This literature review examines previous qualitative and quantitative studies on water sustainability, with a focus on improving water management in the Caribbean. It surveys Gleick's criteria for sustainable water policy, including equity and basic human needs; Basnyat's analysis of nitrogen pollution and the role of land use in water quality; and the application of geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing (RS) as water management tools. The review then traces the evolution of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), evaluating its core principles, its debates over privatization and government intervention, and its practical limitations. It concludes by framing a research question around the political and social barriers to water access in the Caribbean.
The paper demonstrates effective thematic synthesis in a literature review: rather than summarizing each source separately, it groups sources around shared themes — equity in policy, land-use effects on water quality, technological tools, and international governance frameworks — and draws comparative observations across them. This structure allows the writer to identify tensions (e.g., privatization vs. government intervention) that emerge from the literature as a whole.
The paper opens with a brief framing introduction, then moves through four substantive areas: (1) foundational sustainability criteria from Gleick, (2) technical water quality issues involving nitrogen and GIS/RS tools, (3) the history and principles of IWRM, and (4) criticisms of IWRM's practical applicability. The conclusion synthesizes findings and articulates the research question driving the author's own proposed study. This is a standard graduate-level literature review structure that efficiently maps a field before positioning original research.
This literature review examines the operation and data management of water authorities, with a specific focus on the ability to provide a sustainable water supply for the next century in the Caribbean. It surveys previous studies — both qualitative and quantitative — on water sustainability and specific problems related to water quality, such as the build-up of nitrogen in the water supply. It also reviews ways to assess water quality through the use of geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing (RS) as feasible tools of water management. The review concludes with an examination of different philosophies of water delivery in the developing world, specifically the use of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) and that philosophy's pros and cons.
According to Gleick (1998), the impending water crisis is one that will have seismic political and environmental consequences if not addressed soon: "as human populations continue to grow, these problems are likely to become more frequent and serious. New approaches to long-term water planning and management that incorporate principles of sustainability and equity are required and are now being explored by national and international water experts and organizations" (Gleick 1998: 571). Throughout much of the 20th century, the focus was on increasing water access, with little concern for the environment. Gleick proposes a technique of "backcasting" rather than "forecasting," given that building new water delivery systems is likely to be very challenging in the future. Criteria include basic human water requirements; basic environmental requirements; water quality standards (reflecting that different uses may require different levels of quality); renewability of water resources; data collection and availability; and institutions, management, and conflict resolution (Gleick 1998: 577).
Gleick argues that a multitude of considerations should be taken into account when setting water policy, including issues of social justice as well as physical and environmental needs. Opportunity costs are inevitable, but when trade-offs are made they should be done in the most equitable fashion possible. "Perhaps the greatest flaw with many water institutions is their failure to adequately address issues of equity. Equity is a measure of the fairness of both the distribution of positive and negative outcomes as well as the process used to arrive at particular social decisions" (Gleick 1998: 577). Gleick acknowledges that human needs and then environmental needs must come first, but argues that we cannot ignore the discrepancies of social justice in water provision across the world. "The first two criteria require that we identify and meet basic allocations for humans and ecosystems, which are to be satisfied before other demands," but social value judgments as well as concerns about renewability should still be addressed (Gleick 1998: 578).
According to Basnyat (2000), another imperative for making better use of available water supplies is pollution reduction. "Basin characteristics such as land use/land cover, slope, and soil attributes affect water quality by regulating sediment and chemical concentration" (Basnyat 2000: 65). Manipulation of land use and land cover can be used to improve water quality, specifically in reducing different types of pollutants — such as nitrates — that can leach into drinking water. By using GIS and RS analysis tools, forces contributing to nitrate pollution can be identified and classified. In the study conducted for the article, "a 'land use/land cover-nutrient-linkage-model' was developed which suggests that forests act as a sink, and as the proportion of forest inside a contributing zone increases (or agricultural land decreases), nitrate levels downstream will decrease. In the model, the residential/urban/built-up areas have been identified as strong contributors of nitrate. Other contributors were orchards, row crops, and other agricultural activities" (Basnyat 2000: 65).
