Proposal of a water management sustainability index for the 969 sub-basins of Mexico

Abstract

Different components of sustainability have been measured in previous studies at national, regional, and local scales. However, few efforts have aimed to measure water sustainability at the basin level. In this work, a water management sustainability index (WMSI) for quantifying water sustainability at the sub-basin level in Mexico is proposed. Variables related to water management in the environmental, social, economic, and institutional sub-systems of each sub-basin system were selected. The variables were aggregated in four sub-indexes based on a factor analysis, the sub-indexes scores were codified to indicate the level reached of water sustainability. The WMSI classified the water sustainability of the sub-basins of Mexico between poor and deficient, and the code classification indicated the level of compliance of the 969 sub-basins proposed by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography with sustainability criteria.

Keywords

• water sustainability
• integrated water management