List of messages of the River Basin

Message 1: from Francois Molle –introduction- Thursday 31/3/05
Message 2: from Sylvia Tognetti- Thursday 31/3/05
Message 3: Message from Jetske Bouma –Thursday 31/3/05
Message 4: from Jeroen Werner- Friday 1/4/05
Message 5: from Stephen Merrett – Friday 1/4/05
Message 6: from Stephen Merrett- Saturday 2/4/05
Message 7- from Peter Mac Cormick – Wednesday 13/4/2005
Message 8- from Lekan Oyebande- Saturday 16 april 2005
Message 9- from Will Allen- Friday 15/4/2005
Message 10- from Andreas Neef- Saturday 16/4/2005
Message 11- from Juan Maria Fornes Azcoiti- Monday 18/4/2005
Message 12- from Francois Molle, Flip Wester and Philip Hirsch, Wednesday 20/4/05
Message 13- from Arjan Ruijs- Friday 22/4/05
Message 14- from Stephen Merrett- Friday 22/4/05
Message 15- from peter McCornick- Friday 22/4/05
Message 16- from Francois Molle- Friday 22/4/05
Message 17- from Nilanjah Gosh- Friday 22/4/05
Message 18 from Madan Kumar Jha-Monday 25 April 2005
Message 19- from Jeroen Warner- Wednesday 27/4/05
Message 20- from maria de la fuente- Wednesday 27/4/05
Message 21- from Andreas Neef- Wednesday 27/4/05
Message 22- from Dhruba Pant- Thursday 28/4/05
Message 23- from Didier Orange- Thursday 28/4/05

Message1-from Francois Molle –introduction- Thursday 31/3/05
Dear all

Thank you for your interest in the Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture (the CA). The Assessment (www.iwmi.cgiar.org/assessment) is an innovative multi-institute process aimed at identifying existing knowledge and stimulating thought on ways to manage water resources to continue meeting the needs of both humans and ecosystems. The CA critically evaluates: the benefits, costs, and impacts of the past 50 years of water development and challenges to water management currently facing communities. It assesses innovative solutions and explores consequences of potential investment and management decisions. The CA is designed as a learning process, engaging networks of stakeholders to produce knowledge synthesis and methodologies. The main output of the CA is an Assessment report that aims to guide investment and management decisions in the near future and over the next 50 years in order to enhance food and environmental security to support the achievement of the MDGs.

We would like to invite you to participate in the first round of email discussions in relation to the River Basin Development and Management Chapter of the CA.

To start the discussion the Lead Authors (François Molle, Philippus Wester and Phillip Hirsch) would like to discuss with you critical issues related to basin development and management. You can find the discussion page of the chapter (URL) together with an introductory statement, and a tentative content for the chapter (PDF).

We would like to start by addressing the following general questions:
1) What are the most important (and underappreciated?) trends or issues with respect to river basin development or management?

2) What is your analysis of the impact of basin closure on water users and stakeholders?

3) What are the ways to address multiple values, definition of allocation tradeoffs, understanding and consideration of the distribution of costs and benefits attached to interventions?

4) What are the points that are missing and you would like to develop/illustrate?

You may submit comments, examples, counter-examples, or relevant documents that will be uploaded in the website.

This email discussion will begin now and continue to the 15th of April, at which time the lead authors will start working on a draft chapter. The draft will be posted on the web in July and a second round of discussion will be opened.
Over 150 persons have expressed their interest in participating to the discussion. The authors have also tentatively identified 10 contributing authors, whose name will appear at the beginning of the chapter; however they retain discretion over the final list of contributing authors, depending on effective and original participation.

This is a moderated discussion. The moderator will receive all the messages and send them to the whole list. Documents provided will be uploaded on the website.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,

Francois Molle
Coordinating Lead Author of the Basin chapter

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Message 2-: from Sylvia Tognetti- Thursday 31/3/05
A message from Sylvia Tognetti, environmental and policy consultant working in the US, invited to contribute to the discussion. She will react further in a couple of days but wishes to share relevant websites.
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Thank you for your message - I I have done a number of review papers on the subject and welcome the opportunity to participate in this discussion. To avoid duplication, I will wait to contribute until I have had an opportunity to review documents found at the website, which I will do over the next few days. In the meantime, please include me on the list.

Just fyi, I most recently wrote or compiles sections on governance and on payments for watershed services for the freshwater chapter of the forthcoming Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. I also produce the

With best regards,
Sylvia Tognetti
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sylvia S. Tognetti
Environmental Science and Policy Consultant
10211 Menlo Ave.
Silver Spring, MD 20910
Tel/Fax: (301) 587-3064
Cell: (240) 462-0090
e-mail: sst@sylviatognetti.org
website: www.sylviatognetti.org
see also: www.flowsonline.net and www.postnormaltimes.net

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Message 3- Message from Jetske Bouma –Thursday 31/3/05
Jetske Bouma working at IWMI-Indian office, comments on the introduction message of Francois Molle. She suggests to look at adaptative management, to clarify the “water scarcity issue in close basins”. She proposes to take a more robust and simpler approach and deal also with issues of water access and security. She seeks clarification on the “man made” basin closure. She also contributed a document that will be available on the discussion website.
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What a nice way to facilitate a discussion and get a broader audience to join in on the topic of river basin development and management ! I am sure it will be appreciated a lot.

