Abstract:
As societies develop, the problem of securing and mobilising adequate water resources
to support and sustain economic and social activities increases in complexity. As a costeffectiveness
measure the use of the Unit Reference Value (URV) has become standard practice
in South African water resource management and development. It is informative and easy to
understand. These two attributes inspire confidence and an ever-greater uptake of its use in
evaluating suggested courses of action to be taken by society in ensuring their future. Deviations
in how an URV is calculated emerge due to both the diversification of its user base and the
dynamic nature of the contexts in which it is applied. Such developments add to the pluralistic
framings within which research and decision-makers operate. We provide three sub-types of
URV application, and caution against comparing URVs across categories. To mitigate possible
confusion, we propose the development of standards/rules for the interpretation of URVs.
