, and lays down some factors for determining equitable and reasonable utilization such as the contribution of each state to the Nile waters and the proportion of the drainage area [ 68 ]. The construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has been a source of concern and conflict among the three riparian countries of Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt [ 67 ]. The asymmetrical power relations (Egypt is the biggest economy) in the Nile Basin is a big hindrance to the co-operation among the riparian countries [ 69 ] and thus a threat to IWRM implementation in the shared watercourse. While Ethiopia is using its geographical power to negotiate for an equitable share in the Nile water resources, Egypt is utilizing both materials, bargaining and idealistic power to dominate the hydro politics in the region and thus the former can only succeed if it reinforces its geographical power with material power [ 70 ].

Therefore, IWRM implementation at the multi-national stage is complex but necessary to forestall regional conflicts and war. The necessity of co-operation rather than conflict in the Nile Basin is paramount due to the water availability constraints which is experienced by most countries in the region. The transboundary IWRM revolves around water-food- energy consensus where the needs of the riparian countries are sometimes contrasting, for example, Egypt and Sudan require the Nile waters for irrigation to feed their increasing population while Ethiopia requires the Nile waters for power generation to stimulate her economy. The upstream riparian States could use their bargaining power to foster co-operation and possibly force the hegemonic downstream riparian States into the equitable and sustainable use of Nile waters [ 71 ].

The SADC region has 13 major transboundary river basins (excluding the Nile and Congo) of Orange, Limpopo, Incomati, Okavango, Cunene, Cuvelai, Maputo, Buzi, Pungue, Save-Runde, Umbeluzi, Rovuma and Zambezi [ 72 ]. The Revised Protocol on Shared Watercourses was instrumental for managing transboundary water resources in the SADC. The overall aim of the Protocol was to foster co-operation for judicious, sustainable and coordinated management, the protection and utilization of shared water resources [ 73 ].

Ashton and Turton [ 74 ] argue that the transboundary water issues in Southern Africa revolved around the key roles played by pivotal States and impacted States and their corresponding pivotal basins and impacted basins. In this case, pivotal States are riparian states with a high level of economic development (Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe) and a high degree of reliance on shared river basins for strategic sources of water supply while impacted States are riparian states (Angola, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Tanzania, and Zambia) that have a critical need for access to water from an international river basin that they share with a pivotal state, but appear to be unable to negotiate what they consider to be an equitable allocation of water and therefore, their future development dreams are impeded by the asymmetrical power dynamics with the pivotal states. Pivotal Basins (Orange, Incomati, and Limpopo) are international river basins that face closure but are also strategically important to anyone (or all) of the pivotal states by virtue of the range and magnitude of economic activity that they support. Impacted basins (Cunene, Maputo, Okavango, Cuvelai, Pungué, Save-Runde, and Zambezi) are those international river basins that are not yet approaching a point of closure, and which are strategically important for at least one of the riparian states with at least one pivotal State.

The transboundary co-operation under IWRM in Southern Africa is driven mainly by water scarcity which is predominant in most of the SADC countries which may imply the use of inter-basin transfers schemes [ 74 ]. Further, most of the water used for agriculture, industry and domestic are found within the international river basins [ 75 ] which calls for collaborative water management strategies. The tricky feature hindering the IWRM is the fact that States are reluctant to transfer power to River Basin Commissions [ 76 ]. Indeed most of the River Basin Organizations (RBO) in Southern region such as the Zambezi Commission, the Okavango River Basin Commission, and the Orange-Sengu River Basin Commission have loose links with SADC and therefore lack the political clout to implement the policies governing the shared water resources [ 66 ]. Power asymmetry, like in Eastern Africa, is also a bottleneck in achieving equitable sharing of water resources as illustrated by the water transfer scheme involving Lesotho and South Africa [ 77 ]. The hydro-hegemonic South Africa is exercising control over any negotiations and agreements in the Orange-Senqu basin [ 43 ]. Limited data sharing among the riparian States is another challenge which affects water management in transboundary river basins e.g. in the Orange-Senqu basin [ 78 ].

West Africa has 25 transboundary watercourses and only 6 are under agreed management and regulation. The situation is compounded by the fact that 20 watercourses lack strategic river-basin management instruments [ 28 ]. Unregistered rules and the asymmetrical variations associated with watercourses warrant the introduction of the IWRM principle to set equitable water sharing protocols and promote environmental flows (e-flows). The various acts signed represent an evolutionary treaty development that combines the efforts of riparian states to better manage the shared water resources. It is important to note that evolutionary treaties are incremental innovation. Water Resources Coordination Centre (WRCC) was established in 2004 to implement an integrated water resource management in West Africa and to ensure regional coordination of water resource related policies and activities [ 79 ].

The Niger River basin covers 9 Countries of Benin, Burkina, Cameroon, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Niger and Nigeria. The Niger River Basin Authority (NBA) was established to promote co-operation among the member countries and to ensure basin-wide integrated development in all fields through the development of its resources, notably in the fields of energy, water resources, agriculture, livestock, forestry exploitation, transport and communication and industry [ 80 ]. The Shared Vision and Sustainable Development Action Programme (SDAP) was developed to enhance co-operation and sharing benefits from the resources of River Niger [ 81 ]. The Niger Basin Water Charter together with the SDAP are key instruments which set out a general approach to basin development, an approach negotiated and accepted not only by all member states but also by other actors who utilize the basin resources [ 82 ].

The main agreement governing the transboundary water resource in River Senegal Basin is the Senegal River Development Organization, OMVS (Organisation pour la mise en valeur du fleuve Sénégal) with its core principle being the equitably shared benefits of the resources of the basin [ 82 ]. The IWRM in the Senegal River Basin is hampered by weak institutional structures and lack of protocol on how shared waters among the States as well as conflicting national and regional interests [ 83 , 84 ]. The Senegal River Basin, being situated in the Sudan-Sahelian region, is faced by the threat of climate change which affects water availability [ 84 ] The Senegal River Basin States have high risks of political instability.