I also appreciated the manageable size of the documents put up for discussion, and will try to keep my feedback short and concise as well.

1) I believe the challenge of the chapter lies in moving beyond stating the problem towards coming up with a research agenda and /or realistic ways forward. I think this will require a more dynamic approach, with much more emphasize on the effects of increasing water scarcity on the coordination problems water management institutions need to face. Instead of focusing to much on the almost static concept of ' integrated water management' I would move more in the direction of 'adaptive management', which is also in line with the current state of the art with regard to water resource management thinking (at least, that is what I gathered from the Dundee AWRA/IWLRI meeting on water governance I attended last summer).

2) I think it will help to be more specific about the fact that the increased 'interconnectness' of users is caused by the fact that water is a (largely) collective resource. Because of this characteristic, there are serious externalities involved with water use, most notable public good, collective resource and environmental externalities.

3) Again related to the issue of dynamics, I think it would be clarifying to talk more about water scarcity (and its meaning) and less about 'closed basins' as this last term is (again) very static. As we know, water scarcity is season-, region- and locale- specific, but this is someting that becomes completely disguised by using the term 'closed basin'.

4) In proposed paragraph 3, the main message states that " Integrated basin management demands a high degree of knowledge/control on bio-physical processes and interlinked patterns of governance at various scales". Personally, I don;t think the required level of knowledge and control for optimal integrated resource management is realistic or feasible and hence, I would prefer a more realistic, robustness focused approach. A system is called robust if " it prevents the ecological system upon which it relies from moving into a new domain of attraction that cannot support a human population, or induces a transition that causes long term human suffering" (Anderies et al. 2003). For robustness, adaptability is crucial. Hence, Hollings (1978) conceptualisation of the term 'adaptive management' as "a conscious effort to reduce adjustment costs by making institutions flexible and able to deal with uncertainty and new information in an effective way"

5) What I miss is an elaboration of topics relating to distributional issues, like water access and water security. The chapter seems to be very allocation focused, which is fine but still attention needs to be paid to the distributional impacts of this allocation as well. The whole entitlements/rights based approach that one sees in closed basins, where access to water for basic human needs becomes an issue, is for example missing as is the topic of drinking water security and human health.

6) I am not sure what you mean with the question whether the closing of basins is made-man or not (apart from the demographical part of the story): do you mean man-made in the sense that politicians (or those that should have a strategic vision of the problems ahead) continued with supply augmentation where they should have shifted towards conservation and -re-allocation?

7) I am also not sure why you state that water pollution problems are much more complex then water quantity problems: I really don't think that is true. It is only that IWMI has less experience dealing with water quality problems that it might seem more complicated, but the basic issue are no more complex then having to deal with physical water scarcity.

Hope this is helpful. Attached a paper Samad and I are working on. We presented an earlier version of this paper at the AWRA/IWLRI water governance workshop in Dundee, august 2004, but have seriously rewritten the story since. Especially the discussion is still very much in draft form, but some of the other parts elaborate some of the ideas I present above.

Best regards
Jetske


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Message 4-from Jeroen Werner- Friday 1/4/05
Jeroen Warner from Wageningen University in Holland answers to the fours questions of the introductory message of Francois Molle posted on the website.
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Dear editorial team

I hope you are keeping well!
Many thanks for including me in the list for feedback on the river basin management theme. It is a useful process and I am keen to be involved in it

Here's a short reply to your four questions!

1) What are the most important (and underappreciated?) trends or issues with respect to river basin development or management?
The key development seems to be an exponential increase of talk about river basin management! The basin level is now the mainstream, though there are serious problems with it (Wester/Warner 2002). There are a lot of initiatives, but they are not co-ordinated, and the way the World Water Fora are set up do not promote such a co-ordinated process.

2) What is your analysis of the impact of basin closure on water users and stakeholders?
The impact is not linear. In the 1990s, the dominant creed was Malthusian - that scarcity leads to violent conflict (a struggle of all against all). However, a multiplicity of other responses is possible:
- technical solutions (inter basin transfers)
- improved co-ordination and efficiency of use
- adaptation through a virtual water strategy
- mining existing resources (do-nothing strategy)
- theft, robbery, deceit
- offloading the water stress onto others (down-streamers)
- individual adaptation
- top-down redistribution of resources

Leif Ohlsson (1998 FAO report) claims It very much depends on the degree in which social resources offset water resource scarcity, and I tend to agree with him. Clearly an important issue here is the robustness of the political and judicial system, whether marginal groups can make their claims heard and whether the powerful are inclined/can be made to share.

3) What are the ways to address multiple values, definition of allocation tradeoffs, understanding and consideration of the distribution of costs and benefits attached to interventions?
Obviously multi-stakeholder platforms, fora, dialogues on paper point a way forward as way of increasing democracy, accountability, tapping knowledge and capacity. However so far such platforms have rarely been empowered with a mandate, and are driven by structural power disparities. It is important to realize that participation does not take the politics out of basin management, and that not everyone will participate the way a platform initiator envisaged it - some people find different ways of influencing water policy, others feel they can't make a different, and still others will try to hijack or frustrate the process - it's a lot like life!
However, they have generated energies and enthusiasms in several places, and it is important to keep supporting such initiatives without promising people the world!

