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History of water use, evolution of water management paradigm, and associated aspects are well documented in Hassan (2011), and context of increasing realization of water’s role in the overall development process in Biswas (1983). Here we synthesize the evolution from the lens of water as a political and governance issue.

Table 1.1 Selected global initiatives in the areas of environment, water and climate.

S.N	Year	Name of the Initiative	Description
1.	2016	The New Urban Agenda	It was adopted at the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) in Quito, Ecuador, on 20 October 2016. It was endorsed by the UN General Assembly at its 68th plenary meeting of the 71st session on 23 December 2016. It represents a shared vision for a better and more sustainable future.
2.	2015	Paris Climate Agreement (PCA)	A global agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) dealing with greenhouse gas emissions mitigation, adaptation and finance starting from 2020. It was adopted by consensus by 195 state parties on 12 December 2015 at the 21st Conference of Parties of the UNFCCC in Paris. This agreement went into effect from 4 November 2016. It is the post‐Kyoto Protocol measures for curbing greenhouse gas emission.
3.	2015	Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)	The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all UN Member States through UN Sustainable Development Summit held in September 2015, provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and planet, now and into the future. There are 17 SDGs, which are an urgent call for action by all countries in a global partnership.
4.	2015	Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR)	The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR) 2015‐2030 was adopted at the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Sendai Japan in 2015. It includes seven targets and four priorities for action to reduce the occurrence and impact of disasters resulting from natural hazards. Among those priorities, the Sendai Framework calls for the strengthening and implementation of global mechanisms on hydro‐meteorological issues.
5.	2005	Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA)	The World Conference on Disaster Reduction in 2005, 168 states adopted the first global framework for DRR. The core of the Hyogo Framework Action 2005‐2015 consists of three strategic goals, a number of guiding principles, five priorities for action, and considerations for implementation and follow up.
6.	2000	Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)	The MDGs are eight goals with measureable targets and clear deadlines for improving the lives of the world’s poorest people, agreed by leaders of 189 countries in the form of millennium declaration at the UN Millennium Summit in 2000.
7.	1997	Kyoto Protocol	Signed in 1997 and came into effect from 2005 commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions based on the premise that global warming exists, and that human‐made CO2 has caused it. This is a first of its kind agreement which has currently 192 parties to it, which divides the countries in Annexed and non‐Annexed countries thus distinguishing between the developing and developed world in combating climate change
8.	1996	United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)	Signed in 1996 and came into effect in 1996, it is a convention to combat desertification and mitigate the effects of drought through national action programs that incorporate long term strategies supported by international cooperation and partnership agreements.
9.	1993	Convention on Biological Diversity	It is a multilateral treaty with three main goals – conservation of biological diversity, sustainable use of its components, fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from genetic resources. Its objective is to develop national strategies for conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity. It is a key document regarding sustainable development. It was drafted on 22 May 1992, signed during 5 June 1992 to 4 June 1993, and became effective from 29 December, 1993. It has been ratified by 30 States.
10.	1992	United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)	The first UN Conference on Environment and Development (or Rio Conference or Earth Summit) was held in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, which succeeded in raising public awareness of the need to integrate environment and development. UNFCCC was an outcome of the conference, which is a climate change agreement that led to the Kyoto Protocol, Agenda 21, the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification.
11.	1992	Agenda 21 with a focus on Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM)	Among the major international water management events, 1992 UN conference on environment and development (UNCED) held at Rio de Janeiro stands out as an event of outstanding importance. UNCED covered a very broad range of development issues and from a water resources perspective was informed by the International Conference on Water and Environment with its highly influential “Dublin Principles. UNCED produced “Agenda 21”, which in section 2 of Chapter 18 mentioned about integrated water resources management (IWRM).
12.	1988	Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)	Is a scientific and intergovernmental body under the auspices of United Nations dedicated to the task of providing the world with an objective, scientific view of climate change and its political and economic impacts. It provides scientific, technical and socio‐economic information relevant to understanding of risk of human induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.
13.	1987	Montreal Protocol	Montreal Protocol on substance that deplete the Ozone layer in an international treaty designed to protect the ozone layer by phasing out the production of numerous substances that are responsible for ozone depletion for example chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that are present in our air‐conditioners and refrigerators. It was agreed on 16 September 1987 and entered into force on 1 January, 1989.
14	1977	Mar del Plata Action Plan	The UN Conference on Water was held in Mar del Plata, Argentina in 1977. The conference approved the Mar del Plata Action Plan, which was the first internationally coordinated approach to IWRM. It discussed assessment of water use and efficiency; natural hazards, environment, health and pollution control; policy, planning and management; public information, education, training and research; and regional and international cooperation (Biswas, 2004). The conference considered water management on a holistic and comprehensive basis, an approach recognized as one of the key IWRM issues in the 1960s. The conference was a major milestone in the history of water resources development for the twentieth century.
15	1972	United Nations Conference on the Human Environment and Stockholm Declaration	Also known as the Stockholm Conference, it was the UN's first major conference on international environmental issues. Along with the declaring 26 principles concerning the environment and development (Stockholm Declaration), it marks a turning point in the development of international environmental politics, including establishment of UN Environmental Programs (UNEP, currently renamed as UN‐Environment).

