Mainstreaming integrated approaches to sustain lake and reservoir basin benefits in a changing climate

Water resources are essential for the survival and development of life on our planet. They are crucial for economic growth, and their management can lead to conflicts between different uses such as food, energy, livelihoods, biological diversity, and drinking water. The tension between water development and water resource management reflects economic growth and an unequal distribution of economic power. Failures in multisector governance exacerbate this tension and contribute to the degradation and depletion of water resources, resulting in conflicts and shortages. The loss of benefits from lakes and reservoirs is also accelerating due to multiple global changes, especially a warming climate. While policies focusing on isolated single-sector projects have historically led to lake and reservoir degradation, more extreme climatic events and population growth now compound and accelerate the deterioration. The evolution of water policy and resource governance institutions toward integrated approaches has to be continuously updated to counter the dynamic set of adverse impacts. With water resource management responsibilities residing in multiple ministries and authorities at different governance levels, institutional inertia and power imbalances hold back these reforms.

This paper builds on a companion article that describes the importance of lakes and reservoirs for water, food, energy security, and climate resilience. While the previous paper (Hirji & Duda, 2025) covers the threats to lakes and reservoirs, we delve more deeply into the institutional barriers that hinder progress toward integrated, cross-sectoral approaches urgently needed for lake and reservoir basins. We examine solutions demonstrated to address the barriers to action in land, water, and environmental policies and practices that have been utilized in the past but seemingly forgotten by newer generations of practitioners. Most importantly, the paper identifies recent global institutional developments for their potential to provide new impetus across sectors for integrated action to sustain the planet's critical lake and reservoir assets.

The accompanying article (Hirji & Duda, 2025) underscores the importance of lakes and reservoirs for supporting human civilizations with water, food, energy, drought, flood control, climate resilience, navigation options, and recreational, cultural, and religious values. It discusses the rapid deterioration and loss of benefits in lake and reservoir basins with a review of recent initiatives and investigations. It highlights multiple causes of why lakes and reservoirs are undervalued and neglected, ranging from various water and environmental policy failures, multiple sector stresses, and multiple responsible management ministries and authorities to lack of financing, institutional inertia, and powerful sector interests. The article emphasizes the importance of overcoming barriers to sustainability. Lakes and reservoirs have unique management needs and are highly vulnerable, yet water-related institutions often treat them like rivers, resulting in the loss of benefits due to unrecognized vulnerabilities. Multiple stresses, such as over-abstraction of water for irrigation and urban supply, excessive pollution, sedimentation from poor land-use practices, overfishing, and the impact of climate change, contribute to the degradation of these water bodies and the reduction of community uses.

Small impoundments for water supplies are particularly sensitive. However, with their management considered local responsibilities, those institutions require additional authority, capacity, and funding. Hirji & Duda (2025) also identify the increasing loss of lake and reservoir benefits in high-income countries and the Global South. Many countries, due to limited budgets, cannot afford to lose the benefits of lakes and reservoirs or to restore and replace them. Many reservoirs are aging, and their dams urgently need maintenance. Quite a few of these existing dams were controversial. Operation of these dams must be altered to sustain multiple downstream uses, and society must value their reservoirs as vital societal assets. These assets can be critical for minimizing the impact of floods and droughts, and many dams/reservoirs provide potential through adjusted rule curves for operations to further mitigate damage from extreme weather events.

The previous article also outlines past analyses by the World Bank and other organizations that focused on water and environmental policy and practice failures and the need for improved governance of these sensitive resources that store nearly 90% of the Earth's available surface water. Also described are the results of an integrated, multiagency global partnership led by the World Bank known as the Lake Basin Management Initiative. The collaborative program from 20 years ago involved a comprehensive review and synthesis of 28 case studies on managing global lakes, reservoirs, and their basins, both national and transboundary cases. Nineteen types of problems with four broad origins were identified, and critical elements for collaborative best practice strategies at a basin level were highlighted and referred to as integrated lake basin management (ILBM). This underscores the importance of working together for the common good.

In addition to long-standing policy failures, rapid global changes in the last half-century, such as population growth, increased water, food, and energy needs, pollution, agricultural land degradation, urban development, and single-sector water decision-making, have resulted in interconnected global crises. The interconnected crises already exist and are becoming overwhelming due to extreme precipitation events associated with the warming climate. The companion paper emphasizes the urgent need for reforms in ILBM to protect the viability of existing reservoir and lake assets. These reforms, which require upstream collaboration, partnerships, and community participation in cross-sector governance, both horizontally and vertically within countries, should become a critical priority for reducing poverty and avoiding civil unrest. The article concludes with recommendations to scale up best practices and awaken from the collective amnesia hindering the sustainability of precious lake and reservoir benefits.

Institutional change has been necessary for decades to address water-related degradation and conflicts. Still, the evolution of policy, legal frameworks, and practical implementation has yet to catch up. Thousands of analyses, papers, and research have produced potential solutions over the last four to five decades. Among them is the need to adopt integrated approaches such as integrated water resources management (IWRM), elimination of water-wasting energy, water, and agricultural subsidies, and proper economic valuations of water and nature, as Dasgupta (2021) argued. Notably, the Global Commission on the Economics of Water (2023) has presented analyses advocating transformational, theoretical, and controversial changes globally based on the valuation of all water uses associated with the global water cycle.

The historically controversial concept of IWRM was coined to balance competing water uses in basins and aquifer systems as well as water development and water management institutions. It has not been easy to operationalize in specific places, especially when accounting for environmental and ecosystem considerations and when stakeholder participation is not actively involved in the decision-making. Lundqvist et al. (1985), Mitchell (1990), and Duda & El Ashry (2000) have argued for the integrated, cross-disciplinary approaches to land and water management that are necessary to overcome fragmented institutions.