4) What are the points that are missing and you would like to develop/illustrate?
Water-related disasters (they constitute 80% of all disasters). Flood calamities, for example, tend to be a national government concern rather than delegated to basin level authorities and fora, which would make for more rapid response in times of disaster.

Jeroen Warner
WUR Wageningen


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Message 5: from Stephen Merrett – Friday 1/4/05
Stephen Merrett react on the message of Jetske Bouma (2) where she suggests to look at adaptative management, to clarify the “water scarcity issue in close basins”. She proposes to take a more robust and simpler approach and deal also with issues of water access and security.
Stephen could you send the details of the book you published and could you share with us more elements about the way you define “catchment water deficits”. Thanks in advance.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dear Jetske
I very much enjoyed your intervention, particularly the references to rights. In the last few months I've been working on the feasibility and desirability of introducing transferable water rights to the A.K. Basin in Tamil Nadu.
But to go back to the quantity issue, closed basins and adaptive management. I recently published a book (details I can send if you wish) in which I explore a broad theoretical 'model' (all in words!) in which I define 'catchment water deficits', show how the 21st Century will find these deficits to be one of the three main focus areas for policy and research (the others being ii) the hydrocide spinning from water quality change and iii) access to water and sanitation on the part of the dispossessed of the world), and I end by suggesting 12 different approaches to move away from deficit into surplus...or at least slow the rate of approach to deficit.
Many thanks to you, Francois and Domitille.
Steve
Dr. Stephen Merrett
Water Resource Economics and Management
43 Anson Road
London N7 0AR
Tel: +44 (0)20 7609 1013
Fax: +44 (0)20 7609 8648
Email: steve@tufpark.demon.co.uk


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Message 6 : from Stephen Merrett- Saturday 2/4/05

Stephen Merrett completes his previous message (5) with his definition of “catchment water deficit” and other considerations.
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Dear Friends
My definition of a catchment water deficit is:
A catchment water surplus is a situation in which, throughout the course of a specified year, total precipitation in the basin is sufficient to simultaneously satisfy four conditions:
i) Abstraction from the aquifer is maintained at a sustainable rate.
ii) Outstream water fully meets the economic demand for water from households, agriculture, mining, manufacturing, construction and the services sectors.
iii) The basin population’s economic demand for food is fully met from the domestic rainfed and irrigation sectors and/or from food imports financed by the basin’s commodity and service exports and/or from domestic fisheries.
iv) The river’s in stream flows do not fall below defined minima.
When a catchment water surplus does not exist, the river basin is in deficit.
The argument is set out in: S.Merrett, 'The Price of Water: Studies in Water Resource Economics and Management', London, International Water Association, 2005, pp. 70-78.
By the way, my friend Jeroen briefly cross-refers to Malthus (will we never escape him?) and I believe my friend Tony Turton has views on neo-Malthusian approaches.
The core of Mathus's argument is that the rate of growth of population tends to outstrip the rate of growth of food output.
The core of my argument is that, at the basin level, the rate of growth of output and therefore the rate of growth of water use outstrips total precipitation, which (allowing for inter-year variation) is fixed.
The twelve policy instruments I propose are a combination of civil engineering, socio-political, agricultural, demographic, and economic!
The paper concludes with recommendations for parallel research projects to test the theory's i) general hypothesis and ii) causal hypothesis.
That's about all.
Best wishes to you all.
Steve


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Message 7- from Peter Mac Cormick – Wednesday 13/4/2005
Please excuse for the delay in sending out some of the messages– we have been taken in the turmoil of march-April events with CA workshops, and from Easter to the recent Singalese and Tamil new year here in Sri Lanka.

I invite you back online for the discussion, particularly those of you who were away when we started.

Peter Mac Cormick from IWMI has gone through the outline of the basin chapter, and reacts on the four questions asked by Francois Molle. He would later comments on the concepts suggested by Stephen Merrett in his message (6). If anybody needs some clarification he will be happy to add elements.

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1. Most important (under appreciated?) trends or issues with respect to river basin development or management?

I fully agree with the overall position of critically considering the application of the IWRM and would encourage this pragmatic approach, and I think this could be a major contribution of the book. However, there is some confusion in this outline with regards to the definition of IWRM and disconnects in your position. It is most striking between the end of your support message 3 (relatively negative) and the start of support message 4 (quite positive), although message 4 does go on to point out some issues. This is not surprising because although it may be a widely accepted set of principles, I think there is a wide variation of opinions as to the appearance of this beast and just where and how it connects to the practicalities of water management. I would recommend that you agree on a definition of IWRM and what it means in this context.

Perhaps I am missing this in the document you sent out, but I think it is very important to state up front the diversity of basins and the typology. I assume this will be built upon in the book, but it would be productive to have the range of general characteristics that can be found presented early. For instance, the renewable freshwater per capita in Jordan is <150 cubic meters whereas some of the other basins being examined are in excess of 20 times that.

