Does water accounting support sustainable water management? A review

Abstract

Abstract The business risks experienced by clean water companies include losses and decreased loyalty of water users. This risk occurs due to the absence of accountability, reliability, and transparency in sustainable clean water management. It can be overcome by implementing water accounting. This narrative review explains a sustainable water management model using a water accounting approach. The narrative review method consists of compilation, tabulation, comparison of research results, and summarizing. The literature review study collected articles from accredited journal sites (Sinta, Emerald, Science Direct). After searching for research keywords criteria, 29 articles were taken as samples. The results show that water accounting, in addition to reducing business risk for clean water service providers, also supports sustainable water management. Water accounting components such as gross inflow, net inflow, available water, water depletion, and outflow provide transparent and accountable information. The components of water accounting can analyze water use, scarcity, and productivity to predict the need for clean water because the amount of water discharge produced and used in one day can be known with certainty. Management and community commitment are needed to realize sustainable groundwater use conservation to ensure that the community enjoys the long-term supply of clean water.