The rationale behind this water accounting and auditing sourcebook is that scope exists worldwide to improve water-related sectoral and inter-sectoral decision-making at local, regional and national levels. Improvements can often be initiated by basing decisions on‘best-available’ information, evidence and analysis – rather than intuition, assumptions and guesswork.
Of course, it would be naïve to believe that improvements in water governance or policy-development will follow automatically and seamlessly from water accounting and auditing. The collection, evaluation, analysis and interpretation of biophysical and societal information that is central to water accounting and auditing is subject to uncertainty and professional biases and, as behavioural scientists are quick to point out, irrationality. However, mutually-supportive water accounting and auditing has much to offer as a practical approach to: 1) Assembling and checking the veracity of information from multiple sources; 2) Analysing, modelling and interpreting this information; and 3) Assembling robust evidence to support decision-making, policy development and new courses of action.