One issue that is worth bringing out is when is a basin organization appropriate? While it is clear that water resources needs to be considered in the basin context, this does not imply that there needs to be a river basin organization or commission established and supported. New institutions need funds to be established and maintained, and such a decision should not be taken lightly where funds are limited. I realize it is not a good example with regards to the availability of fiscal resources, but the basins in the western United States, although they have coordinating arrangements that are established at a basin level (government and civil society), the water resources are generally manage by agencies with an administrative foot print. Your outline gets at this, particularly the poor rate of success with trying to establish basin organizations, but I would encourage you to further expand on it. I do not believe that such organizations are doomed to failure just that we need to be realistic and pragmatic about what is really needed and what can be sustained. Doug Merrey and I expanded on this somewhat in a recent conference paper, which I have attached. A more detailed source is the recent book by Mark Svendsen.

One of the major challenges, as you allude to in support message 4, is how to operationalize the stakeholder—RBO relationship. Although I am somewhat skeptical that this is workable or even desirable in many situations, there are some notable exceptions. I have been particularly struck by the Okavango example where local NGOs with support mainly from SIDA has created some good results.

I suspect this will be covered as the concepts are expanded on, but we need to keep in mind the broader aspects of the evolution of a basin. Not only do we need to consider the evolution of water quantity and the water quality, but also the deterioration of the watershed due to increasing population pressures, moribund economy and relating increasing rates of poverty (see the Awash basin, Ethiopia. Girma Taddesse has submitted various documents to the CA on this area, but not sure if he sent in the one that gives the overview of the basin). This situation is impacting the ecology and exacerbating the flooding problems downstream, and it is removing options with regards to other water related interventions.

2. Impact of basin closure on water users and stakeholders?

I would second Jetske’s point on closed basins. Although I am not sure it is necessarily a static versus dynamic issue, I do find it rather cumbersome, particularly with regards to the temporal variations in the basin. If you do use this concept in the book I would suggest you carefully define it up front, as there seems to be some differences in the literature, and consider how it applies in various parts of the world, including sub-Saharan Africa (see excerpt from McCornick and Merrey below). It would seem incorrect to apply the term to basins where limited infrastructure has been developed and the users are water-short for significant parts of the year. Your support message 1 does get at this, and I would recommend that you make this very clear at the start.

All river basins already have, to some extent, some form of formal and informal governance systems in-place, which are characterized by the particular social, cultural and political setting of that basin (Rogers & Hall, 2003). Each river basin has its own unique physical, social, environmental and economic characteristics, is at its own unique level of development, and has its own unique administrative and institutional arrangements. A few basins are still “open,” i.e., there are still more water resources that have not been developed, but increasing numbers of river basins around the world are “closed,” i.e., have no more water available for development (Molden & Sakthivadivel, 1999). This issue has profound implications for basin governance.

The above said, it is important to qualify that in sub-Saharan Africa the concept of a 'closed' basin is not as pertinent as in other parts of the world. Many basins in this region, such as the Ewaso Njiro North in Kenya and the Ruaha in Tanzania, are experiencing intense competition for resources and are subjected to frequent shortages and in the broad sense of the concept, are “closed”. However, given the low level of physical development of these basins this is occurring at relatively low levels of utilization of the resource. If there was more storage capacity to capture wet season runoff there would be a better capability to meet growing demands and reduce the impacts of the droughts.

Excerpt from McCornick & Merrey (2005).

3. How to consider multiple values, definition of allocation tradeoffs, understanding and consideration of costs and benefits attached to interventions.

At this point I don’t have much specific to contribute here, except that such undertakings require a thorough understanding of the given basin and active participation of stakeholders as much as practical. Neither is a trivial undertaking but undertaking one by itself is unlikely to lead to viable outcomes. The various “vision” type approaches need to be considered under this. In your words, does this allow the stakeholders to mobilize science to legitimize their position?

4. Point missing that need to be developed/illustrated.

Perhaps you should include a section on the political influence in basin development and management. At the end of support message 3 you state that it is the bureaucratic elites who make the choices. Many of the big choices are made above that pay-grade. Also, although negotiations need to be informed by good science, in the end they incorporate many factors, including the politics, and often do not reflect what would be considered the best scientific solution.

Other Points

In support message 1 you mention the closing of the basins as societies develop. What about basins that then start, in some cases reluctantly, opening again?

I don’t fully agree with your main message in point three, especially with regards to control. This needs to be qualified.

On the water rights, it is important to consider the indigenous water rights systems. I believe this will come out of a number of the CA reports.

With the relative complexities of water quantity and water quality, I would recommend you remove the original sentence. They are inter-related and complexity in one creates even more complexity in the other. The Jordan case will clearly demonstrate that.

Perhaps should introduce the international/transboundary basins earlier


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Message 8- from lekan Oyebande- Saturday 16 april 2005
Lekan Oyebande, professor of geography and hydrology at the university of lagos, Nigeria comments on river basin management and its challenges.
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I am Lekan Oyebande, Professor of Geography and Hydrology at the University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria. I have had opportunity to:

(1) write on, and ‘preach’ the appropriateness of river basin as unit for water resources planning and management.
(2) Study all existing and prospective river basin organizations in Africa for UN ECA, Addis Ababa as part of the ARIA programme (as at 2001).