The economic and financial power dynamics between water development and water management/environmental institutions help to understand the challenges. The failure to achieve integrated management is often due to the strength represented by large budget allocations of national development sector ministries and institutional bottlenecks (de Jong et al., 1994). Deyle (1995) lamented the lack of funding and national interorganizational rivalries that hinder integrated approaches. White (1998) famously expressed disappointment at his unsuccessful 50-year international search for IWRM. Biswas (2008) was especially critical of IWRM. He pointed to very few examples of partial applications hindered by the complexity of water resources. More recently, reformulated IWRM approaches might have evolved into ‘NEXUS approaches’ (Golam & Bikash, 2016), but they still advocate place-based, cross-sector integration (Weitz et al., 2017).

IWRM originally described a top-down approach that seems to have led to IWRM fatigue. More basin-specific bottom-up approaches to integrated land and water resources management with stakeholder participation in conjunction with cross-sectoral collaboration and partnerships from ministries in the capitals have been missing. Developing partnerships and collaborating across sectors with top-down and bottom-up governance levels in specific basins is complex and challenging. It takes time and institutional evolution fostered by partnerships in capitals to surmount the ‘institutional inertia’ related to needed reforms.

United Nations water-related conferences and UN General Assembly proclamations have encouraged the adoption of IWRM. UN support for IWRM began in 1977 at the UN Water Conference at Mar del Plata, Uruguay. With little progress over the years, the UN advanced partial attempts to advocate for IWRM through aspirational IWRM-related subtargets in:

• 1. Chapter 18 of Agenda 21 in 1992.

• 2. The UN General Assembly adopted the Millennium Development Goals in 2000.

• 3. The UN General Assembly adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 to achieve them by 2030.

The UN added a non-binding target (target 6.5 for adopting IWRM) to the SDGs, with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) assigned to coordinate reporting by UN-Water. In its most recent report on the 2030 IWRM target, UNEP (2021) indicated that many nations had yet to progress, with the following report due in late 2024.

Institutional inertia poses a barrier to adopting integrated reforms to balance competing uses of land and water resources basin by basin. These reforms are critical to sustaining lake and reservoir uses. Institutional inertia helps us understand why institutions ignore, adapt, modify, maintain, and abandon new ideas. Institutional inertia hinders, obstructs, and prevents organizational adaptation and routinization of newly implemented practices and structures immediately and in the long run. The long-lasting impact of institutional inertia can help to explain why: (a) fundamental organizational change is infrequent, (b) many organizations fail to change, (c) fundamental change is not enough to overcome inertia, and (d) organizations have problems adapting new ideas and eventually abandon or ignore them (Aksom, 2022).

At least four general categories of barriers at different governance levels impede the adoption of integrated approaches to lake and reservoir basins.

No global convention exists to reflect the global water crisis due to the political importance of water. Global conventions represent a way for countries to address global issues collectively with grant funding transferred to low- and middle-income countries. Unfortunately, these legal agreements seem to continue the fragmented silo, sector-by-sector approach because they are difficult to negotiate between the Global South and the North. Climate change, land degradation, and biological diversity issues have global conventions with legal frameworks, but they have perpetuated silos and fostered bureaucracies. Water does not have such a global legal framework. Limited cooperation was evident during the first decade of implementation of the three global conventions (Duda, 2003). As a result, specific earmarked national ministries could interpret that this dedicated funding was for them alone, and involvement of water resource ministries seemed rare.

At the global level, international organizations have vested governing councils with natural rivalries, funding constraints, legal frameworks, and difficulties in pooling resources for collaboration and developing partnerships. While there is a coordinating body among UN organizations known as UN-Water, collaboration often requires an external funding source beyond meetings, conferences, and required duties in reporting to the United Nations. The UN organizations that can address water resources still represent sector approaches.

Likewise, international organizations such as the World Bank, regional development banks, and NGOs often continue their thematic, sector, or practice operations with limited or marginal integration across themes, sectors, or practices. One way to address the tension between water development and environmental management is by mainstreaming or internalizing the ecological water needs and downstream uses into water development policies, plans, programs, and projects at all governance levels, with Hirji & Davis (2009a, 2009b) as examples of such mainstreaming efforts. Within international organizations, the role of UNEP as a normative agency is to push and advocate for this internalization. It becomes possible when more funding is available to implement this responsibility from the international level down to national ministries facing the same issues. UNEP's minimal budget is a disadvantage against the more powerful and highly funded water development agencies such as multilateral development banks (MDBs) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Indeed, FAO has a critical mission to mainstream sustainable land management policies and practices where it has a presence. There must be more than environmental impact assessments and safeguard policies to influence decision-making. As noted later in this paper, new global institutional developments provide opportunities to trigger policy changes to address these barriers.

Cooperation among nations regarding economic trading blocks and transboundary rivers, lakes, and aquifers is an essential international opportunity that could drive national reforms. Over 50% of the planet's surface is in cross-border basins, with almost half the population. Regional trading blocks of cooperating nations can provide opportunities to harmonize national legislation to reduce competitive advantages. The European Union and the North American Free Trade Agreement represent opportunities to introduce sustainable water resources management. Some 260 transboundary water agreements exist among countries. Opportunities to overcome barriers to sustainable water resources management could be catalyzed by amendments or adopting protocols for integrated approaches. Even the one global convention on transboundary waters, entitled the 1997 Convention on the Law of the Non-navigational Uses of International Watercourses, focuses mostly on the waterway rather than integrated approaches.

There is difficulty achieving collaboration and partnerships among engineers, biologists, agronomists, and hydrologists when each is trained in and speaks a specific disciplinary language and congregates in different worlds like professional societies. For university researchers, promotions and tenure have rewarded excellence within disciplines rather than cross-departmental collaboration. In the last decades, cross-disciplinary programs have started to overcome academic barriers to improve interdisciplinary capacity. New tools are also available to foster integrated land and water management through remote sensing and computational advancements, but site-specific analysis of land and water remains a complex undertaking. Hydrologic uncertainties and lack of information continue to create barriers that provide easy excuses for decision-makers to avoid changing the status quo.

