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Nutrient pollution is one of the major issues in water resources management, which has drawn significant investments into the development of many modelling tools to solve pollution problems worldwide. However, the situation remains unchanged, even likely to be exacerbated due to population growth and climate change. Effective measures to alleviate the issues are essential, dependent upon existing modelling tools' capacities. More complex models have been developed with technological advancement, though applications are mainly limited to academic reach. Hence, there is a need for a paradigm shift in policymaking that looks for a reliable modelling approach. This paper aims to assess the capacity of existing modelling tools in the context of process-based modelling and provide a future direction in research. The article has categorically divided models into plot scale to basin-wide applications for evaluation and discussed the pros and cons of conceptual and process-based modelling. The potential benefits of distributed modelling approach have been elaborated with highlights of a newly developed distributed model and its application in catchments in Japan and Australia. The distributed model is more adequate for predicting the realistic details of pollution problems in a changing environment. Future research needs to focus on more process-based modelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]