Freshwater Governance for the 21st Century

This book explores the challenges most countries face in dealing with governance issues and highlights the advantages and disadvantages of various approaches to achieve effective freshwater governance suited for this century. The idea for writing this book was triggered following the successful hosting of the International Conference on Fresh Water Governance for Sustainable Development, 5–7 November 2012, at the Champagne Sports Resort, Drakensberg, KZN by the Water Research Commission of South Africa. At that conference, the need to bring together the research communities from different disciplines and practitioners at different levels of jurisdictions from around the world was tangible. The exchange of experiences and the interrogation of frameworks, policies and perceptions around best practice were invigorating. This book is not a direct result of that conference, but the exchange of experiences provided the impetus to embark on this undertaking.

Citizens increasingly demand to be more engaged in how public policy decisions are made. In this environment, stakeholder engagement has emerged as a principle of good water governance. However, despite extensive research and case studies on the topic in recent years, the lack of evidence-based assessment on how effective engagement processes have proven to be in reaching intended objectives of water governance is striking. Most participatory evaluation exercises fail to provide decision-makers with the evidence they need to inform future engagement processes.

This chapter presents the key findings of an OECD study, which relies mainly on empirical data from a survey carried out across 215 stakeholders, within and outside the water sector, and derived from 69 case studies collected worldwide. It suggests an analytical framework to assess the impact of stakeholder engagement in water-related decision-making and policy implementation, based on interdependent components, i.e. drivers, obstacles, mechanisms, impacts, costs and benefits.

Results highlight the need for better understanding of the pressing and emerging issues related to stakeholder engagement. These include the external and internal drivers that trigger the engagement processes, the arrival of new entrants that ought to be considered, innovative tools that have emerged to manage the interface between multiple players and types of costs and benefits incurred by engagement at policy and project levels. The chapter concludes with policy guidance to decision-makers and practitioners in the form of necessary conditions on how to set up the enabling environment for inclusive water governance.

Key actors in various developing countries are often confronted by difficult choices when it comes to the selection and deployment of appropriate water governance regimes taking into account national socio-economic and political realities. Indeed, scholars and practitioners alike continue to grapple with the need to create the optimum water-supply and allocation decision-making space applicable to specific developing countries. This chapter uses case studies to explore the utility of free-market economics and developmental statism as two major paradigms that have emerged in the face of enduring questions about how best to govern water-supply systems in developing countries. The chapter establishes that increasing pressure on available natural resources may have already rendered obsolete some of the water-supply systems and governance regimes that have served human societies very well for many decades. It is also clear that national water-supply governance paradigms tend to change in tandem with emerging national development theoretical frameworks and priorities. Each nation or local government feels compelled to adopt a particular framework to fulfil its needs taking into account the broader global water policy context. While many developing countries have adopted water policy prescriptions from the international arena, national and local socio-economic and political realities ultimately determine what works and what does not work on the ground. Local realities have also helped to inform how nation-states domesticate global concepts for their local purposes. Thus, the choice between free-market approaches and developmental state-oriented approaches is never simple, and hybrid models are often deployed. Indeed, the majority of countries and municipalities rely on a mix of market economics and developmental statism to make their water governance regimes more realistic and workable on the ground.

Urban governance is as much about infrastructure as it is about people and processes. In particular, the history of urban governance is closely intertwined with the history of urban water services. Historically, as urban areas became larger and more densely inhabited, the collective need for better water services (drinking water, sanitation and flood protection in particular) became overwhelming. Cities simply could not grow beyond a certain relatively modest size without the simultaneous articulation of an integrated water services infrastructure to replace the piecemeal local arrangements previously in place. This necessarily implied new and more complex governance arrangements, in this case the institutionalisation of water services management in functional departmental structures, linked to political decision-making, finance, quality assurance and related functions. Whilst other papers have presented case studies of the urban hydrosocial transition (UHT) in terms of the physical extension of water services (e.g. water supply, sanitation and surface water management), this chapter focuses specifically on urban governance of water. We argue that the progressive breakdown of Fordist neo-corporatism in water services has opened up the field to a proliferation of ‘glocal’ (to use Swyngedouw’s useful neologism) governance arrangements. Whilst integrated water resource management (IWRM) principles imply a supra-urban scale of governance, the fact that urbanisation brings with it local concentration of water-related impacts means that there is an ineluctable local and urban dimension to water governance. It is therefore not surprising that cities around the world are asserting themselves as central players in water governance. Brief case studies from around the world are presented by way of illustration.