It is just human nature to defend existing approaches and to utilize hard-earned training, knowledge, and experience. However, history has shown that clinging to the past can hinder progress. Historically, national water policy and legislation have focused on rivers. Once policy or legislation is adopted, human nature takes over, and opponents of revised policy or legislation may attempt to block updated policy or laws. Additionally, political considerations have become so important in the 21st century that they may override the desire of leaders to institute reforms. It seems leaders have forgotten the ‘Precautionary Principle’ adopted by the world community at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio. The longer leaders stay in power, the more human nature takes over in resisting change. However, reforms are now necessary to address rapid global changes.

Staff changes, relocations, and new staff also represent barriers in organizations. The accompanying article (Hirji & Duda, 2025) outlines a series of efforts by the World Bank to emphasize endangered lakes and reservoirs. Case studies and good practices developed collaboratively with partner agencies are essential. Moreover, using such lessons is critical in ensuring they are not forgotten or ignored. When new staff take over, they often advocate for and promote new concepts and only apply what they learned from their experiences. There appears to be a case of amnesia regarding meaningful experiences from decades ago despite priorities placed back then and good documentation. Knowledge and experience sharing are essential to ensure that the past informs policies, behaviors, and investments. For example, while the World Bank staff certainly learn from the past, newer publications from more recent hires rarely reference the 1993 Water Resources Management Policy promoting comprehensive, integrative approaches or lake basin issues, which were previous priorities.

With the sector-by-sector influence of global organizations, donor funds based on sectors, and interorganizational rivalries, national ministries have also reflected and often continued to work on a sectoral basis as they compete for limited external and national funding. Ministries may have political champions and specific legal frameworks based on old laws. A notable example is the United States, which has a Western water law regime based on the 1800s. As with the case of UNEP in the UN system, national environment ministries seem to have smaller budgets and consequently wield less political power to mainstream downstream uses and the water environment into development ministry programs and projects. Additionally, corruption can result in significant leakage of funding and abuse of laws.

Different cultures varying from place to place within countries, higher salaries in capitals, and political differences also create rivalries in working vertically with lower levels of governance. Regarding civil society and stakeholder participation, some ministries or countries may need to develop the skills mix and desire to work collaboratively. Without stakeholder participation in decisions and proper legal allocation frameworks, tradeoffs between upstream and downstream water users encourage further degradation as project-by-project water allocations worsen downstream conditions. Market failures at the national level can also inhibit legal frameworks for enabling local governments to charge total prices for water services, such as delivery of irrigation water or drinking water supplies.

Environmental uses of water have often taken a back seat to those related to water sector development. While water uses for irrigation, energy, agriculture, water supply, and mining ministries are represented by their respective institutions in water allocation policy or decision-making, environmental and downstream uses usually lack adequate institutional representation in water allocation policy or decision-making. These ministries, industries, and powerful sponsors (and larger budgets) wield more influence than those speaking up for the water environment and downstream communities. Funding for ministries is a problem in most countries, which may refuse to levy sufficient taxes, especially on the elites, and fail to enforce collections.

A product of policies at all three levels, subnational levels experience governance concerns with funding, skills mix, civil society participation, and political interference. Integrated approaches are challenging because collaboration is needed across all sectors and governance levels to sustain multiple water resource uses, and funding seems insufficient to support the extra processes required for basin-specific attention and stakeholder involvement. Additionally, uncertainties with a lack of information and the complexity of water resources with their multiple causes of degradation (now with the changing climate) are daunting for local officials. Trained capacity to address complexities is often absent, even in high-income countries. This capacity is needed to mainstream sustainable land, water, and environmental policies and practices at all governance levels.

The lack of full-cost pricing for urban water services, sewerage services, and irrigation improvements continues to be a significant barrier. Providing free water for irrigation or drinking leads to wastage, excessive withdrawals, and engineered system failure when operational and maintenance costs are inadequate. For floods, droughts, and disasters involving human-induced policy failures, leaders of low-income countries commonly request emergency aid from NGOs and high-income countries. These donor costs have skyrocketed, creating internal political unrest in high-income countries. Reducing these costs through investments in partnerships for sustainable water resources management in specific basins can represent a lower-cost option to mitigate disasters.

The barriers to more sustainable water resource management apply to lakes, reservoirs, rivers, and aquifers. In addressing accelerated lake and reservoir degradation, the flowing water in rivers and aquifer recharge/discharge characteristics are critical to sustainability. Strategies to protect lake and reservoir uses must become a priority until the more transformational, complex, and politically unpopular reforms for properly valuing all water resources finally get addressed. Integrated approaches to better manage upstream land, particularly agriculture, with these downstream assets, must take precedence in the interim. Because many land use decisions are also water use decisions, land and water resources management must be considered collectively within hydrologic units to achieve sustainable economic development goals, especially for lakes and reservoirs. Integrated approaches can address both the conjunctive uses of surface and groundwater and flood control and drought mitigation through multiobjective planning and multipurpose infrastructure. Leadership must address long-standing barriers to needed policy reforms that accelerate institutional evolution toward integrated approaches.

Global efforts to advocate for reforms to fragmented water institutions have been through voluntary partnerships such as the Global Water Partnership, UN General Assembly proclamations, water-related conferences, triennial World Water Forums, NGO promotions, and World Water Day events. The UN has set non-binding targets for the 2012 SDGs, including adopting IWRM. However, the most recent report from 2021 showed only modest progress in this area. At the transboundary basin scale, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) supported the first global assessment of the planet's transboundary rivers, lakes, reservoirs, and aquifers. Known as the Transboundary Waters Assessment Program executed by UNEP, 199 transboundary aquifers, 204 transboundary lakes and reservoirs, and 286 transboundary river basins were assessed to provide a baseline and to stimulate interest in cooperation among countries sharing these systems (ILEC & UNEP, 2016) – this effort aimed to improve awareness, especially for lakes and reservoirs at the transboundary scale.

