National Perspectives on Water Governance: Lessons from the IWRM Planning Process in Malawi and Zambia

At the Second World Water Forum in 2000, the problems relating to water around the world were described as a consequence of the lack of good governance in water. The Global Water Partnership defines water governance as the range of political, social, economic and administrative systems that are in place to develop and manage water resources, and delivery of water services, at different levels of society.

As a contribution to good water governance, the GWPSA has been facilitating the development of Integrated Water Resources Management and Water Efficiency (IWRM/WE) Plans in Malawi and Zambia. Effective water governance is crucial for the implementation of IWRM. While the process is still ongoing, various lessons can be drawn in relation to water governance.

This chapter argues that, while governance may be seen to be dependent on three key clusters; Government, Society and Science and the interactions among them, there are no distinct boundaries among the three clusters. Further, lessons from the IWRM/WE process highlight the importance of scale and power relations to water governance. IWRM Plans are being developed for river systems and natural resources at the national scale, confined to national boundaries. However, the transboundary nature of water resources requires effective interactions between and across the different scales. International conventions, protocols, declarations and targets such as the 2015 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are some of the factors at the international scale that have a strong influence on the IWRM Planning process at the national scale. Another important issue is that of power relations among players at a given scale, and also between different scales. The way decisions and information is communicated from central government to local government and vice-versa or from the catchment to the sub-catchment scale is crucial to good water governance. These interactions and process are highlighted in this chapter.