Summary
Focusing efforts on ensuring cities’ sustainability particularly by managing consumption of natural resources and productions offers great potential not only to improve urban socio-economic and environmental conditions but also in addressing many global issues including water, food and energy security. This is because urban areas are not only absorbing most of the global population but also the natural resources, energy and agriculture products for urban consumption as well as for manufacturing products and services majorly happening in urban areas. Moreover, climate change impacts put greater pressure on urban systems and increase the vulnerabilities of cities. Many of our efforts and approaches to solve problems faced by urban water systems today are not working the way we anticipate and in many cases produce unintended consequences that undermine our efforts put to solve the problems. Pursuing the same approaches will not work in the future as well. While definite benefits could be gained from integrating the management of natural and human systems, taking into account the effects of human activities on the environment in cities, the task of operationalising and implementing this approach in practice represents an enormous challenge due to its complexity.
New ways of thinking are hence needed to allow policy-makers and water managers to better understand how water systems work, and how to rethink and redesign effective and sustainable solutions, through systems change. Systems thinking has a real potential to deliver sustainable water management when system tools are employed to facilitate and enhance integrated, interdisciplinary and holistic approaches in water management based on participatory methods to ensure successful implementation. Because of this, this research makes the case that systems approach need to be better defined to capture these elements, supporting the transformational change required for sustainability to emerge. Key leverage points for this will be identified and further investigated to establish their applications on a case-by-case basis facilitating tailored made transformations towards sustainable urban water systems. Towards the end, this research aims at developing a systemic framework to assist policy makers, water managers and other stakeholders transform urban water management towards sustainability