Rapid urbanisation, growing urban populations, environmental issues and climate change all represent significant challenges for water resource management, the delivery of essential water and sanitation services and environmental protection. As a result, traditional approaches that have relied heavily on large-scale infrastructure development are making way for new approaches such as the portfolio-based approach to planning and management. In an urban context, this includes integration of all components of the urban water cycle, and most state governments in Australia have embarked on implementing this integrated approach by having a mix of water supply sources including demand management and conservation measures. However, effective implementation of this approach depends on policies and regulations and encounters various impediments. Accordingly this chapter focuses on the City of Adelaide in South Australia and explores the legal and policy challenges for implementing an integrated urban water management plan in Metropolitan Adelaide. Drawing on the results of governance studies carried out in Australia that included a literature review, stakeholder and community surveys, the chapter attempts to better understand the barriers to transitioning Adelaide to a water-sensitive city.

The UN recognition of a human right to water for drinking, personal and other domestic uses and sanitation in 2010 was a political breakthrough in states’ commitments to adopt a human rights framework in carrying out part of their mandate. This chapter explores other domains of freshwater governance in which human rights frameworks provide a robust and widely accepted set of normative values to such governance. The basis is General Comment No. 15 of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 2002, which states that water is needed to realise a range of indivisible human rights to non-starvation, food, health, work and an adequate standard of living and also procedural rights to participation and information in water interventions. On that basis, the chapter explores concrete implications of the Comment for states’ broader infrastructure-based water services implied in the recognised need to access to infrastructure, rights to non-discrimination in public service delivery and respect of people’s own prioritisation. This implies a right to water for livelihoods with core minimum service levels for water to homesteads that meet both domestic and small-scale productive uses, so at least 50–100 l per capita per day. Turning to the state’s mandates and authority in allocating water resources, the chapter identifies three forms of unfair treatment of small-scale users in current licence systems. As illustrated by the case of South Africa, the legal tool of “Priority General Authorisations” is proposed. This prioritises water allocation to small-scale water users while targeting and enforcing regulatory licences to the few high-impact users.

Transboundary watercourses, including rivers, lakes and aquifers (confined and unconfined), shared between two or more countries, are home to over 70 % of the world’s population and supply water for roughly 60 % of global food production. It is no surprise that the management of these watercourses has been entrusted to national states, which have the power to take sovereign decisions over their management, use and conservation. State sovereignty is mitigated through the existence of a global institutional framework comprised of customary international water law (the norms dictating how states behave), global and regional conventions, basin-level agreements and basin management organisations. The good news is that there is a large body of joint institutions between countries with transboundary watercourses, the UN estimating that around 3600 exist. This in part explains the relative lack of military interstate conflicts. Less good news is that despite the existence of international- and basin-level agreements and basin organisations, the benefits to be expected from international cooperation around transboundary watercourses have in most cases not materialised. Acute, persistent and seemingly intractable problems persist, with ecosystem degradation not being reversed, joint investments in water infrastructure not materialising and joint management organisations failing to attract significant long-term support from the respective basin states. Despite at least two decades of concerted support by the international development community, the impacts of enhanced interstate cooperation are noticeable through their absence. This chapter investigates why this may be so and introduces a starting point which moves beyond the state-centric approach to transboundary water management. In doing so it does not challenge the sovereign right of states to manage their watercourses; instead it shows how a range of non-state actors do in fact influence state practice through a variety of mechanisms. As these mechanisms are frequently covert, it becomes difficult to assess the integrity of the relationships between actors, in turn making public engagement and participation difficult. Needed is a governance paradigm which opens the decision-making arena to non-state actors all in support of the national governments and their respective mandates. This chapter ends with an indication of what such a governance arrangement would look like across the four success factors identified in the preface of this book: science-informed decision-making, investments in appropriate infrastructure, development of skills and talent and the water use behaviour of stakeholders.

