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Climate variability (CV) and climate change (CC) have been associated to global changes or to changes in the climate regime and have shown remarkable effects on the hydrological cycle. Water shortage, changes in precipitation intensity, and variability of extreme events are gaining more importance. Because of the increase in air temperature and the changes in precipitation, CC is increasing the competition for fresh water and is impacting hydrological processes and regimes, causing in some cases a larger flow of pollutants and sediments in lakes and rivers, water quality degradation, alteration of the rate of bio-geochemical processes, and reduction of dissolved oxygen concentration. The need for adapting to CC is urgent when large economic and social changes are occurring that affect usage of water resources (WR). CC is increasing the vulnerability of badly-managed water systems, creating an urgent need to build a new framework for the management of WR. In this paper, an integrated water resource management concept (IWRM) is presented, which is gaining acceptance as a CC adaptation strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]