Global commitment and progress toward integrated approaches are necessary to address water issues in transboundary basins. International organizations, trading blocs, and economic development blocks like the EU have shown leadership.

Cooperation and collective approaches to cross-border water resources are essential for driving national policy, legal and institutional reforms, and securing additional funding to address more integrated approaches. Early examples of catalyzing national reforms in the legal water frameworks of each cooperating basin country include the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909 (as amended) between Canada and the US (Duda & La Roche, 1997) and the Rhine River Basin (Huisman, 1994) and their operating commissions.

The EU Water Framework Directive mandates basin-by-basin ecosystem approaches to manage rivers, lakes, and reservoirs, making it a globally significant initiative (Kallis & Butler, 2001). Unlike some countries that sign limited agreements for navigation or adopt actions for sub-basins within shared systems without integrated approaches for the rest of the country, the EU's Directive applies to all the territories of the 27 states. Lake basins receive special integrated attention under this approach. Additionally, other agreements related to lakes and reservoirs have the potential for amendments or protocols for integrated commitments, such as the 1992 United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes or the Southern Africa Development Community Revised Protocol on Shared Watercourses. However, even though the EU Directive has been instrumental in leading to more sustainable water policies, subsequent reviews have suggested that implementation can be improved (Apostolaki et al., 2019).

International organizations can be crucial in providing global leadership and knowledgeable third-party assistance for reforms. For example, the World Bank recognized in the late 1980s and early 1990s that a lack of integrated approaches and sector-by-sector water development had created various social, economic, and environmental problems. It initiated a year-long process to develop a more comprehensive and sustainable approach to water resources development and management through its first water resources management policy. This reform aligned with Agenda 21, endorsed by 130 country leaders at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. The 1993 Water Resources Management Policy (World Bank, 1993) advocated for comprehensive, more integrated approaches for the Bank's operations worldwide. World Bank teams, including co-authors of this paper, helped develop country-specific water resources strategies for internal bank action, incorporating them through joint discussions with countries into specific country assistance strategies.

The 1993 Policy included elements that prioritized vulnerable lakes and reservoirs (World Bank, 1993; Easter et al., 1995). As a result, various World Bank analyses, case studies, and best practices for sustaining the use of lakes and reservoirs were carried out and shared with the global community. These included analyses by Dinar et al. (1995), Ayres et al. (1997), and Mee (2003), leading to the publications ‘Managing Lakes and Their Basins for Sustainable Use’ (ILEC, 2005) and ‘Lessons for Managing Lakes for Sustainable Uses’ (World Bank, 2005). Many good practice strategies in these knowledge products remain relevant to address contemporary challenges. As in many organizations, past contributions can be marginalized or forgotten, with human resources policies contributing to ignoring, forgetting, or undervaluing older policies and information with re-assignments and new staff.

In conjunction with the upcoming 1992 Earth Summit, the global community established a pilot multi-billion US$ grant instrument in 1991 to serve as a financial implementing mechanism for the three global Multilateral Environmental Legal Agreements (MEAs) arising from the summit. The GEF was initially established as a pilot program within the World Bank in 1991 before it became a permanent international legal instrument in 1994. A GEF Council representing all world countries set policy and adopted a GEF Operational Strategy in 1995, outlining priorities for grant financing eligibility (GEF, 1996). The negotiations and strategy included transboundary water systems as a priority for grant funding in the new GEF International Waters (IW) focal area.

Over the years, GEF grant funding for transboundary water systems has supported various measures undertaken sequentially through multicountry collaboration. Trust and confidence building are necessary for countries sharing a basin as they are among ministries. Joint fact-finding helps the countries work together and gather facts on their transboundary water concerns, the root cause of those concerns in upstream land areas, and setting priorities for action. Establishing and operating national inter-ministerial committees in each participating country to undertake the work and then developing a shared-vision strategic action program of reforms and investments for the priorities were mandatory grant funding conditions to build confidence for internal collaboration within countries and among collaborating countries.

Stakeholder participation in the basins, monitoring and evaluation indicators, reporting measures, and mid-term evaluations were also required to ensure progress and accountability. Establishing targets and projected dates for accomplishing them were also encouraged to spur action. After concluding these enabling activities, countries can access more considerable grant funding to implement measures in needed sectors that each identified for its part of the shared basin.

In the first decades of the GEF, over 100 countries collaborated on managing their shared river, lake, and reservoir water systems (Duda et al., 2012a). Notable country requests successfully funded were for Lakes Malawi/Nyassa, Victoria, Tanganyika, Chad, Edward/Albert, Kivu, Ohrid, Prespa, Shkoder, Baikal, Titicaca, Manzala, and reservoirs included in Senegal, Orange, Volta, Nile, Danube, Drin, Amazon, Parana, Paraguay, Sao Francisco, and Mekong Basins. Grant funding from the GEF has provided significant opportunities for countries to overcome barriers and sustain their lake and reservoir basins through place-based, cross-sectoral, and integrated approaches. Some countries have used this funding for sector reforms and subsequent investments, while others have not pursued integrated reforms. The availability of grant funding to provide incentives for action has been critical, along with the support of independent third-party organizations such as FAO, UNDP, MDBs, and NGOs, which can help address internal barriers.