I have just a couple of comments at this stage:

River basin management and its twin concept, IWRM is as varied as the socio-cultural and economic environment, the level of basin degradation, acceptance of water sector reforms propelled by Dublin principles and in the case of transboundary basins and the political will to be subject to a regional power or governance (supranationality).

Therefore, one of the challenges of this exercise will how far the writers are willing to adopt a realistic approach that is relevant and will promote better river basin management not only in developed countries, but also in those developing countries that are still struggling with the very basic needs of life. The most advanced and most dynamic approaches should be compared with the well-tested methods to assess the added value of the former.

River basin management is generally understood to imply the management of water and freshwater ecosystems as well as other the associated land resources.

Transboundary basins are not explicitly mentioned or emphasized, but only implied by the mention of two or three countries. It is however known that the peculiar nature of these basins mark them out as deserving of special mention. Dispute between downstream and upstream riparian can occur within and outside a country, but those between countries are far more disrupting. Examples of Mano River basin in West Africa, and at least one other basin in Central Africa shared by hostile countries, are instructive. Also while supranationality can be taken for granted in regional cooperation among developed countries, long-term mutual suspicion makes such ready acceptance in developing countries difficult.

The subject of allocation of water resources has been rightly emphasized. It is an important and increasing challenge for most developing countries. The traditional categories of multi-dimensional values of water- environmental, social and economic with their sub-categories, are still important. They provide guidance for allocation of water through markets, other means, or combinations of both. Valuation of water, the so-called new economy (J. Thomas (2001) Valuing the costs and benefits of water use, National Land and Water Resources Audit, A program of the Heritage Trust, Australia), aims at improving the economic productivity and distributional equity between various uses. Valuation is relevant at each level of decision making, and basin level is a crucial one. There are examples of unviable basin and sub-basin level projects which have been undertaken without proper valuation particularly in some developing countries. This work hopefully would provide helpful guidelines to guard against such in future.

Thank you.

Lekan
Lekan Oyebande, Ph.D.
Professor (Hydrology and Water Resources), Hydrology Laboratory, Department of Geography, University of Lagos Akoka-Yaba, Lagos 101017, Nigeria. Phone(Mob): +234-8033086714/234-1-7933223; Fax: +234-1-5820429/5851139
Eml: lekan@infoweb.com.ng or lekanoye@hotmail.com

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Message 9- from Will Allen- Friday 15/4/2005
Will Allen from New Zeland comments on the basin chapter outline and the message of Jetske Bouma (3).
It insists on adaptative approached illustrated in the attached document.
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Francois and Domitille,

Thanks to you and the other chapter authors for the opportunity to participate in the discussion.

I appreciated the chapter outline. It highlights the problem well and looks at what happens as a consequence.

I agree with Jetske that one of the main challenges you may wish to address is how to suggest a way to dynamically move forward. This is getting harder, as the number of stakeholders and their concerns seems to grow every year. I think there is often a tendency to suggest that we need to have a high degree of knowledge or control on bio-physical processes, but the relaity is that there will always be more for science to know. Also that decision-makers will make decisions today, with or without science.

I think that adaptive management approaches, particularly those variants that are emerging through the integration of ecological and participatory research approaches are one way forward. Basically this process would look to involve the different stakeholders in an iterative process of sharing their knowledge (science, local and traditional knowledge systems), planning what do do - by science, management and policy - and then implementing and learning the lessons for another cycle. A generic diagram of this is in the attached file.

Best wishes to you all.

regards
Will
=====================================
Will Allen (PhD)
Co-ordinator: Collaborative learning for environmental management
Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research NZ Ltd.
Canterbury Agriculture and Science Centre
PO Box 69, Lincoln, NEW ZEALAND
Tel: +64 3 3256701 ext 3762 Fax: +64 3 3252418
http://www.landcareresearch.co.nz/research/social/
E-mail: allenw@landcareresearch.co.nz

NRM-changelinks: An on-line guide to improving community participation in environment & development
http://nrm-changelinks.net


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Message 10- from Andreas Neef- Saturday 16/4/2005
Andreas Neef working in Chiang Mai university in Thailand comes in the discussion suggesting to consider "water use rights" as one of the under researched area of river basin management, "integrating the diversity of micro-level governance" and look particularly at upstream stakeholders.
(the contributed documents will be available on the CA website - see links at the end of the message).
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I apologize for entering the discussion rather late, but I hope you can still consider my modest contributions to the chapter on “River basin development and management”.

1. I believe that one of the most important, under-appreciated and under-researched issues with respect to river basin management are water use rights. In our study area in Mae Sa watershed, located in the Upper Ping River Basin of northern Thailand, we observe a strong trend towards individualization of water ownership and use rights. Upstream farmers, for example, increasingly store water in small reservoirs while mid- and downstream farmers resort more and more to pumping groundwater from wells on private land. We even found cases where farmers sold water sources, such as a spring, to fellow villagers or outside investors. This challenges the widespread and persistent view of water resources as a collective resource or public good (see Neef et al., 2005; Neef et al., forthcoming).

2. To my view, a major challenge for basin governance (through RBOs and IWRM) is how to integrate the diversity of micro-level governance structures (e.g., small water user groups at the subcatchment level, water committees at village level) into the organizational structure of a River Basin Organization. There is also the question of legitimacy and accountability: Mae Sa watershed is one of the pilot areas for RBO-based water management in northern Thailand. In interviews with community representatives they expressed their frustration about the lack of coordination between different agencies, the multitude of committees and sub-committees that do nothing but talking, and the fact that the committee leaders are mostly appointed by provincial authorities rather than elected by RBO members.

