Online published on 28 August, 2013.
This paper presents a framework for understanding the global water governance in vogue. Traditionally, water has been considered to be a local subject and has been dealt accordingly. When the water problems have crossed the local boundaries, efforts have been made to solve them at sub-national, national, supra-national and global level. There is no global government, but the global governance has influenced the national policy domain in many areas including water sector. An attempt has been made in this paper to analyze the concept of governance, water governance and global water governance framework which has been influencing the national policy domain even though such efforts have not acted as binding principles. There has been very few studies on ‘water sector as a global subject'and role of global governance in Water Resource Sector (WRS). The global focus for achieving the drinking water and sanitation targets through Millennium Development Goals (MDG) has almost camouflaged the other challenges of this sector requiring global policy response. The Rio+20, has thrown fresh challenges before the water experts and the policy makers alike to identify the specific role of WRS in its broad agenda of Sustainable Development (SD). In this context, the present study examines the hypothesis “Need for Global Water Governance Architecture for Sustainable Development” to understand the present global water politics and the possible role of global governance in this sector. In the process an attempt has also been made to analyze the various efforts being made worldwide to meet the looming challenges of WRS, its sufficiency/adequacy against the magnitude of requirements and derive broad policy recommendations keeping in msind the Rio+20. This study has relevance for the countries like India where the water is not a national subject but a national concern.