Land management, water management, social sciences, and environmental professionals must collaborate and concentrate on priority lake and reservoir basins. Working together in a single location may help break down barriers among ministries. The GEF emphasizes the use of national inter-ministerial committees in each participating basin country, which is essential for building trust among ministries and jointly undertaking tasks while collectively representing their countries. The GEF also advocates for the establishment of science advisory committees to mobilize scientific information for its water-related projects. These examples demonstrate how multidisciplinary and inter-ministry collaboration can foster integrated approaches. Additionally, professionals trained in public participation activities are essential for engaging with stakeholders in specific lake and reservoir basins to operationalize integrated land and water resource management.

Developing and sharing knowledge is essential but applying that knowledge to inform policy and decision-making is even more critical for facilitating and scaling change. The GEF IW LEARN program has been a valuable resource for country officials involved in GEF transboundary basin projects. It has provided resources for active South-to-South learning opportunities, training, knowledge development, and experience sharing for GEF IW projects over the last 20 years (GEF IW:LEARN, 2024). Accessible learning opportunities that provide knowledge from previous projects and capacity building in operationalizing that knowledge can help countries overcome institutional inertia in decision-making. To promote integrated approaches, partnerships among organizations are crucial for operationalizing integrated approaches, as highlighted in the 2023 UN World Water Development Report (UNESCO, 2023).

Addressing this barrier involves stimulating national ministries representing sectors and disciplines to collaborate on joint work in a specific place to help build trust among sector staff. Transboundary water concerns and international trade partnerships can be driving forces to unite national ministries and their disciplines. Downstream impacted uses from pollution, water withdrawals, and inappropriate land use activities require integrated, cross-sector reforms and basin-specific investments. Agricultural ministries need to pay special attention to upstream degradation caused by producers and growers. Best practice implementation requires incentives and disincentives for irrigation that might be wasteful, accelerated soil erosion from cropping practices, salty irrigation return flow, pollution from pesticides and fertilizers, and wastes from confined livestock operations.

The North American Great Lakes provide an example of the evolution of Agreements and Protocols overtime under the 1909 treaty between Canada and the US and their implementation with inter-ministry committees. Canada first adopted a committee for collaboration horizontally across national ministries and vertically down to the provincial level to address actions needed to restore the lakes. The US followed, creating an equivalent Federal inter-agency task force to ensure cohesive actions with 10 federal agencies working cooperatively to address the lake concerns within the US portion of the basin through subnational level counterparts to meet US commitments in the Agreement and 1987 Protocol to integrate approaches. The two countries divided the highly complex 5-lake basin system into manageable hydrologic/geographic units of 43 Areas of Concern in their 1987 legal agreement. They defined different reforms and investments in specific sub-basins linking the land, river, and groundwater sources of pollution flowing to those lakes. This breakdown first helped target the integrated approaches to priority areas and involve stakeholders in the 43 sub-basins depending on each specific basin concern (Duda & La Roche, 1997).

The government of Germany has also implemented a cross-ministerial approach to protect the Rhine basin, its lakes, and reservoirs through the National Commission for the Protection of the Rhine. They established a national inter-ministerial committee, the Working Group of Federal States for the Protection of the Rhine, to ensure an integrated approach among the subsidiary Federal states (Iza & Stein, 2009). Australia's Murray Darling Basin Authority is another example of national and subnational cross-ministry action for integrated land and water management (Moore et al., 2020).

Other cases demonstrate reforms promoting integrated approaches for lakes, reservoirs, and river basins. Among them are the Tennessee River basin in the US and the evolving approach for Tanzania basins.

The movement from single-purpose to multipurpose water projects began in the 1930s in the Tennessee River basin, along with others such as the Loire and Ganges. The US Congress established the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in 1933 to address poverty, yellow fever, eroded land, floods, droughts, and lack of electricity. TVA presented a report to Congress entitled ‘Unified Development of the Tennessee River System’ in 1936, outlining an integrated approach to constructing and operating a system of multiple-use reservoirs that included watershed protection with sound land management practices (TVA, 1936). This basin-centric, integrated land–water economic development approach in the 7-state basin was a significant early step toward integrated water and land development. It enabled the construction of about 30 multipurpose reservoirs. To prevent sedimentation, it sustained financial and technical assistance to the seven basin states to implement sound land management practices – especially in agriculture and mining. As climate, population, and water use priorities changed over the years, TVA demonstrated flexibility by adjusting its water management rules for the entire reservoir dam system in the basin. It modified dam release rule curves and implemented water quality improvement measures to better meet the evolving needs of different downstream multiple uses, including water ecosystems, as summarized in TVA (1989).

Tanzania has faced challenges with water management due to arid regions and severe poverty. Development projects funded by international organizations led to conflicts over water use for irrigation, livestock watering, public water supplies, hydropower generation, and wildlife preservation (Lankford, 2004). In the late 1980s and early 1990s, these conflicts became severe, prompting the government to seek assistance from the World Bank.

With the help of the World Bank, Tanzania established a national inter-ministry committee to assess water resources on a basin-by-basin basis and prioritize which conflicts to address first. This Rapid Water Resources Assessment (Msuya, 1994) led to the development of a National Water Policy (2002), the National Water Resources Management Act (2009), the establishment of basin offices, and financing for priority investments to reduce conflicts and meet water needs and securing grant and loan financing for critical priority investments across sectors to reduce the land and water basin conflicts and meet the needs for large lakes such as Victoria and Tanganyika.

Over time, amendments to Tanzania's water laws included fees for water abstraction and pollution discharges, the establishment of basin water offices and Basin Water Boards, and civil society participation in Basin Water Users Associations (USAID, 2019). However, challenges remain, including merging formal and informal institutions (van Koppen et al., 2004), addressing budget limitations, and enforcing legal requirements.