How mechanisms for inclusive governance are understood is built on the framing choices that are made about governance and that which is being governed. This chapter unpacks how governance can be understood and considers different historical and contemporary framings of water governance. A framing of “governance as praxis” is developed as a central element in the chapter. What makes governance inclusive is explored, drawing on theoretical, practical and institutional aspects before elucidating some of the different mechanisms currently used or proposed for creating inclusive water governance (though we argue against praxis based on simple mechanism). Finally, the factors that either constrain or enable inclusive water governance are explored with a focus on systemic concepts of learning and feedback.

The adherence of water stakeholders and institutions to integrity principles is critical to improve water governance and sustainable water development. Integrity is strongly manifested in water decision-making, and the level of integrity plays a critical role in deciding the outcomes of decision-making, that is, who gets what water, when and how. In many countries, fragmented institutions obstruct accountability in a sector with high investment and aid flows, making the water sector particularly vulnerable to corruption. Governance failures such as corruption can take place at multiple levels and traverse all water uses, incurring huge cost for societies, environment and human development. This chapter provides insights into the role of integrity to improve governance and suggests an apparent need to include integrity and anticorruption-related issues in the analysis of and policy responses to water crises. Accountability in water supply services is used as an example to outline challenges and opportunities for strengthening integrity.

This chapter provides an overview and thus contributes to a better understanding of the world’s groundwater resources, their distinctiveness and their governance. It describes the principal elements of and key instruments employed in groundwater governance. To this end, the authors introduce several case studies from across the globe and offer some corresponding lessons learnt. In particular, this chapter presents an analysis of the role of monitoring and assessment in groundwater governance, showcasing the example of The Netherlands. A global diagnostic of the current state of groundwater governance is provided, based on information from a set of commissioned thematic papers and the outcomes of five subsequent regional consultations carried out within the framework of a GEF-supported project on Global Groundwater Governance. It includes insights into some of the findings of that project regarding the four main components of groundwater governance: actors, national legal frameworks, policies and information and knowledge. In addition, the authors address the issue of governance of transboundary groundwater resources and the relevant existing international legal frameworks. In conclusion, through a Global Vision for 2030, the chapter presents a way forward to govern groundwater and a Framework for Action to achieve good governance, formulated by the Groundwater Governance Project jointly implemented by UNESCO, FAO, World Bank and IAH.

This chapter explores the likely trends and outcomes in water governance by about 2030 in two regions: South Asia and Southern Africa. It addresses the question: What are the prospects for developing governance arrangements in the two regions that will lead to more positive outcomes in terms of sustainably improving people’s livelihoods while conserving natural resources? It examines this question through three “lenses”: (1) “beyond disciplines”, (2) “beyond scales” and (3) “beyond ‘institutional’ hardware to ‘human’ software”. The two regions are currently on different trajectories: the Southern African trajectory seems to be moving in a positive direction, in contrast with South Asia. The chapter discusses four factors that go far to explaining this divergence: (1) the contrasting roles of the hegemonic countries, (2) the level of intercountry “trust” that has emerged in the two regions, (3) the roles of civil society and NGOs and (4) the roles of external facilitators. The chapter emphasises the importance of developing the human software – the “soft skills” of communication and shared values complementing technical competence – as the most critical driver of successful water resource governance.