3. I think the chapter should focus more on those stakeholder groups which are the likely losers in new institutional setups. Traditionally, upstream users have been privileged with regard to access to water resources, while often being blamed for water overuse and destruction of head watershed forests.
Their “participation” in RBOs is likely to lead to an increased pressure on changing their farming practices and releasing more water to downstream users. There is a significant danger that negative stereotypes of upstream communities (often members of ethnic minority groups) will guide the discourse in the river basin organizations which might be dominated by downstream interests and powerful elites. This is particularly unfortunate as a joint research with our Thai colleagues at Chiang Mai University suggests that water security of upstream users – measured in terms of (1) share of irrigated land, (2) diversity of access to water sources, and (3) occurrence of water conflicts – is significantly lower compared to downstream farming communities.

4. To the first part of question no. 3 of your introductory message: What are the ways to address multiple values (of water)? I think we still lack understanding of how water users actually value the different dimensions of water resources. We are currently doing a pairwise ranking exercise of water values in several upstream and downstream communities in Mae Sa watershed and are astonished about the attention of villagers given to multiple values of water, such as cultural, religious and ecological values as well as values for future generations. Maybe your statement that the environment and future generations might be the ultimate losers of increased water competition is somewhat over-pessimistic.
In addressing multiple values, there has not been much considerations in most developing countries about rewarding communities financially for their environmental services, such as protecting head watersheds or taking up measures to reduce agrochemical pollution, erosion and sedimentation (the RUPES initiative currently propagated by the World Agroforestry Center is a notable exception).

5. Finally, I would like to comment on the issue of stakeholder participation in RBO and IWRM. In a recent study on “Public participation in water management in northern Thailand”, we found that attitudes of government officers at different hierarchical levels towards participation of local people differ considerably between development-oriented and conservation-oriented agencies, the latter being much more skeptical about local communities’ ability to manage natural resources, and water in particular, in a sustainable way. Conservation-oriented agencies are also more reluctant to release power and fear they are losing their traditional mandate of taking care of the environment in new institutional settings that favor deliberative and participatory processes (Heyd and Neef, 2004). I do not want to advocate a naïve and romanticizing view of local communities working always towards a common goal of sustainable resource management (Neef et al.,2004), but I think it is important to see the potential trade-offs between a one-sided focus on the environment (advocated by conservationist agencies and advocacy groups) and the call for people’s participation and community-based resource management (favored by development agencies and people-centered NGOs).

I hope that you find some of my comments useful for editing the chapter. I attach some of the papers that I mentioned above.

Thanks again for this great initiative and good luck with this endeavor.

Best regards,
Andreas


References cited

HEYD, H. & A. NEEF (2004) Participation in water management. Evidence from the
Mae Sa watershed, northern Thailand. Discussion Paper, Environment and
Production Technology Division, International Food Policy Research Institute
(IFPRI), Washington, DC.

NEEF, A., CHAMSAI, L. & C. SANGKAPITUX (forthcoming) Water tenure in highland
watersheds of northern Thailand: managing legal pluralism and stakeholder
complexity. In: Lebel, L., Jianchu, X. and Contreras, A. (eds.) Institutional
Dynamics and Stasis: how crises alter the way common pool natural resources
are perceived, used and governed in Asia. RCSD Monograph Series, Chiang Mai

NEEF, A., SANGKAPITUX, C., BOLLEN, A., CHAMSAI, L. & ELSTNER, P. (2004) Can
local communities manage water resources sustainably? Evidence from the
northern Thai highlands. Paper presented at the 13th International Soil
Conservation Organization Conference “Conserving Soil and Water for Society:
Sharing solutions” in Brisbane, July 2004.

NEEF, A., ELSTNER, P. SANGKAPITUX, C., CHAMSAI, L., BOLLEN, A. and
KITCHAICHAROEN, J. 2005. Diversity of water management systems in Hmong and
Thai communities in Mae Sa watershed, northern Thailand. Mountain Research and
Development, 25(1), pp. 20-24.


Dr. Andreas Neef
Hohenheim Office, New Building,
Faculty of Agriculture, Chiang Mai University,
Chiang Mai 50200, Thailand
Phone: +66-53-944647
Mobile: +66-1-9513007
Fax: +66-53-893099


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Message 11- from Juan Maria Fornes Azcoiti- Monday 18/4/2005
Juan Maria Fornes Azcoiti comments on the 4 questions put forward by Francois Molle. For him the real issue is poverty and water mismanagement and the sub-issue of groundwater use.
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Dear editorial team:
IMany thanks for including me in the list for feedback on the river basin management theme. It is a useful process and I am glad to be involved in it. Here's a short reply to your four questions:

1) What are the most important (and underappreciated?) trends or issues with respect to river basin development or management?

All these aspects are going to be analysed in NeWater Project ("New Approaches to Adaptive Water Management Under Uncertainty"): Contract Nº 511179 (GOCE) for the period 2005-2008, inside the VI Program of the EU. In this Project are included 43 research institutions of 15 different countries. There are 7 case studies. More information: www.newater.info.