3.4 Prospects of IWRM Africa

The countries in the three regions are at different stages of implementation ( Table 4 ). In East Africa, Uganda and Kenya are at medium-high level while Tanzania is medium-low. Majority of the countries in the Southern Africa region are at medium low. Comoros Islands is the only country at low level of implementation in the region. West African countries are evenly spread between low, medium-low and medium-high levels of implementation. Generally, East Africa is ranked as medium-high level with average score of 54% while Southern Africa and West Africa are ranked as medium low-level at 46% and 42% respectively. However if you include, medium low countries of Rwanda, Burundi, Ethiopia and South Sudan and the low-level Somalia, then East Africa’s score drops to 39% (medium-low).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236903.t004

The implementation of IWRM in the continent, and more so the inter dependent and multi purpose water use sectors, will continue to evolve amid implementation challenges. The dynamics of water policies, increased competition for finite water resources from rapid urbanization, industrialization and population growth will continue to shape IWRM practices in the region. Trans-boundary water resources management will possibly take centre stage as East African countries move towards full integration and political federation as envisaged in the four pillars of the EAC treaty. Decision support tools such as the Water—Energy—Food (WEF) nexus appraoch will be very relevant in the trans-boundary water resources such as the Nile system, Mara and Kagera river basins. The approach can potentially ameliorate the after effects of the devolved governance system in Kenya that consequently created a multiplicity of transboundary sectors.

Adoption of the IWRM policy in West Africa is fraught with many challenges. For example, despite having significant water resources, the lack of a collective effort by the governments to train water experts at national level presents a challenge for adoption. Unavailability of trained water experts (who in any case are diffusion media) results in a lack of diffusion channels that facilitate policy interpretation, translation and its subsequent implementation. Helio and Van Ingen [ 27 ] pointed out how political instability possesses a threat to current and future implantation initiatives. The future collaboration projects and objective outlined by ECOWAS, CILSS, and UEMO highlight a major effort to bring the region to speed with the IWRM policy approach. The WAWRP objectives can potentially set up the region on an effective IWRM trajectory which can be mimicked and upscaled in other regions. Positives drawn from the region are the deliberate institutional collaborations. Burkina Faso and Mali have the potential to operationalise and facilitate policy diffusion to other neighbouring states. Donor driven reform is essential and national ownership is critical in ensuring the water reform policies and innovation diffusion processes are implemented at the national level.

The IWRM policy approach and practice in South Africa was government-driven whereas in Zimbabwe external donors were the main vehicles for diffusion. For both countries, the water and land reform agenda has a multiplicity of overlapping functionaries; however, they are managed by separate government departments. The silo system at national level prevents effective innovation diffusion and distorts policy interpretation and the subsequent dissemination at the local level.i.

Water affairs are politicised and often, the water reform policy fails to balance the Dublin’s principles which form the backbone of the IWRM innovation policy approach. Failure by national governments to address unequal water access created by former segregationist policies is perpetuated by the lack of balance between creating a new social order and recognising the “water as an economic good” principle.

4 Conclusion

Africa as a laboratory of IWRM produced varied aggregated outcomes. The outcomes were directly linked to various national socio-economic development agendas; thus, the IWRM policy took a multiplicity of paths. In East Africa, Kenya is still recovering from the devolved system of government to the County system which created new transboundary sectors with the country. Water scarcity, trans-boundary water resource and donor aid played a critical role in driving the IWRM policy approach in the three regions. Southern Africa’s IWRM experience has been fraught with policy clashes between the water and land reforms. Similar to Africa, the transboundary issue in Europe and Asia and the subsequent management is a major buy-in for formulating water resources strategies that are people centric and ecologically friendly. Global water scarcity created fertile grounds for IWRM adoption in Asia, specifically India. Thus, we postulate that some of the drivers that influenced the uptake and diffusion in Africa are not only unique to the continent.

For the future, IWRM policy approach can be implemented in Africa and the continent has the potential to implement and adopt the practice. Endowed with a significant number of water bodies, Africa must adopt a blend of IWRM strategy and the water energy food nexus (WEF) for maximising regional cooperation and subsequent economic gains. WEF nexus will help combat a singular or silo approach to natural resources management. WEF nexus and IWRM is a fertile area for future research as it brings a deeper understanding of the trade-offs and synergies exsisting in the water sector across and within regions. In addition, the WEF nexus approach can potentially facilitate a shift to a circular approach that decouples over dependence on one finte resource for development.

Supporting information

S1 checklist..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236903.s001

S1 Table. Data extracts with the applied codes.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236903.s002

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Review article, a bibliometric analysis and review of water resources carrying capacity using rené descartes’s discourse theory.

• 1 Research Center on Flood and Drought Disaster Reduction, China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Beijing, China
• 2 Development Research Center of the Ministry of Water Resources of P.R.China, Beijing, China
• 3 Jiangxi Academy of Water Science and Engineering, Nanchang, China

Water Resources Carrying Capacity is an important indicator of water sustainable and economic development, yet few studies investigated a bibliometric analysis of Water Resources Carrying Capacity research. In this research, we proposed a four-staged bibliometric analysis method for Water Resources Carrying Capacity studies following the René Descartes’s Discourse on the Method guidelines which makes the bibliometric analysis process more systematic. Our four-staged bibliometric analysis method contains a refined screening process of the records, which can successfully delete poorly correlated data from tens of thousands of data within a short period of time and determined the subject-related data. The screening results shortlisted 271 records from an initial 16,769. We further conducted a complete bibliometric, statistical and meta-analysis of the 271 records. The results showed that China is the major country that conducts research on Water Resources Carrying Capacity. Modeling in various forms and system dynamics are the mainstream methods of Water Resources Carrying Capacity research. Water Resources Carrying Capacity is intrinsically linked to population carrying capacity, groundwater resources, urbanization and water shortage. Based on a comprehensive analysis of the research of Water Resources Carrying Capacity, we divided the research progress into five stages lastly. The method proposed in this research can provide reference for future bibliometric studies.

1 Introduction

1.1 research backgound.

Water resources are an important part of the natural environment and guarantee the development of the human society and economy. However, the distribution of water resources in space and time is often uneven. Rapidly developing and densely populated areas need more water resources but due to their uneven distribution, water resources in some areas cannot satisfy the local human population and economic demand for water ( Yu et al., 2017 ). In this regard, it is important to pay attention to the relationship between the supply and consumption of water resources to be able to balance interaction between the two. Studying the relationship between water supply and consumption, that is, focusing on the water resources carrying capacity, is of great significance for the sustainable use of water resources within a certain region. Concern on sustainable use of water resources has increased due to the unprecedented growth and expansion of global economies within the last 3 decades that has placed an insatiable demand on water resources ( Wu et al., 2020 ; Bian et al., 2022a ). Hence, it important to comprehensively study Water Resources Carrying Capacity (WRCC) to be able to achieve an efficient water related sustainable management.