Table 1.2 Sustainability challenges across multiple sectors or issues interlinked with water security.

Source: Modified from UN‐Water (2019b).

Interlinkages	Facts underlying challenges to sustainable development
Climate change	More than 2 billion people live in countries experiencing high water stress. By 2030, water scarcity in some arid and semi‐arid places will displace between 24 million and 700 million people due to climate change.
Disaster	About 90% of all natural disasters are water‐related. Over the period 1995–2015, floods affected 2.3 billion people, killing 157,000 and causing US$662 billion in damage
Ecosystem	Ecosystems across the world, particularly wetlands, are in decline in terms of the services they provide
Energy	Roughly 75% of all industrial water withdrawals are used for energy production, while 90% of global power generation is water‐intensive.
Food	Agriculture (including irrigation, livestock and aquaculture) is by far the largest water consumer, accounting for 69% of annual water withdrawals globally.
Education	Lack of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) at home and school directly impact education due to multitude of factors such as inability to attend school due to time lost for fetching water or sickness from water borne disease and school dropout of girls
Gender	Women and girls are responsible for water collection in 8 out of 10 households with water off premises.
Health	Some 297 000 children under five who die annually from diarrheal diseases due to poor WASH. About 44 million pregnant women have sanitation‐related hookworm infections. Loss of productivity to water‐ and sanitation‐related diseases costs many countries up to 5% of gross domestic product (GDP).
Human right	Lack of access to safe, sufficient and affordable WASH facilities has a devastating effect on the health, dignity, prosperity, and for the realization of other human rights of billions of people.
Urbanization	In 2017, more than half of the global population live in towns and cities. By 2050, that proportion is expected to rise to two‐thirds. Filling a resource and infrastructure gap for supplying water, sewer and wastewater management facilities is challenging for creating sustainable cities.

Water management on both local and regional levels has undergone a series of historical transformation in the form of invention and widespread use of irrigation and drainage methods, water‐lifting devices, long‐distance water transport technologies, and storage facilities (Hassan 2011). From the start of early artificial irrigation in Egypt some 7000 years ago, water use and management has stepped‐up through different ages such as “water‐lifting technology (400 to 2200 years ago)”, “water industry”, “water science and modernity”, and “water management (from the middle of the 20th century onwards)” (Hassan 2011). After the start of modern industrialization in the 1800s, world population increased rapidly, urbanization started to take momentum, and a new set of services to cater for the changing world created a new demand for water in addition to allocation for agriculture. With the increasing use of water for various uses, the international scientific community together with governments realized water resources as one of the primary limiting factors for harmonious socio–economic developments in many regions of the world (Makarigakis and Jimenez‐Cisneros 2019). Realizing the need of internationally coordinated cooperation mechanisms to solve the water problems, 1965‐1974 was declared as the International Hydrological Decade (IHD), which gave birth of UNESCO’s International Hydrological Program (IHP) in 1971 to focus on research and capacity building in hydrological sciences in true sense.

