Governance, Institutions and Water Metabolism: Developing an Operational Framework for the Caribbean

The need to understand the ways in which governance and institutional arrangements impact the stocks, inflows, outflows, distributional aspects of water (including water related disasters) was first identified at the 2015 International Association for the Study of Commons (IASC) in Edmonton. It was proposed that an effective framework and indicators that can help monitor such relationships and their outcomes should be prioritized. Against this backdrop, the primary goal of this project is to address this particular need by initiating work on a conceptually and practically oriented framework to better understand the possible linkages between water metabolism and water governance to ensure sustainable stock and flow of water resources within a given social-ecological context. This approach is innovative insofar that it addresses water issues from a stock and flow perspective using industrial ecology tools. The proposed framework on ‘water metabolism’ and its management will be designed to include feedback loops with other critical resources as food and energy in the context of small island states, using Caribbean as a case.

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