Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) Sustainability Report

There have been a number of IWRM initiatives executed in the Caribbean in recent times. Although many of these initiatives had built-in monitoring systems and specific outputs addressing lessons learnt, few studies have attempted to document the sustainability and long-term impact of these initiatives. Moreover, challenges in replicating and upscaling the initiatives in new locations and other countries have not been captured. This report fills this information gap providing an analysis of the sustainability of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) initiatives in the Caribbean.

The report builds on a Global Water Partnership-Caribbean (GWP-C) WACDEP database of 40 IWRM initiatives focussing on water security and climate change. The sustainability study is an in-depth review of a subset of these initiatives examining impacts, challenges, successes and lessons for the replication and upscaling of the initiatives.

The report examines initiatives which address inter alia, IWRM policy and governance; integrated watershed and coastal areas management; water security; water pollution; wastewater management; hydrological and meteorological data and climate resilience in the water sector. Both the database and study were carried out using literature review, questionnaires and interviews with IWRM project staff and beneficiaries.