Analysis of water security and its worldwide context, 2000-2019
The water security (WS) approach must be practical and measurable to address water-related challenges. Since 2000, the term Water Security has been regularly mentioned worldwide. However, nowadays, there is still not an accepted definition either for a country or for a region. This research conducted a meta-analysis in the context of renewable water and global water stress, evaluating 873 scientific papers and 26 definitions of WS, using bibliometric network analysis, geographic information systems, and data mining to analyze the state of the art of WS.
The results indicate that the definitions of WS have an anthropocentric character. The term economic in the context of WS definitions is the most relevant, and the term ecosystems are the least relevant. Less than 30 % of the definitions analyzed are operationalized through some measurement instrument. The most researched topics on WS are evaluation, management, and impact. On the frontier of study are the issues of water footprint, operation of springs, and awareness. In the world, countries such as the United States, China, and the United Kingdom, with little renewable water in their respective continents, are the ones that publish the most and try to define the concept of WS. Therefore, it is concluded that the main problem of WS definitions worldwide is that they cannot be operationalized in some local indexes, hindering their implementation. In addition, the environment has not been relevant in WS research and definitions.
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