The role of water in the overall development process became increasingly evident from the 1970s after the occurrence of several droughts and floods in many parts of the world during the early 1970s contributed to a major food crisis. As a result, at the World Food Conference held in Rome in 1974, water resources management emerged as a key for furthering horizontal expansion of agriculture as well as increasing productivity from existing cultivated lands (Biswas 1983). In subsequent years, in addition to agriculture, water also started to contribute as a source of energy with the development of hydropower being increasingly considered as a viable source of additional energy in the context of steady increase fossil fuels price. Water also got attention in industrial sector after the Lima Declaration of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization in 1977 recommended to have 25% of global industrial production in developing countries by the year 2000, which implied the need for more water for further industrial development. Works of the United National Environmental Programme (UNEP) and others around the same time further highlighted pollution of water bodies (i.e. inland, coastal, and the oceans), which helped to attract international concerns on the need to focus on water management in a holistic way. In these contexts, UN Water Conference held Mar del Plata, Argentina in 1977 approved the Mar del Plata Action Plan, which was the first internationally coordinated approach to IWRM. It outlined various aspects related to assessment, use, and the management of water resources (Table 1.1). The conference considered water management on a holistic and comprehensive basis, an approach recognized as one of the key IWRM issues in the 1960s. The conference was a major milestone in the history of water resources development for the 20th century. In 1980, the UN General Assembly declared 1981‐1990 as the International Drinking Water and Sanitation Decade to enhance access to those who are unreached.

After a decade, in 1992, UN International Conference on Water and the Environment was organized in Dublin and the Conference on Environment and Development (i.e. “The Earth Summit”) in Rio de Janerio, Brazil. The Earth Summit in the presence of around 100 heads of state addressed the urgent problems of water, the environment, and socio‐economic development by signing the Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and endorsing the Rio Declaration by adopting “Agenda 21”, a plan for achieving sustainable development in the 20th century. The Section‐2 on the Chapter 18 of the “Agenda 21” mentions about IWRM. Furthermore, in response to increasing concern from the global community about world water issues, the World Water Council (WWC) was established in 1996 by renowned water specialists and international organizations.

The “age of water management” is in a sense about the management of differences in scale (community, region, nation, transboundary, and global), differences among uses (domestic, agriculture, industry, and ecosystems), and differences that have risen because of lack of harmonization among experts drawn from different disciplines to resolve water issues (Hassan 2011). Various contrasting paradigms have emerged over that time in the use and management of water, as depicted in Figure 1.1, each having their own methodology, technology, and reasoning. Further to Hassan (2011)’s illustration of paradigms, sustainability paradigm is in place since 2015 and global financial system has been further expanded to “globalized system” with aid of further dimensions. Furthermore, water has raised its profile as a key political and governance agenda over the years. Though hydro‐politics was in place since quite some time, primarily among the riparian countries of the shared aquifers and watershed, with increasing import/export of water with trade in the form of “virtual water” (Alan, 1998) by keeping the footprint of commodity somewhere else (Chapagain and Hoekstra 2004; Hoekstra and Chapagain 2007), it has become more clearly visible in recent time expanding its scope from riparian countries to across the globe. Major changes in water governance is underway since the 1990s. Water has been a key component of UN as well, and UN‐Water publishes a global report titled “The United Nations World Water Development Report (WWDR)” every year, through coordinated efforts of 26 UN agencies, providing an authoritative, comprehensive assessment of the world’s freshwater resources.

From accumulated knowledge and information so far, it is convincing that water resources are under pressure from competing uses and climate change and governance is a key challenge in achieving the long‐term sustainability of this valuable natural resources (Özerol et al. 2018). Climate change, which manifests through water, exacerbates the pressure on water thereby further complicating resource governance (IPCC 2014). Water, in direct or implied way, has been increasing evident as a core in global commitments such as MDGs, SDGs, climate agreements, and international trades. Water challenges become the center of discussion in most international forums/platforms. Some of the global water challenges of this time, which are expected to continue in future, are growing water demand and water scarcity; water pollution; insufficient access to safe and affordable water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH); increasing risk to freshwater ecosystems; climate change impacts on water; water governance; and water cooperation and conflicts in the shared aquifers and river basins. Water solutions in the form of understanding water availability, enhancing access with reliability, reducing losses, improving WASH, and managing the water resources are advancing over the years along with advancement in science and technology. The solutions, however, are context‐specific and there are no silver bullet solutions. As water is the multi‐facet issue, stakeholders from multiple disciplines need to work together to harness benefit from the water in the most optimal way but at the same time without compromising sustainability of resources.