Water is everyone's business.Beside a necessity for living, water has implications onpublic health and, most importantly, can cause socialconflicts. This is because water is limited, is difficult tocontrol, and can easily be polluted. The Integrated WaterResource Management (IWRM) process is considered worldwideas a means to reduce social conflicts from competing waterneeds as well as to facilitate effective and sustainabledevelopment of water resources. Effective implementation ofIWRM however will require appropriate policy, regulation,and institutional frameworks which could facilitatecross-sectoral dialogue and cooperation among water users. Agood example of IWRM is in the Lower Mekong River Basin.IWRM has been adopted by the Mekong River Commission (MRC)as a means to management water resources through the 1995agreement, where as MRC countries are fully committed tomanage water resources. In Thailand, IWRM has beentechnically recognized as a means to achieve sustainablewater resources management and the concept has beenincorporated in the national policy for more than 15 years,however clear institutional responsibility and introductionof the IWRM concept to local communities are relatively new.To address the challenges on water resource management inThailand, particularly at the local level, strongerleadership and commitment of the key government agencies andeffective cooperation of the water users will be important.
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