1.2 Literature review and research gap

The concept of carrying capacity began in the study of physics and refers to the maximum load that an object can bear before any irreversible deformation occurs ( Dhondt, 1988 ). Carrying capacity was however introduced from biology where it was applied in the study of wild animals ( Young, 1998 ; Malthus, 1798 ). In 1921, Park and Burgess ( Park and Burgess, 1921 ) re-invented the idea to calculate the maximum population that can be carried by a specific area from an ecological perspective based on the supply of objects and the state of natural and social resources in a specific period. From hence, carrying capacity has been applied in the field of ecology ( Mcnaughton and Wolf, 1970 ; Kessler, 1994 ).

From early 1970, population and economic expansion, which sustained for 30 years, created a contradiction between social development and environmental sustainability and this triggered a worldwide exploration of the issue of Resources and Environmental Carrying Capacity (RECC). Afterwards, other concepts such as Land Carrying Capacity ( Shi et al., 2013 ), Environmental Carrying Capacity ( Li et al., 2019 ), and Resource Carrying Capacity ( Wang et al., 2020 ) emerged, peaking research on carrying capacity.

In 1985, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) ( UNESCO&FAO, 1985 ) proposed the definition of Resources Carrying Capacity. Onwards, from then, carrying capacity has become one of the main contents of the concept of sustainable development ( Bolis et al., 2017 ). In 1995, Arrow, the Nobel laureate in economics, and other well-known economists and ecologists ( Arrow et al., 1995 ) published an article “Economic Growth, Carrying Capacity and Environment” in “Science”, which greatly improved the sustainable development and cataloged carrying capacity research in the scientific community.

WRCC is an extension of the concept of carrying capacity in the field of water resources, and belongs to a research aspect of Resources Carrying Capacity. WRCC research mainly originated in China. Though studied in other parts of the world at the time, scholars elsewhere regarded WRCC as part of the contents of sustainable development research and described it with terms such as available water and limits of river development ( Falkemark and Lundqvist, 1998 ; Jonathan, 1999 ; Rijisberman and Frans, 2000 ; Gleick and Palaniappan, 2010 ; Zhu et al., 2010 ). An official scientific study of WRCC began in the late 1980’s when the Xinjiang Water Resources Research Group met to discuss WRCC ( XWRSSRG (Xinjiang Water Resources Soft Science Research Group), 1989 ). In 1990s, the concept of WRCC was clearly put forward by Shi Yafeng, an Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences ( Shi and Qu, 1992 ). WRCC is about the relationship between the carrying “subjects” and the ‘objects’ in the “water resources-ecological environment-social economy” system, and whether the load generated by the objects exceeds the supporting capacity of the subjects.

After nearly 30 years of exploration and development, a large number of scientific research results have been discovered in the research of WRCC which has increasingly become a hot issue in regional water resources management. Early researches on WRCC mostly focused on cities ( Yue et al., 2015 ; Dai et al., 2019 ; Yang et al., 2019 ), provinces ( Huang et al., 2014 ; Yang and Ding, 2018 ; Deng et al., 2019 ; Zhu et al., 2019 ) and river basins ( Yang et al., 2010 ; Wu et al., 2018a ; Meng et al., 2018 ; Wang et al., 2018 ; Kang et al., 2019 ). With the continuous deepening of research on WRCC, especially in recent years, its research objects have also changed. More and more researches have begun to focus on the study of WRCC of some typical regions including arid and semi-arid areas ( Wang et al., 2010 ; Xie et al., 2014 ; Li and Zhang, 2016 ; Qi et al., 2016 ; Xiao et al., 2017 ), urbanized regions ( Gao, 2017 ), lake basins ( Lei et al., 2013 ), water-deficient regions ( Wang et al., 2014 ), karst regions ( Bo et al., 2016 ; Yang et al., 2016 ; Li et al., 2018 ), mining areas ( Chi et al., 2019 ), industrial park ( Kang and Xu, 2012 ), islands ( Cao et al., 2014 ; Kuspilić et al., 2018 ) and wetlands ( Wang et al., 2017 ). While other studies have shown interest in WRCC research for certain specific periods, for example, some studies concentrate on WRCC of arid rangelands during the droughts ( Accatino et al., 2017 ).

Calculation methods of WRCC have evolved over the study period. New methods including back propagation model ( Yang and Han, 2011 ), matter element analysis ( Gao et al., 2013 ), grey clustering ( Gao and Sun, 2018 ), state-space method ( Tang et al., 2016 ), support vector machines ( Zhang et al., 2008 ), analytic hierarchy process ( Zhang et al., 2014 ; Chi et al., 2019 ), set pair analysis ( Fu et al., 2008 ; Liu et al., 2018 ), multi-objective programming model ( Wang and Zeng, 2013 ), metabolic theory ( Ren et al., 2016 ), ecological footprint ( Zhang and Li, 2012 ; Wang et al., 2017 ; Li et al., 2018 ; Dai et al., 2019 ; Yang et al., 2019 ), system dynamic model ( Wang et al., 2014 ; Yang et al., 2015 ; Song, 2016 ; Fang, 2018 ; Sun and Yang, 2019 ), catastrophe theory ( Chen et al., 2010 ; Song et al., 2020 ), cloud model ( Cheng et al., 2018 ) and neural network ( Lu et al., 2009 ; Wang, 2015 ) have been discovered. Some methods are a combination of two or three, such as, neural network and projection pursuit ( Zhao, 2012 ); inexact fuzzy and multi-objective programming model ( Wang and Zeng, 2013 ); analytic hierarchy process and fuzzy discrimination method ( Chi et al., 2019 ); set pair analysis and entropy weight method ( Cui et al., 2018 ); maximum entropy and entropy weight ( Li et al., 2019 ); fuzzy set pair analysis model ( Liu et al., 2018 ); combination weights and entropy principles ( Zhou et al., 2017 ) and grey neural network model ( Zheng et al., 2016 ).

