Water Resources Management

In order to achieve success in water resources development, a holistic approach such as the Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is needed in water resources planning and development in Malaysia. In view of that, the Malaysia government has played an important role through its policies, plans and programmes. For example, the Integrated River Basin Management (subset of IWRM) in water planning and development was introduced in the Ninth Malaysia Plan (2006-2010) and National Physical Plan (2006-2020). Apart from that, the participation of all stakeholders is a prerequisite to attain the goals of IWRM. The basic argument of this paper is that current water resources management framework become a question of developing full participation from various stakeholders. The involvement from the community based organizations (CBOs) and local communities are lacking and do not seem to be aware of their important roles in this matter. Besides, some social and environmental problems exist in the basin such as population growth, high siltation in local streams and non-point sources pollution. However, the major concern is what the future of water resources status is after operation of proposed Pahang-Selangor instate raw water transfer infrastructure in the Pahang River Basin, Malaysia. In order to safeguard sustainability of water resources, Pahang River Basin requires an enabling environment to encourage full participation of all levels of stakeholders to articulate the key issues.