Sustainable Development and Water Security: Towards Achieving a Water-secure World

Water is an integral part of our daily lives, yet most of us have little idea about how much water we use to maintain our lifestyles and the extent to which our lifestyles pollute and degrade water resources. The increasing occurrence of floods, droughts and water pollution incidents are reminders of our vulnerability in relation to water. Estimates suggest that global water demand could outstrip supply by the middle of the century if we continue with the current “business as usual” approach to water management.


Melvyn Kay and Olcay Ünver use Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 as a framework to explore the concept of sustainable water resources management and how to improve water security. They provide a synthesis of water resources planning and management issues across all water-using sectors to dispel misunderstandings and myths and enable informed approaches to decision-making. In so doing, they offer an in-depth critical review of SDG6, including what it does and does not do. Case studies from around the world are used throughout the book to illustrate the key issues of water (in)security.

Melvyn Kay is a chartered civil engineer with over 40 years of international experience in water resources, particularly agricultural water management and irrigation. He is now Director of RTCS Ltd. He edited UN-Water’s Sustainable Development Goal 6: Synthesis Report 2018 on Water and Sanitation and is currently chief editor of the UN FAO flagship publication on The State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture. He is also the author of the textbook Practical Hydraulics and Water Resources Engineering (3rd edition).

Olcay Ünver 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.