The development and expansion of WRCC also witnessed the evolution of another concept of WRCC known as Water Resources Carrying State (WRCS) ( Jiao and Liang, 2006 ; Ye et al., 2018 ). WRCC and WRCS are similar but differ slightly. Although the research on WRCC and WRCS both focus on the supply and demand of water resources within a certain area, WRCC tends to pay more attention on the larger economy and population that water resources in a certain area can support, making WRCC a threshold concept, while WRCS focuses on the balance between water supply and demand in a region.

1.3 The main work and innovations

Although the research on WRCC has increasingly become a hot topic in regional water resources management, bibliometric analysis of literature on it are still very limited ( Zhang and Wang, 2012 ; Jin et al., 2019 ). Bibliometric analysis of the research on WRCC can clarify the development context and knowledge base, understand the development process, clarify the research progress, define research trends and provide scientific reference of WRCC studies.

To do a philosophical and scientific review of literature, we adopted René Descartes’s (1596. 3. 31–1650. 2. 11) method of philosophical thinking expressed in his book, “Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One’s Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences” ( Discourse on the Method , in French: Discours de la méthode pour bien conduire sa raison, et chercher la vérité dans les sciences ) (80). Based on his philosophical concept, René Descartes proposed a four-staged method of researching a problem which he categorized into the following: 1) The doubt stage, 2) The partition of problem stage, 3) Sequencing of thoughts and problem-solving stage, and 4) The comprehensive inspection and review stage ( Wikiquote contributors, 2020b ). These four stages have important guiding significance for both scientific research and social practice, and thus have been widely researched and used in other studies, however, to our knowledge, no study has yet applied this thinking in bibliometric analysis. The basis of theoretical analysis is lacking in most bibliometric studies.

While conducting studies on bibliometric analysis, researchers often have to deal with thousands of records, some, not closely related with the topic under study. Some researchers perform manual screening of records directly ( Tao et al., 2020 ), which consumes large quantities of time. And some of the studies even lack the process of screening ( Huang et al., 2020 ; Mallawaarachchi et al., 2020 ; Secinaro et al., 2020 ), which will lead to less credibility of the results. Since finding out the subject-related records can be very time consuming, an efficient method that can quickly and precisely sort-out topic-related records within a short period of time is necessary. Consequently, we proposed a refined literature screening process to effectively and efficiently sort out relevant from irrelevant literature.

This article aims to sort out and summarize the research on WRCC through bibliometric analysis. The remaining parts of the article are structured as follows: the second part introduces the retrieval process, the records screening method and the analysis process; the third part analyzes and discusses the results of the bibliometric analysis and statistical analysis of WRCC; the fourth part summarizes the full text, and prospects for future development of research on WRCC.

2 A four-staged bibliometric analysis for WRCC

René Descartes’s Discourse on the Method has been used as a general guideline, by which we build the framework of this research. Section 2.1 shows how we applied Descartes’s four-staged methodology. Due to the macroscopic nature of Descartes’s methodology, it is difficult to guide the specific steps ( Wikiquote contributors, 2020b ). According to the specific process of bibliometric analysis, and based on Descartes’s methodology, we also divided the concrete steps of bibliometric analysis into four stages in this research (Section 2.2).

2.1 René descartes’s Discourse on the Method and application

In Descartes’s book Discourse on the Method , he proposed the true method by which to arrive at the knowledge of whatever lay within the compass of his powers, and he summarized this method into four stages ( Figure 1 ). These include: 1) The doubt stage in which ideas are scattered and uncoordinated, and knowledge is based only on what is read; 2) The partition of problem stage, where difficulties are broken down to pieces for easy understanding; 3) The sequencing of thoughts and problem solving stage, where by starting from the simple to the complex, difficult situations are organized in an explicit way for easy understanding and problem-solving; 4) The comprehensive inspection and review stage where enumerations are completed while ideas and thoughts are presented in an orderly and concise review ( Wikiquote contributors, 2020b ).

FIGURE 1 . Framework and application of René Descartes’s Discourse on the Method. Source of René Descartes’s portrait: image.baidu.com .

Putting René Descartes’s study into perspective, in the first stage ( Figure 1 .) of this study where we examined the existing bibliometric analysis of WRCC, there was initial doubt about the rationality and accuracy of existing bibliometric research on WRCC. We found that the existing bibliometric analysis of WRCC were not systematic, lacked coherency and were not comprehensive. This confirmed our earlier assertion that bibliometric research on WRCC is limited. Only two studies by Zhang and Wang (2012) and Jin et al. (2019) have done a bibliometric analysis of WRCC. Zhang and Wang (2012) only conducted a bibliometric analysis of Chinese literature, and ignored the bibliometric analysis of English literature. Their paper is archaic (( Zhang and Wang, 2012 ), was published 8 years ago), and does not reflect the bibliometric analysis of current WRCC research. Even though Jin et al. (2019 ) was published recently, their work lacks a detailed screening process of the records (data) and also lacks rationality and accuracy of the results. The above two scenarios are part of the foundations of this research.

In the second stage of applying René Descartes’s philosophy, we broke the WRCC bibliometric analysis into several units consisting literature retrieval, records screening and analysis. From the statistical point of view, our research was further divided into two parts, statistical analysis and bibliometric analysis.

In the third stage, though we needed to rank the steps, since literature retrieval, records screen and records analysis cannot be re-ranked as literature retrieval should always come first followed by records screening and then analysis records, we chose rather to rank the statistical and bibliometric analysis. We found that statistical analysis was easier compared to bibliometric, so we finished the statistical analysis and then conducted a bibliometric analysis.

In the fourth stage, we analyzed the results, checked whether we met our target and then proceeded to finish the article.

2.2 Four stages of bibliometric analysis of WRCC

Because it can be better understood and thus can be widely used, staged method has attracted more researchers’ attention in recent years ( Wu et al., 2018b2018 ; Bian et al., 2022b ). René Descartes’s method can be concluded into four stages, therefore, we divide our research process also into four stages. Since each of literature retrieval, records screening and records analysis stages are very complicated and contain several steps, we treated them separately. We further divide the concrete steps of bibliometric analysis of WRCC into four stages. And the details of our four-staged bibliometric analysis proposed in this research is shown in Figure 2 .

FIGURE 2 . Details of application process of four-stage bibliometric analysis method.

The four stages of bibliometric analysis are elaborated as follows:

Stage 1: The choice of search terms and search strategies is very important, and directly determines whether the search results are comprehensive. Many terms can be used to express the meaning of WRCC, therefore, using a single term will not present comprehensive results. In order to acquire more comprehensive search results, in the first stage, multiple search terms should be selected.