By taking such factors into consideration, it is hoped that future contamination can be reduced. However, the pattern identified in the article indicates the extent to which highly concentrated areas of human settlement are specifically linked to high nitrogen build-up, and avoiding these types of building patterns — while desirable — may be challenging in the future. Nitrogen is a particularly problematic nutrient because, as well as being added as a pollutant, it can also occur in high concentrations due to naturally recurring factors. "Nitrogen concentration downstream is a function of multiple controlling factors, and different streams have different responses to the set of controlling factors. One of the important factors is vegetation, which at times can be manipulated to maintain or improve water quality" (Basnyat 2000: 65–66). Rainfall intensity, basin delineation, and land use all play a complex role in water quality, but predicting how they interact can be an inexact science even with the use of GIS and RS. Sui (1998) likewise concluded in his review of the technology that "current stand-alone and various loose/tight coupling approaches for GIS-based urban modelling are essentially technology-driven without adequate justification and verification for the urban models being implemented" (Sui 1998: 8).
The use of GIS and RS has proven somewhat controversial in terms of evaluating its efficacy. As noted by Buogo and Chevalier (1995), relying upon GIS in all contexts is not always ideal, given that the tool is not always able to show multiple representations of reality — as is necessary for a full portrait of the complexities of a water delivery system. "GIS, as a computer tool, are still limited for the integration of multiple representations of the same concept… conceptual level modeling in GIS does not yet fully make use of the informational richness found in reality for integration within a GIS" (Buogo & Chevalier 1995: 161). However, Aspinall and Pearson (2000) contend that GIS can be quite beneficial when "models implemented in GIS allow indicators to be combined within water catchments by setting them within a specific geographic context and integrating the descriptions of environmental variability across the geographic area. This spatial integration is necessary to place individual, site-specific indicators within a broader geographic context; the models allow this context to reflect the ecological and hydrological functioning of the water catchment. Scale and other geographic effects associated with integration are managed using an approach that partitions the landscape into a hierarchical series of nested functional units" that can assess a region's overall likelihood of providing sustainable water (Aspinall & Pearson 2000: 299).
All of these articles highlight the challenges of assessing the sustainability of water delivery and the practical issues of ensuring equity in the distribution of water to various populations, due to both political and logistical reasons. This suggests that while environmental components of the issue need to be reviewed — with appropriate technology — to improve water delivery in a safe and clean fashion, without political will and logistical planning, such improvements will mean little. A program of water delivery cannot be excessively theoretical and conceptual to be useful to residents of either the developing or the developed world. Water delivery must be addressed as a practical problem in all political contexts, and a diversity of tools must be employed for systemic improvement.
The goals of the research that follows this review will specifically be to improve analysis of water delivery in the Caribbean, focusing on the political problems that have arisen to impede access. The research question will address the extent to which political and social issues, as opposed to environmental barriers, have impeded access to water in the region.
Al-Barqawi, H. & Zayed, T. 2008. Infrastructure management: Integrated AHP/ANN model to evaluate municipal water mains' performance. Journal of Infrastructure Systems, 14: 305–318.
Aspinall, R. & Pearson, D. 2000. Integrated geographical assessment of environmental condition in water catchments: Linking landscape ecology, environmental modelling and GIS. Journal of Environmental Management, 59: 299–319. doi:10.1006/jema.2000.0372
Basnyat, P. 2000. The use of remote sensing and GIS in watershed level analyses of non-point source pollution problems. Forest Ecology and Management, 128: 65–73.
Buogo, A. & Chevalier, J. 1995. Spatial information systems and information integration. Computer, Environment and Urban Systems, 19 (3): 161–170.
Gleick, P. 1998. Water in crisis: Paths to sustainable water. Ecological Applications, 8 (3): 571–579. URL:
Rahaman, M. & Varis, O. 2005. Integrated water resources management: Evolution, prospects and future challenges. Sustainability: Science, Practice, and Policy.
Sui, D. 1998. GIS-based urban modelling: Practices, problems, and prospects. International Journal of Geographic Information Science, 12 (7): 651–671.
Always verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.