Introduction

The water sector has witnessed a substantial change in management focus since 1992 when both the Dublin Conference on Water and the Rio de Janeiro Summit on Sustainable Development adopted the four principles of integrated water resources management(IWRM) to guide governments towards better management of the resource (UN, 1993). Many subsequent international conferences have since reaffirmed the importance of IWRM as the new paradigm in water management. However, planning and implementation have been hampered by various factors, such as vested interests of the water sector and organisational constraints, of which the most important might be the lack of human and institutional capacities in water management organisations.

This chapter addresses the role of capacity building in the process of implementation of IWRM, and changing capacity building practices to meet the demands of a changing water management environment. To do that it gives a brief overview of capacity building in the water sector and its development to address changing capacity needs. Different approaches to capacity building are reviewed, and new trends in knowledge management and networking are discussed. The paper concludes with the question of how to measure outputs, results, and impacts of capacity building.