Stage 2: In the search process, files with poor relevance to the topic will inevitably be retrieved. The search results need to be accurately and carefully screened. In order to obtain more accurate topic-related results, this study proposed a refined literature screening process, which is a three-stepped screening method ( Figure 2 . Stage 2: The screening methods are done through records category, relevance, and manual. By adopting this three-stepped screening method, we can extract the topic-related records from even tens of thousands of records in a short period of time.

Stage 3: We analyzed all the topic-related records by using both statistical analysis and bibliometric analysis at the same time.

Stage 4: We analyzed all the results comprehensively, we checked whether we meet our target and finished this article.

2.2.1 Literature retrieval

In this study, the Web of Science Core Collection Database was explored in advanced search page, using Boolean Logic to search TS = (water carrying capacity OR water resources carrying capacity OR water bearing capacity OR water resources bearing capacity OR water resource bearing capacity) in which the subject contains “water carrying capacity”, “water resources/resource carrying capacity”, “water bearing capacity” or “water resources/resource bearing capacity”. The retrieval year ranges from 1989 to 2019 (in 1989, WRCC was discussed for the first time, but the concept of WRCC was not yet proposed). A total of 16769 records were obtained. The retrieval time is August 15, 2020.

2.2.2 Records screening

During the search process, some files irrelevant to the topic will inevitably be retrieved. Therefore, the search results need to be accurately and carefully screened. In order to obtain more accurate search results, this study adopted a three-stepped screening method. The specific screening steps were applied as follows: 1) The first screening explored 16769 results through Web of Science and selected the category that is related and similar to WRCC, For example, in this research, we click “Result Analysis” on the search results interface of Web of Science, and selected “Environmental Science”, “Water Resources”, “Engineering environmental”, “Ecology”, “Green sustainability science” in the “Web of Science category on the result analysis interface technologyv”, “Multidisciplinary sciences”, “Environmental studies”, “Computer science interdisciplinary applications”, “Mathematics applied”, “Urban studies”, “Management”, 5678 records were obtained. 2) The second step is to screen 5678 search results through the relevance function of the Web of Science webpage. The 5678 search records obtained after screening were sorted in order of relevance, and it was found that the top 500 records all contained “water”, “carrying”, “capacity” or “water”, “bearing”, “capacity” in their topics. After the first 500, the records no longer contained, in relevant application, usage of the words “water”, “carrying”, “capacity” or “water”, “bearing”, “capacity”. Therefore, we concluded that the content after first 500 files does not contain relevant literature related to WRCC. 3) The third step of screening was to manually check the contents of the first 500 records one after the other. During the search, the fact that “water”, “carrying”, “capacity” or “water”, “bearing”, “capacity”, appears in the title of an article doesn’t necessarily mean its research content belongs to the research category of WRCC, therefore the 500 records need to be manually checked, For example, “tourism water resources carrying capacity”, “groundwater carrying capacity”, “water resources and water environment carrying capacity”, and “agricultural water resources carrying capacity ” all belong to the research category of WRCC. However, though “soil water carrying capacity”, “sediment carrying capacity of river flow”, “carrying capacity of fishpond”, “stock carrying capacity”, “recreation carrying capacity”, “mineral resources carrying capacity”, all include the words “water”, “carrying”, “capacity” or “water”, “bearing”, “capacity” in their topics, they do not belong to the research of WRCC. We can see that due to the similarity of some research content, in order to obtain more accurate data in bibliometric research, it is very necessary to finely screen results. After the three-stepped screening process, a total of 271 records were obtained (Appendix A).

2.2.3 Records analysis

The data export of this study is divided into two parts: 1) In the first part, we added the 271 records to the Marked List on the Web of Science website, and then exported important information such as “title”, “author”, “source publication”, “cited frequency”, “document type” and “keywords” to an excel file. 2) In the second part, we directly exported the “full records and cited references” of 271 records on the Web of Science website to plain text files.

In processing of excel file data, we first sorted out the information in the exported excel file starting with the year, country, journal and number of author’s publications. We then sorted out the top 30 highly cited articles, extracted the methods used in the articles and finally marked the time these methods were first used.

In dealing with the plain text files, we first analyzed the exported text file through the VOSviewer software. The results of keywords co-occurrence analysis, inter-year changes of keywords and heat maps were obtained. VOSviewer is a software tool for constructing and visualizing bibliometric networks, which has been developed by Nees Jan van Eck and Ludo Waltman at Leiden University’s Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) ( http://www.vosviewer.com/ ).

2.2.4 Comprehensive analysis

In order to have a more comprehensive understanding of the nature of research progress and current research state of WRCC, we adopted the comprehensive analysis method to further analyze the results obtained from the bibliometric analysis of WRCC in this stage. We also checked whether we met our target, which means that whether we have completed a systematic and comprehensive bibliometric analysis-review of WRCC in this stage. The volume of published literature and research progress have been analyzed, and stages of the development process of WRCC divided.

3 Results and discussion

In this section, both statistical and bibliometric results have been fully analyzed and discussed, and a comprehensive analysis has also been conducted lastly. 3.1 presented the number of articles published by country, periods and authors, and statistical analysis of methods; Section 3.2 analyzed the highly cited papers; 3.3 analyzed the keywords co-occurrence and research hotspots dynamics; and Section 3.4 analyzed WRCC development comprehensively.

3.1 Statistical analysis of articles and methods

Number of articles by country, periods and authors are shown in Figure 3 .

FIGURE 3 . Number of articles published by countries, periodicals, and authors.

Number of publications by country indicates that China published the highest number of papers followed by Indonesia, Germany, Algeria and other ( Figure 3A ) in that order. China has the largest number of publications for two reasons: firstly, WRCC was put forward by the Chinese, and Chinese scholars have shown more research interest in this area. Secondly, due to rapid infrastructural and economic expansion witnessed by China in the last 30 years, demand for water resources has tripled and placed a huge deficit on water need. To avert this situation, the Chinese government attached great importance on WRCC research by setting up a number of National Natural Science Foundation Projects including “Innovative Research On Water Resources Carrying Capacity Based On Water Scarcity Risk Model” (approval number: 40771044), “Research On the Dynamic Mechanism And Sustainability Of the Evolution Of Water Resources Carrying Capacity Under the Framework Of Quality-Energy” (approval number: 41061053), “Risk Analysis Of Economic Development Planning Based On Water Resources Carrying Capacity Under Uncertain Conditions” (approval number: 41271536). The establishment of these National Natural Science Foundation Projects directly and vigorously promoted the research and development of WRCC.