Tanzania is still evolving its land and water resources management institutions, and inadequacies in merging newly established formal institutions with informal, customary ones still need to be addressed (Bulengela 2024). Basin-specific management, user fees for water abstraction and pollution dischargers, and civil society participation should not just be limited to high-income countries. Lower-income countries need to undertake a similar evolution of legal frameworks and institutions with development assistance to manage their lake and reservoir basins effectively. This process takes time, patience, and constructive criticism, but it is essential for conserving basin assets under changing climatic conditions.

It is crucial to have seamless coordination among national ministries and collaboration with their counterparts at regional, basin, and local governance levels. The subnational counterparts of ministries and local communities are responsible for implementing integrated land and water management through civil society. However, relying solely on subnational institutions for integrated approaches is problematic due to funding, legal, and capacity limitations. Legislation can help to define the relationships among administrative levels for place-based action across ministries and lower levels, as seen in the Tanzania case and others, such as the French approach to basin management (French Ministry for the Ecological and Solidary Transition, 2019).

Leadership and political will are essential in the Global North to address subnational governance barriers and overcome inertia caused by powerful interests. In the Global South, countries need assistance with capacity and grant funding to overcome obstacles, like the role played by TVA and the 7-state Tennessee River Valley reservoirs in economic development starting in the 1930s. There is a growing need for more development assistance coherence, collaborative partnerships, and long-term attention among national sectors cooperating horizontally and then working vertically in cooperation with lower administrative levels to focus on crucial lake and reservoir assets and their basins.

The GEF IW focal area responded decades ago to horizontal and vertical governance barriers by simultaneously employing grant financing both top-down and bottom-up approaches in specific, priority sub-basin areas that were transboundary in nature. Every GEF IW water resource project must engage local stakeholders in demonstration projects addressing the top-priority transboundary water or environmental issues identified by the countries in their joint action programs. The role of these local stakeholders is not just important; it is integral to the success of the project. At the same time, GEF supports collaboration at the national level through inter-ministerial committees aimed at building trust and confidence among ministries and countries. These GEF processes operationalize place-based integration through simultaneous top-down and bottom-up institutional interventions and often involve multiple UN agencies and development banks to foster cross-sector collaboration and cooperation through its grant facility and accountability through setting and tracking measurable targets.

The local demonstration projects and needed sector investments, initiated from the bottom up, help national ministry officials collaboratively build capacity with various administrative levels and communities in the basins. Additionally, the interventions enable parliamentarians to recognize the positive impacts of new, cross-sector reforms and local investments, garnering their support. These reforms are not just positive but transformative, bringing hope and optimism for the future. This approach, initially introduced in the GEF IW focal area by Pacific Small Island Developing States and supported by GEF, is referred to as ‘From Community to Cabinet’ (Duda et al., 2012b). Engagement and satisfaction of local stakeholders resulting from the successful implementation of integrated land and water demonstration practices provide essential positive feedback to national ministries and parliamentary representatives. The tangible benefits experienced on the ground from integrated land and water measures can then gain the necessary political support in the capitals, leading to collaborative cross-ministry backing for implementing legal, institutional, and budget reforms to operationalize and scale up new integrated approaches. The establishment of measurable targets and periodic monitoring and evaluation provide powerful drivers complementing this top-down and bottom-up approach.

The global community needs to place a higher value on all uses of water and the ecosystem services it provides to sustain the planet. The current economic system fails to consider the depletion of natural resources, leading to harmful policies. A new economic approach to valuing water and ecosystems is clearly needed. The Global Commission on the Economics of Water (2023) has proposed that significant global change is necessary to value all water uses more fairly. However, potentially endless debates on valuation approaches and opposition from powerful economic interests with unrestricted access to water make it politically controversial and complex to implement the proposed changes. As the debate continues, it is essential for each of us to advocate for urgent, more politically acceptable reforms focused on protecting benefits delivered by the most threatened water bodies.

Recent global institutional developments provide a driving force to accelerate institutional evolution and address ‘institutional amnesia’. Solutions exist to restore and protect lake and reservoir assets, as described by Hirji & Duda (2025). ILBM strategies can help speed up institutional evolution but remain impeded by institutional inertia and powerful interests.

New institutional developments in recent years have taken various forms, including increased attention to water resources at global climate change, land degradation, and biological diversity Conference of the Parties (COPs), critical reforms at the World Bank and regional MDBs, an unprecedented UN Water Conference at the United Nations in 2023, and substantial increases in funding available from the GEF for countries to accelerate reforms and pilot investments related to water resources.

Since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, international MEAs addressing climate change, biological diversity, and land degradation have included commitments for high-income countries and funding for mid- and low-income countries through the GEF, the Adaptation Fund, and the Green Climate Fund (GCF) to help them achieve their goals. Energy ministries have focused on reducing carbon emissions, while environment and forestry ministries have concentrated chiefly on terrestrial biodiversity. Agriculture and forestry ministries have focused on sustainable crop production and reforestation. Despite the essential nature of water resources to each ministry and the severe impact on aquatic biodiversity globally, water has been treated only as an input to activities rather than being managed as a critical resource.

The 2015 Climate Change Convention COP in Paris was crucial in mobilizing additional finance as world leaders adopted the 2015 Paris Agreement (IISD, 2015). With only modest progress on the SDGs, adoption of the Paris Agreement, and increased climatic disasters, recent discussions at climate change COPs have opened the door for more adaptation funding and recognition by all MEAs of the importance of sustaining water resources. IWRM approaches have become a priority for global climate adaptation funds managed by the GEF and others like the GCF, which allows water resources ministries to participate in developing national plans of action for adaptation.

For decades, the World Bank has focused on development activities to end poverty, which has created tension with environmental interests and continued degradation of the water environment. Regional MDBs such as the African, Asian, and Latin American Banks have had similar missions. Countries in the Global South have prioritized lending for essential investments in education, energy, hospitals, roads, food production through irrigation, and drinking water supply. Many carry debt burdens and limits on future lending. Additional loans for reforms toward integrated approaches to water resources have a lower priority.