The real issue is poverty and widespread water mismanagement, and the main result of mistaken management is water quality degradation. Every expert knows that groundwater quality degradation or pollution is a more serious problem than surface water pollution. Lundqvist (1998) has defined this degradation as a hydrocide.

2) What is your analysis of the impact of basin closure on water users and stakeholders?

During the last decade the expression water stressed regions has become pervasive in the water resources literature. This usually means that these regions are prone to suffer now or in the near future from serious social and economic problems due to freshwater scarcity. Some authors even insist on the probable outbreak of violent conflicts -water wars- among water stressed regions. The usual threshold used to consider a region under water stress is 1,000 m3/yr per person (UN 1997), but some authors almost double this figure When this ratio is only 500 m3/yr per person the country is considered in a situation of absolute water stress, or beyond the barrier (Seckler et al. 1998, Postel 1999, Cosgrove & Rijsberman 2000).

The journalistic literature on the problems caused by groundwater use is more abundant that the literature on its benefits. It often stresses local problems as if they were general issues. This is mainly a corollarium of the general attitude of the media, as it is described by Lomborg (2001): "It is an often heard cry: global water crisis, the major issue of the 21 century. But it is needlessly rhetorical and intimidating. It is unreasonable to expect that wells are going to run dry. We need better water management, pricing and impact substitution".

3) What are the ways to address multiple values, definition of allocation tradeoffs, understanding and consideration of the distribution of costs and benefits attached to interventions?

The benefits of groundwater use have been pointed out by many authors and are presented in most hydrgeology books (see Todd 1958, Custodio & Llamas 1976, Freeze & Cherry 1979, Fetter 1994). They can be summarised as easy accessibility, great areal distribution, progressive development, low capital intensity, relative low cost, ease of available technology, widespread use by a large number of users, relative resilience to droughts, and the general good chemical quality of water. Groundwaters offers unique opportunities for human development in poor areas (Shah et al. 2000).

Costs of groundwater use, often called problems, can be summarised in the drawdown of groundwater levels and groundwater quality deteroration. This means increased exploitation costs and in some cases loss of well yield, as well as problems for using groundwater as drinking water supply or irrigation source. Collateral problems are linked to land subsidence and in some cases, land collapse (Custodio 2001).

4) What are the points that are missing and you would like to develop/illustrate?

Many problems of groundwater use can be reduced to costs, both direct and indirect, but other problems are much more difficult to measure, especially ecological changes and social values, but their description and consideration is a useful exercise.

I hope that my answers can be useful to you.

Best regards,

Dr. Juan Fornés

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Message 12- from Francois Molle, Flip Wester and Philip Hirsch, Wednesday 20/4/05
Francois Molle, Flip Wester and Philip Hirsch (lead authors of the River basin chapter of the CA) comment on the contributions of the participants and clarify key issues. They invite the participants to react on these points before the 25th of April.
They still welcome the contributions from those of you who did not yet have a chance or the time to share your ideas about what you feel are critical questions for river basin development & management synthesis, as well as the draft outline and the 4 leading questions.
(Links to the webpage are provided at the end of this message)
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Dear all

Many thanks for these thoughts and comments. They prompt a few reactions and clarifications from our side.

• [Jetske] The term ‘closing basin’ is as general (or ‘vague’ if one wishes) as water scarcity: definitely, it is intended to explore temporal, spatial, and social dimensions. We do not feel it is a static concept, since “time” is the x axis…
• When the river is in “deficit” [Stephen’s definition], then the basin is closing (if the deficit is temporary) or closed (the deficit is pervasive) (with the exception of the criteria on full satisfaction of food requirement which lends itself to discussion). Yes [Peter], basin closure is relative to a certain degree of infrastructure (people can suffer from scarcity with abundant runoff to the sea; a basin can be reopened by a new dam or interbasin transfer) but we agree that the two situations should be differentiated.
• Aspects of water security and water rights come under the larger issue of allocation [right systems are one way to allocate]. [Andreas, Jetske] Values [Andreas] are crucial elements of negotiations and decision-making.
• [Jeroen] River basin management, as a conceptual prelude to ‘designing’ RBOs, is indeed a dominant feature of policies which may crowd out other types of institutional building (e.g. polycentric), relying more on socio-political processes. We do intend to show the variety of situations.
• The Malthusian creed of the 90s (a returning beast…) stresses the emergence of conflicts [Jeroen]. We definitely look at the variety of response options, both at the user and state (policy) level (and at how these interact) (see Molle 2003). Ohlsson’s concept of social resource remains vague, however. What governs the existence (or lack) of such resource?
• Typology of river basin [Peter]: indeed we need to characterize basin problems, basin physical characteristics, etc and come up with some distinctions. Per capita scarcity indices are useful but also very misleading (or obvious) and we would like to characterize scarcity by other means.
• International basins [Lekan] will be mentioned with regard to the particular challenges they pose but space constraints do not allow us to fully address the issue.
• Adaptive management approaches [Will, Jetske] provide a framework to addressing “messy” situations where purely rational/deterministic planning approaches are inadequate. They will be discussed as part of the basin governance issue.
• Man-made scarcity [Jetske]: Integrated River Basin Development was already the banner under which massive infrastructure have been developed (see TVA). Clearly, in many basins, infrastructures have outstripped available resources and thus generated a demand that –often- cannot be met. Has IRDB eventually been a good idea? What lessons should we draw?
We invite more comments until the 25th of April. A second round of discussions will take place in July around a draft version of the chapter. We’ll keep you posted in between about what is happening in the CA!
Best wishes
F.Molle, P. Wester, P. Hirsch

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Message 13- from Arjan Ruijs- Friday 22/4/05
Arjan Ruijs has received late the messages on the basin discussions (wrong email!) but he went through the messages sent so far and brings his inputs into the debate, in particular stresses upon what “integrated is” and how integrated management should be, international aspects of river basin management, and the importance of good governance.