Results of number of papers published by journals indicated that, the top 30 journals with the most papers on WRCC research are in the order shown in ( Figure 3B ). They include ADV MATER RES, APPL MECH MATER, IOP C SER EARTH ENV, AER ADV ENG RES, J CLEAN PROD, WATER-SUI, WATER RESOUR MANAG, ECOL INDIC, J GROUNDW SCI ENG and PROCEDIA ENVIRON SCI. The number of articles published in the order in which the journals are listed above are: 26, 11, 10, 9, 8, 8, 7, 4, 4, and 4 respectively.

From number of articles published by authors perspective, the top 30 authors with the most articles and the number of articles published are shown in ( Figure 3C ). The top 10 authors with the most articles include Feng, Lihua, Lei, Kun, Meng, Lihong, Berezowska-Azzag, Ewa, Fu, Qiang, Gao, Yang, Luo, Gaoyuan, Su, Haimin, Wang, Xin, Wang, Zilong. Among them, Feng, Lihua, Lei, Kun, Meng, Lihong published 4 articles each while the remaining 7 authors published 3 articles each.

By analyzing the excel files exported from the Web of Science website, we discovered 47 methods from 271 articles used in WRCC calculation and evaluation ( Figure 4 ).

FIGURE 4 . Summary of WRCC methods.

In Figure 4 , the methods include TOPSIS, system dynamics model, support vector machines, state-space, set pair analysis, neural network, ecological footprint, cloud model, analytic hierarchy process-fuzzy discrimination, inexact fuzzy multi-objective programming model, etc. have been used in WRCC research.

3.2 Analysis of highly cited papers

In sorting citations of the 271 articles retrieved, we first checked the title of the article, author, publication year, journal source, and number of citations of the top 30 articles with the most citations (as of August 14, 2020) Table 1 .

TABLE 1 . TOP 30 highly cited papers (as of August 14, 2020).

From Table 1 , the top 5 documents were all within the period from 2008 to 2014. This period belongs to the research and development stage of WRCC study. Two of the five articles were published in 2008, and one each in 2009, 2011 and 2014. The number of citations of the 5 articles are in the order 109, 91, 76, 73, 70. Among the 5 articles, 3 are from WATER RESOUR MANAG, MATH COMPUT SIMULAT and ECOL MODEL, indicating that the journal WATER RESOUR MANAG plays an important role in publishing WRCC papers, and papers published in this journal have a greater impact. It can be seen intuitively from the titles that three of the articles are studied in cities in China including Tianjin, Yiwu, and Siping and the other two articles equally studied in China ( Feng and Huang, 2008 ; Gong and Jin, 2009 ) in Lanzhou and Jinhua Cities. This confirms results of earlier analysis that China was the country with the highest number of research work on WRCC.

3.3 Keywords co-occurrence and hotspots dynamics analysis

Keywords can reflect the main content of the article, and the analysis of keywords can understand the general status of the research field. When using VOSviewer software to analyze the co-occurrence of keywords, the larger the node means the more frequently the keyword appeared ( Figure 5 ). The width of the connection between nodes can reflect the frequency of two connected keywords. The wider the connection indicates that the two keywords appear more frequently.

FIGURE 5 . Keywords co-occurrence.

The results shown in Figure 5 indicate that the most frequently occurring keywords are “water resources carrying capacity”, “carrying capacity”, “management”, “water resources”, “system dynamics”, “model”, and “sustainable development”, “Sustainability”, “china”, “river-basin” etc. From the perspective of the width of the connection between nodes, the connection between water resources carrying capacity and management and sustainable development is wider, and the connection between China and river-basin is wider. It shows that these two groups of keywords appear more frequently at the same time.

From the clustering results, the water resources carrying capacity node is the largest among all, which is shown in green. The yellow node emphasizes the methods, the main two yellow nodes are model and system dynamics. The blue node focuses on the research objects, and the two main blue nodes are China and river-basin. The red nodes focus on management, and the main red nodes are management, sustainability, sustainable development, carrying capacity and water resources.

In the analysis of keywords co-occurrence in papers related to water resources carrying capacity, the most frequently occurred keyword is “water resources carrying capacity”. Many nodes are directly connected to “water resources carrying capacity”, and other nodes are connected to this node through intermediate nodes. The nodes that are most closely connected to the water resources carrying capacity node are the management node and the sustainable development node ( Figure 6 .). The carrying capacity of water resources is an important means for water resources management and an important measure for achieving sustainable development of water resources.

FIGURE 6 . Nodes connected to water resources carrying capacity Node.

From the results of cluster analysis, the red nodes emphasize water resources management. The number of nodes connected to the management node and the sustainable development node is greater than the number of nodes connected to the water resources node and the carrying capacity node ( Figures 7A–D ). This is because more nodes are connected to the water resources carrying capacity node, the number of nodes connected to the water resources node and the carrying capacity node is relatively reduced. It is worth noting that the largest node connected to the management node and the sustainable development node is the water resources carrying capacity node, and the width of the connection with this node is the widest, indicating that they have the largest frequency of co-occurrence.

FIGURE 7 . Connection of key nodes.

Analysis results of research methods indicates that the most frequently occurring research methods in the keyword co-occurrence graph are model and systems dynamics. This means that building various models and adopting system dynamics in the research process of WRCC are mainstream. Many nodes are closely connected to these two nodes ( Figures 8A,B ). Water resources carrying capacity, carrying capacity, and management are the nodes that are most closely connected to the model node and the system dynamics node. At the same time, the model node and the system dynamics node are also the most closely connected nodes to each other. This shows that these nodes appear more frequently at the same time. In the analysis of keywords co-occurrence, China is the only country that appeared. River basin is the only node closely connected to China ( Figure 8C ). Furthermore, China is the only node closely connected to the river-basin node ( Figure 8D ). It can be seen that the number of nodes connected to the China node and the river-basin node is significantly less than the number of nodes connected to the model node and the system dynamics node, indicating that more research on WRCC tends to be methodological innovation and application, while research on WRCC in some specific areas is relatively lacking.

FIGURE 8 . Method and object node analysis.