The rapid global changes disproportionately affect the poor. Thus, the urgency of reforms in international finance to include climate change resilience cannot be overstated. World leaders emphasized this urgency in the 2015 Paris Agreement. Global discussions over existing debt and new priority lending for climate change have led to recent actions by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in 2023. These actions, outlined in ‘Ending Poverty on a Livable Planet: Report to Governors on World Bank Evolution’ (Development Committee, 2023), are a significant step toward a more sustainable future. Reflecting the realities of the rapidly changing climate, the World Bank has now incorporated attacking climate change and water resources issues as part of a new mission: ‘to end poverty on a livable planet’ and regional MDBs follow with similar reforms. While the urgency of this mission is apparent, national reforms are complex, and water resources ministries will need to work with their finance ministries to request assistance that will take time to operationalize.

Like the MDBs with their new missions, the United Nations completed a new system-wide strategy for water and sanitation in 2024 (UN-Water, 2024). The strategy features strengthened leadership, enhanced support to countries, and, most important of all, improved policy coherence, coordination, and integration across UN organizations to meet agreed goals and targets for the benefit of all people and the planet. As noted in the previous GEF IW section, the GEF piloted multiple UN and MDB organizations working together on individual GEF transboundary water projects according to their comparative sector advantages to ensure optimal impact. The collaboration of the UN system with the MDB institutions represents a critical future mode for partnerships to secure a sustainable future.

Like the flurry of World Bank analyses from 20 years ago that emphasized the importance of using integrated approaches to manage lakes, reservoirs, and their basins, The World Bank has recently started collaborating with willing governments to create Country Climate and Development Reports. The World Bank Group has summarized 42 of these reports, providing country-specific analyses to help guide nations in incorporating climate resilience into their development plans (World Bank Group, 2023). In addition, the Bank has developed its grant funding mechanism to address transboundary water systems. These new opportunities for middle- and lower-income countries are rapidly emerging, and it is essential to prioritize the restoration and protection of lake and reservoir assets to sustain their communities and economies.

The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution establishing the ‘Decade of Ecosystem Restoration’ from 2020 to 2030 to accelerate action toward the 2030 targets and improve collaboration and partnerships among UN organizations. In March 2022, the United Nations Environment Assembly further emphasized this by adopting a Resolution (UNEP, 2022) on Sustainable Lake Management, marking the first global resolution from world leaders focusing on lakes. It urges member states and relevant international organizations to emphasize the importance of lakes. It also requests the Executive Director of UNEP to:

• 1. support promoting sustainable lake management at all levels in coordination with conventions;

• 2. facilitate collaboration among member states and specialized agencies; and

• 3. promote the integration and awareness of sustainable lake management in the global agenda.

While the resolution seems based on a narrow science and in-lake perspective, it does request the UNEP Executive Director to support sustainable lake management, facilitate collaboration, and raise awareness of sustainable lake management on the global agenda. Consistent with the ecosystem approach, the UNEP program of support will focus on the basin and not just in-lake measures. The 2023 UN Water Conference also solidified the new emphasis on integrated approaches to water resources (UN-Water, 2023).

While global resolutions are crucial for setting policy, it is important to note that additional funding is necessary to fully realize the opportunities they offer. UN organizations, including UNEP, have historically been underfunded, leading to a need for partnerships with various organizations to undertake their work. For water resources, UNEP has partnered with the Danish Hydrologic Institute (DHI) to establish a lakes portal and offer courses related to lake management. However, operational progress on lake and reservoir basin management requires more finance and key investments, as noted in the 2023 UN World Water Development Report. UNEP, uniquely positioned as one of the three original GEF Implementing Agencies, should be advocating for a special GEF-integrated program on lake and reservoir basins in the next GEF multi-billion US$ replenishment.

The recent GEF replenishment of $3.67 billion for 2022–2026 addresses biodiversity loss, climate change, land degradation, chemicals, and conflicts in transboundary water systems and includes integrated approaches across sectors. GEF grant financing enables mid- and low-income countries to tackle complex challenges and work toward sustainable development. Over the past 30 years, GEF has provided nearly $25 billion in financing and mobilized an additional $138 billion for thousands of priority projects and programs. Specifically, over the years, $2.85 billion has been allocated to its IW area, covering 400 projects in 60 transboundary river basins, 14 transboundary aquifers, and 16 shared lake basins (GEF, 2022a). The current replenishment provides plentiful grant opportunities for lake and reservoir basins. The GEF website (Global Environment Facility, 2024) provides application information and project documents.

As a multilateral family of funding, the GEF serves as the financial mechanism for various global MEAs. GEF takes guidance from the COPs of each MEA to determine its funding priorities. However, this approach has led to a siloed structure among the MEAs, with limited integration in the early years (Duda, 2003). To address this barrier, GEF introduced the concept of integrated approaches across its focal areas over the years to generate multiple benefits (GEF, 2022a). In the 1990s, GEF initially promoted projects focusing on multiple focal areas. Over time, it evolved into supporting integrated approaches among focal areas termed impact programs. These new programs have the potential for countries to obtain finance for integrating land and water management in specific basins to sustain valuable lakes and reservoirs.

Water resources are certainly key subjects for integrated programs. Involving water ministries in developing these special GEF-integrated programs is a new opportunity for countries to pursue. Integrated land/water programs are essential to sustain lakes and reservoirs. There is no reason not to establish a GEF lake and reservoir basin integrated program with partnerships to operationalize reforms for improved integrated management. A recent evaluation of projects across GEF focal areas by the GEF Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) found that water security has yet to be addressed in climate change, land degradation, or biodiversity focal areas (IEO, 2023). The evaluation found that the GEF International Waters area and Climate Change Adaptation Funds successfully address water issues. The GEF management response, approved by the GEF Council, is committed to incorporating water resource scarcity and relevant finance in future GEF Replenishment projects (GEF, 2023).

