Sustainable Development and Water Security

Melvyn Kay has over 40 years' international experience in water resources, particularly agricultural water management and irrigation. His early career with consulting engineers in the Middle East and Africa was followed by 25 years with Cranfield University (Silsoe College). He edited UN-Water’s Sustainable Development Goal 6: Synthesis Report 2018 on Water and Sanitation and was chief editor of UN FAO’s flagship report The State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture 2021. He also authored Practical Hydraulics and Water Resources Engineering (3rd edition). Olcay Unver is Professor of Practice on the Environmental and Resource Management Program at Arizona State University and a member of Water Policy Group and Industry Fellow at Australian Rivers Institute. In his public service career spanning three decades, he led FAO’s water programs and activities, UN-Water’s World Water Assessment Programme, and UNESCO’s Program Office on Global Water Assessment and served as Vice-Chair of UN-Water.

1. Water, water…

1.1 Water security: balancing supply and demand

1.2 Different people, different views and priorities

1.3 Does water have value?

1.4 About Covid

1.5 This book…



2. Understanding water better and working together

2.1 The hydrologist's story

2.2 The water resource planner's story

2.3 The river engineer's story

2.4 The freshwater ecologist’s story

2.5 The water engineer’s story

2.6 The irrigation engineer’s story

2.7 The farmer’s story

2.8 The energy engineer’s story

2.9 Working together

2.10 Need for a common language



3. An anatomy of SDG 6

3.1 Data are vital

3.2 The value of indicators

3.3 Water, sanitation and health targets

3.4 Target 6.3: Water quality and wastewater

3.5 Target 6.4: WUE and scarcity

3.6 Target 6.5: Integrated water resources management

3.7 Target 6.6: Freshwater ecosystems

3.8 Targets 6.a and 6.b: Means of implementation



4. Responding to the challenges

4.1 Governance

4.2 Integrated water resources management

4.3 Eliminating inequalities

4.4 Embracing innovative technologies and management

4.5 Increasing spending

4.6 Increasing capacity

4.7 More data needed

4.8 Science into policy and practice



5. Thinking beyond SDG 6: links with other SDGs

5.1 Water and society

5.2 Water and the economy

5.3 Water and the environment



6. Our final word