From the keywords co-occurrence density map, we can clearly find research hotspots in the field. The density map of WRCC keywords co-occurrence in this study is shown in Figure 9 .

FIGURE 9 . Hotspot analysis.

In Figure 9 , apart from water resources carrying capacity, there is also carrying capacity, water resources, management, sustainable development, model, China, system dynamics, and other hot spots in the field of WRCC research. WRCC is an important method to realize the sustainable use of water resources and an important means to realize the effective management of water resources. Therefore, these three words, sustainable development, management, and water resources often appear in the keywords of research papers on WRCC. These three words are hot topics in the research of WRCC. WRCC and land resources carrying capacity belong to the research category of resources carrying capacity, therefore carrying capacity is also a hot vocabulary in the research scope of WRCC. China was the only count name of a country that appeared in Figure 9 , which again confirms the assertion that China is the main country in the study of WRCC. It can also be seen from Figure 9 that model and system dynamics are the commonest vocabularies, meaning that a lot of research is carried out by building models or using system dynamics methods to study WRCC.

The time sequence analysis of keywords can reflect the changes of researchers’ interest in some aspects to a large extent. Therefore, time sequence analysis of keywords helps to clarify the development context and knowledge base of the concept. This study conducted a time series analysis on the keywords of WRCC. The analysis results are shown in Figure 10 . The darker the color of the node, the longer the research time in this area. The lighter the color of the node means that the research in that area is the current hotspot.

FIGURE 10 . Keyword evolution process.

From the perspective of time series analysis of the keywords of WRCC, WRCC is gradually generated and developed from scholars’ attention to population carrying capacity, groundwater resources, urbanization, water shortage, risk assessment, etc, ( Figure 10 regions A, B). From the perspective of the spatial scale of WRCC research, the evaluation of WRCC initially focused on the study of cities and provinces. As the research continued to deepen, scholars began to pay more attention to the impact of WRCC on regional water resources. The guiding significance of the deployment, is that the research scale of WRCC has begun to gradually shift to the basin scale (regions C and D in Figure 10 ).

3.4 Comprehensive analysis of WRCC development

The overall situation of the number of papers retrieved in the core database of Web of Science is shown in Figure 11 .

FIGURE 11 . Analysis of publication on WRCC studies.

From Figure 11 , we can see that although the search period is set from 1989 to 2019, the search results indicated that the earliest literature on WRCC from Web of Science Core Database was published between 1997 and 1998. Within this period Joardar and other scholars comprehensively considered natural resources and social resources, established a set of index system for calculating water supply capacity, and used it for the calculation of urban carrying capacity to provide help for the formulation of urban development plans ( Joardar, 1998 ). As research advanced, the number of published papers increased by the year. At the concept proposition stage as well as the early exploration stage, the number of articles published was relatively few and almost all were written in Chinese. Therefore, no articles were retrieved in the Web of Science Core Database for this time. From 2000 to 2010, the number of articles published increased. This however decreased slightly in 2011 compared with 2010, and maintained a steady upward trend from 2011 to 2016. In 2017, both the number of articles and the number of proceeding papers decreased significantly. From 2018 to 2019, the number of papers increased significantly and the types of articles became more diverse. Articles on editorial materials and review papers appeared at this stage. In general, the number of articles published on WRCC has been increasing meaning that studies on WRCC has received attention over the past 3 decades. From the WoS (Web of Science) Categories analysis result shown in Figure 11 , we can see that most of the WRCC research belong to two categories, Environmental Sciences and Water Resources.

Results on types of papers published indicates that 41.7% are articles while editorial materials and reviews account for 1.5%. Conference and other meetings proceedings papers account for a large proportion of papers published on WRCC research. The period from 2007 to 2016 recorded the most numerous proceeding papers published per year, indicating that a large number of proceeding papers published have played an important role in the development of WRCC.

Based on research progress, the volume of published literature, period at which calculation methods were proposed, and our knowledge in WRCC research, this paper divides the research progress of WRCC into five stages ( Figure 12 ).

FIGURE 12 . Development stages division of WRCC.

These five stages have been further elaborated as follows:

• The concept formation stage (-1990). Park and Burgess (1921) took the lead in 1921 and proposed the idea to calculate the maximum population that a region can carry based on regional endowments. Later, other scholars and institutions have successively proposed concepts that are closely related to the WRCC, such as resources carrying capacity, environmental carrying capacity. In 1989, the Xinjiang Water Resources Research Group ( XWRSSRG (Xinjiang Water Resources Soft Science Research Group), 1989 ) completed the first discussion on the issue of WRCC which laid a solid foundation for the concept of WRCC.

• The second stage is the qualitative analysis period (1990s decade). Most of the research in this period focused on the qualitative description stage, while the number of papers on quantitative research is relatively limited. Qualitative research mostly elaborates its theoretical basis and important significance. In 1992, Academician Shi Yafeng clearly put forward the concept of WRCC for the first time ( Shi and Qu, 1992 ). Wang et al. (1999) conducted an in-depth discussion on the concept and theory of WRCC. Cai (1994) elaborated on the issues that needed attention in the study of WRCC in Xinjiang.

• At the methods exploration stage (2000s decade), many quantitative analysis methods have been proposed and applied, For example, Qu and Fan (2000) analyzed and calculated the WRCC in the middle reaches of the Heihe River Basin based on available water resources as well as social and economic water requirements. Li et al. (2009) used an improved fuzzy matter-element model to evaluate water resources carrying capacity. However, in the 10-year exploration stage of the method, only 9 of the 47 methods (47 methods extracted in Section 3.1) were proposed and applied at this stage.

• During the method development period (2011–2016), a large number of research methods have been introduced into the evaluation and research process of WRCC, For example, Zhang et al. (2012) used the ecological footprint method to study the WRCC of the Shule River Basin; Xing et al. (2013) used the principal component analysis method to evaluate ground WRCC of Xi’an from 7 indicators. At this stage, which extends 6 years, 20 methods out of 47 methods have been proposed and applied. The speed of progress at this stage was much faster than the method exploration stage. This study defines this stage as the method development stage.