In addition to its commitment to addressing water scarcity related to its projects, the GEF manages two pilot Adaptation Funds created at the Climate COP in 2001. The GEF has released its strategies for 2022–2026 for the two funds, with IWRM being a priority (GEF, 2022b). This additional financing for adaptation represents a crucial opportunity for almost 140 GEF recipient countries to implement integrated land and water management to sustain lake and reservoir assets.

The GEF IW focal area has provided grant funding for many transboundary lake and river basins with major reservoirs while encouraging national inter-ministry collaboration. To date, over 100 mid- and low-income countries have undertaken initial trust-building, joint fact-finding, and shared vision-developing projects, leading to the development of action plans for their transboundary systems. These action plans aim to identify the necessary policy, legal, institutional reforms, and investments appropriate for each country's part of the shared basin. Countries can access grant financing and third-party GEF operating agency assistance to help enact those reforms and implement integrated land and water resources management. Over $US 400 million has been available in the GEF IW focal area for 2022–2026 (GEF, 2022a). With additional finance becoming available in the Adaptation Funds, GEF-integrated programs, and the IW focal area, there is no excuse for mid- and low-income countries not to access the GEF funds and partnership help from its 18 operating agencies to integrate land and water resources management upstream of vulnerable lake and reservoir assets. The IW focal area must continue to be well-funded to facilitate integrated land and water resources management targeted to vulnerable basins.

The urgency of the situation cannot be overstated. The significant loss of benefits from lakes and reservoirs is not only due to past governance policy failures but also accelerated by rapid global changes, including the changing climate. These articles discuss well-known institutional barriers and tension over development versus management at all levels of governance that have hindered integrated land and water resources management in balancing competing water and land uses in lake and reservoir basins. While the many barriers maintained by ‘institutional inertia’ have been experienced by the co-authors in their global work, the authors also highlight forgotten or neglected experiences and the integrated approach to lake basins (ILBM) as potential solutions to address these barriers. The two articles propose that if leadership at all levels can develop partnerships across sectors to overcome powerful interests and focus resources on reforms for integrated land and water management approaches in the critical lake and reservoir basins for climate resilience, there is a chance to minimize social instability and unrest from climate change and ultimately preventing failed states.

Lakes and reservoirs must be treated as valuable assets and protected in line with the ‘precautionary principle’ due to hydrologic uncertainty and multiple, complex causes of degradation. Although comprehensively valuing water-related goods and services may ultimately lead to answers, debates over different valuation approaches and political considerations stemming from powerful interests in all types of countries are likely to hinder action. In the meantime, irrespective of how it is referred to – IWRM, NEXUS, or ILBM – operationalizing integrated land and water resource management in specific priority basins with policy, legal, and institutional reforms for collaboration across sectors and investments must become a priority to sustain lake and reservoir assets for communities experiencing degradation of uses and unprecedented climatic shifts.

The 1993 World Bank Water Resources Management Policy sparked a decade of World Bank focus on lakes and reservoirs. Despite being overlooked by organizations and countries globally as too complex, expensive, or ignored, it is now more crucial than ever to heed the call to ‘awaken from institutional inertia’ to address rapid global changes. The failures of existing water and land sector-specific policies over the past decades have caused significant damage to these resources without considering the new urban, irrigation, and energy demands on water bodies, not to mention increasingly extreme weather events. Despite fatigue with IWRM, integrated land and water resources management upstream of lakes and reservoirs cannot be ignored as part of comprehensive approaches.

The tension between water development and environmental management can and must be addressed by including the water environment and downstream uses in water development policies, plans, programs, and projects at all levels of governance. The World Bank has recently adopted new policies to reinforce these considerations that need to be urgently implemented globally. Other MDBs and water development agencies must also accelerate the internalization of policies toward integrated management as well as the UN system, which recently adopted its integrating reforms in 2024. Additionally, the agriculture and irrigation sectors especially require mainstreaming sustainable land management into national and subnational policies, plans, programs, and projects – likely through incentives and disincentives. National ministries will hopefully collaborate across departments and sectors to integrate land, water, and environmental management into subnational institutions through participative partnerships and new policies as well as resources. Following the ‘Precautionary Principle’ in balancing multiple water uses will be critical to address the uncertainty and complexity surrounding water resources management.

The processes mentioned in this article help address the long-standing institutional resistance to integrated approaches for balancing water uses. Operationalizing integrated approaches requires a place-based understanding of the local basin context and is the key to ILBM. Specific lake basin or sub-basin bottom-up community engagement with local demonstration projects along with simultaneous top-down sector reforms in the capitals, including inter-ministry collaboration extending down to communities, is challenging but unavoidable and needs to include measures for climate resilience.

Key processes and measures presented in the article include:

• 1. Implementing top-down plus bottom-up integrated land and water resource strategies for specific basins involving stakeholders, grant financing, and national inter-ministry committees (as operationalized by GEF grants in its transboundary waters focal area).

• 2. Vertically extending horizontal collaboration among ministries to lower-level governance institutions for on-the-ground, basin-specific solutions.

• 3. For low- and middle-income countries, securing newly available funding from MDBs, development assistance organizations, national budgets, the Adaptation Fund, the GCF, and the GEF (including its special adaptation funds) with measurable targets, tracking, and evaluations.

• 4. High-income countries must lead by example at international institutions by providing new internal, integrated support with additional finance to their own subnational institutions and local organizations.

These measures offer a practical way to mainstream integrated land and water approaches to sustain multiple benefits from lake and reservoir basins. Recent global institutional developments are creating a new opportunity for integrated reforms, resources, and action. Inaction is no longer an option!

All relevant data are included in the paper or its Supplementary Information.

The authors declare there is no conflict.