• The fifth stage is referred as the all-round development stage (2016-). On one hand theoretical system of WRCC has been further enriched and improved, For example, Wang et al. (2017) first constructed an evaluation index system for WRCC from the four aspects of “quantity, quality, region and flow”. At the other hand, application of the methods has also been expanded to a greater extent. Among the 47 methods, 18 methods have been proposed and applied at this stage, and the time limit from this stage to the study of this review is only 3 years. This explains that more methods were applied at this stage. At the same time, most of the subtle changes (Introduction paragraph 6) that occurred in the evaluation objects of WRCC all occurred at this stage. Based on this precept, this stage is defined as the all-round development stage of WRCC.

4 Conclusions and prospects

In this review, a four-staged bibliometric analysis method was used based on the René Descartes’s Discourse on the Method . This makes the bibliometric research process more systematic and efficient compared to previous studies. The four-staged bibliometric analysis method proposed in this research is equipped with a records screening stage, in which we proposed a three-stepped screening method, that solved the problem of large file sorting. Through the three-stepped screening method proposed in this research, it was possible to finally determine the document records highly related to the research topic from tens of thousands of records within a short period of time.

The bibliometric analysis - review results show that a total of 47 methods including system dynamics, cloud model, set pair analysis, neural network and ecological footprint have been introduced into the evaluation process of WRCC. Through keyword co-occurrence analysis, we found that building various kinds of models and adopting system dynamics methods are the mainstream methods in the research of WRCC. We also found that China is the only country that appears in the keywords co-occurrence analysis chart, which shows that China is the main country in the study of WRCC. Through time series analysis of keywords, we found that the research on WRCC originated from scholars’attention to population carrying capacity, groundwater resources, urbanization, water shortage and risk assessment. From the perspective of research objects, previous studies have focused more on some provinces and cities. In recent years, more and more scholars have begun to study the WRCC of some typical regions, such as arid and semi-arid regions, urbanized areas and water-deficient regions. Based on the research status, the amount of published literature over time, the analysis of the time when the method was first adopted, and our knowledge in this area, this study divided the development process of WRCC into the concept formation stage, qualitative analysis stage, method exploration stage, method development stage and all-round development stage.

Author contributions

XY contributed to conception and design of the study. FL organized the database. YQ performed the statistical analysis. BS, XY wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors contributed to manuscript revision, read, and approved the submitted version.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the National Key Research And Development Program funded project 2021YFC3000203, and the Ministry of Water Resources' flood and drought disaster prevention strategy research talent innovation team project WH0145B042021.We also would like to extend special thanks to the editor and the reviewers for their insightful comments and constructive suggestions.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2022.970582/full#supplementary-material

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Keywords: water resources carrying capacity, screening method, bibliometric analysis, water carrying state, VOSviewer

Citation: Yang X, Sun B, Lei S, Li F and Qu Y (2022) A bibliometric analysis and review of water resources carrying capacity using rené descartes’s discourse theory. Front. Earth Sci. 10:970582. doi: 10.3389/feart.2022.970582

Received: 16 June 2022; Accepted: 25 July 2022; Published: 25 August 2022.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2022 Yang, Sun, Lei, Li and Qu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Boyang Sun, [email protected]

This article is part of the Research Topic

Water and Ecological System: Response, Management, and Restoration

Risk assessment of deep-sea floating offshore wind power projects based on hesitant fuzzy linguistic term set considering trust relationship among experts

• Published: 02 April 2024
• Volume 196 , article number  405 , ( 2024 )

Cite this article

• Qinghua Mao 1 ,
• Yaqing Gao 1 ,
• Jiacheng Fan 1 ,
• Mengxin Guo 1 &
• Jinjin Chen 1  

The development of deep-sea floating offshore wind power (FOWP) is the key to fully utilizing water resources to enhance wind resources in the years ahead, and then the project is still in its initial stage, and identifying risks is a crucial step before promoting a significant undertaking. This paper proposes a framework for identifying risks in deep-sea FOWP projects. First, this paper identifies 16 risk criteria and divides them into 5 groups to establish a criteria system. Second, hesitant fuzzy linguistic term set (HFLTS) and triangular fuzzy number (TFN) are utilized to gather and describe the criterion data to ensure the robustness and completeness of the criterion data. Third, extending the method for removal effects of criteria (MEREC) to the HFLTS environment through the conversion of TFNs, under the influence of subjective preference and objective fairness, a weighting method combining analytic network process (ANP) and MEREC is utilized to calculate criteria weights, and the trust relationship and consistency between experts are used to calculate the expert weights to avoid the subjective weighting given by experts arbitrariness. Fourth, the study’s findings indicated that the overall risk level of the deep-sea FOWP projects is “medium.” Fifth, sensitivity and comparative analyses were conducted to test the reliability of the assessment outcomes. lastly, this research proposes risk management measures for the deep-sea FOWP project’s establishment from economic, policy, technology, environment, and management aspects.

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Abbreviations

Analytic hierarchy process

Analytic network process

Block-wise rating the attribute weights

Decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory

Elimination and choice translating reality III

Fuzzy induced ordered weighted harmonic averaging

Floating offshore wind farms

Floating offshore wind power

Floating offshore wind turbine

Fuzzy synthetic evaluation

Global Wind Energy Council

• Hesitant fuzzy linguistic term set

Multi-criteria decision-making

• Method for removal effects of criteria

Offshore photovoltaic power generation

Ordered weighted average

Probabilistic linguistic ordered average Choquet integral

Photovoltaic poverty alleviation project

Reference ranking organization methods for enrichment evaluations

Social networks

Trust function

Triangular fuzzy number

Trust function values

Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution

Trusted third partners

Visekriterijumska Optimizacija i Kompromisno Resenje

Wave-wind-solar-compressed air energy storage

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Thanks is given to my tutor for the guidance of this paper, which greatly improved the quality of the article. Thank you for providing this academic platform for me to submit my manuscript.

This work was supported by Qinhuangdao social science development research project (2022LX024).

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Qinghua Mao, Yaqing Gao, Jiacheng Fan, Mengxin Guo & Jinjin Chen

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Data collection and conceptualization were performed by Qinghua Mao. Data analysis was performed by Yaqing Gao. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Yaqing Gao. Jiacheng Fan supervised the research. Mengxin Guo and Jinjin Chen checked the overall manuscript. All authors approved the final manuscript.

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Mao, Q., Gao, Y., Fan, J. et al. Risk assessment of deep-sea floating offshore wind power projects based on hesitant fuzzy linguistic term set considering trust relationship among experts. Environ Monit Assess 196 , 405 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-024-12582-6

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-024-12582-6

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