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Thanks for the invitation to participate in the discussion on river basin development and management. It’s a nice discussion and the topic chapter promises to become a really nice chapter showing the most relevant issues and possible solutions to improve river basin management.

I’ve got a few comments and issues that need, according to me, somewhat more attention in the entire discussion.

First, I agree with some of the previous participants that a clear definition of IWRM is a necessity. Many people use the term and instead of becoming a relevant and useful concept, it threatens to become an empty bucket that can be used for everything related to water management. More attention should be paid in the literature to giving a clear description of what ‘integrated’ is and how ‘integrated’ management should or can be.

A second issue is that, according to me, much more attention should be paid to the international aspects of river basin management. A couple of hundred rivers worldwide are shared by two or more countries. International law is not of much help in determining which country has water rights and which allocation schedules are reasonable. Many people predict increasing international conflicts over water allocation. Allocation and pollution problems cannot be solved on a national or local level. Still, knowledge is lacking on the factors affecting cooperative or non-cooperative behaviour of nations with regard to international river basin management. Riparian relations are affected by strategic choices with regard to water allocation and water use. Why do some countries deliberately or undeliberately make such strategic choices that international tensions increase whereas others choose for more cooperative attitudes? Which allocation rules are economically and politically feasible and consider equity and environmental and future generations’ water needs? Are side payments a feasible option? How should international river basin organisations be set up, with which policy making possibilities, who should be part of it? How can international agreements on water allocation be monitored? Can issue-linking result in more stable international water allocation agreements? Especially this topic of issue-linking, in which not only water allocation but also other subjects are included in international negotiations, proves to be promising and give countries the possibility to exploit their comparative advantages and reach considerable efficiency gains. In the Europan Union, many unpleasant policies are approved especially because countries know that if they approve this policy, they increase the probability of getting approved policies on other topics. Also on a national or local level, issue-linking has the potential to improve cooperation between stakeholders.

A third issue is that IWRM should pay more attention to the importance of ‘good governance’. As with any development initiative, water management will fail if ‘good governance’ is not present. In case of absence of well functioning and strong governments who have a clear vision and that are supported by qualified and well staffed ministries, initiatives of local stakeholder participiation are doomed to remain short term projects whereas long-term solutions and cooperation is necessary. This argument is in line with the ‘development-oriented’ and ‘conservation-oriented’ agencies in the contribution of Andreas Neef. In case good governance is absent and nepotism or corruption are present in a country or in governmental institutions, the necessary trust to get improved cooperation between stakeholders is absent. Unfortunately, this is still the case in many countries in which water is so scarce that a more integrated management of water resources is important. How good governance can be attained is another question. Probably local initiatives of stakeholder cooperation are one of the means to mobilize civilians to impose authorities to improve their functioning, but this is certainly not one of the objectives of IWRM.

A last issue I’d like to draw the attention to are the expected effects of climate change and the consequences for management and agreements on water allocation. In some parts of the world rainfall is expected to increase whereas in others it will decrease. In most parts of the world, the distribution of rainfall is expected to become more extreme with longer drought-spells and heavier showers. International or national agreements on water allocation should consider this uncertainty and should not be based on too rigid rules. Moreover, in order to reduce the risk of flooding or to increase water storage capacity to cope with longer drough-spells, costly infrastructural programmes are probably necessary. Considering the current resistance to large infrastructural projects in both the developing as the developed world (like dam construction, assigning emergency flooding areas or heightening dykes) this will become a difficult task in the near future. Although decisions on such projects should be based on broad consultation of all stakeholders and a clear analysis of the distributive, social and environmental consequences, weak compromises might not be enough to cope with the uncertainty.

Regards,

Arjan Ruijs

Environmental Economics and Natural Resources Group

Wageningen University, P.O. Box 8130, 6700 EW Wageningen
The Netherlands

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Message 14- from Stephen Merrett- Friday 22/4/05

Stephen Merrett adds elements on his deficit approach – catchment specific and focused on quantity.
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Dear All
Scarcity, stress, closure, deficit. We are all searching for a way to understand catchments in the 21st century when we know they will come under terrific pressure from population and production growth. There's no reason why we should not use more than one concept; the aim is to understand, not to monopolize analysis with one's copyrighted concept.
My deficit approach is catchment specific and limited to quantity. The precipitation within the catchment has to be sufficient to fully meet food requirements (in the way I specify), meet the economic demand for water, and yet for groundwater abstraction not to exceed the sustainable yield and surface water abstraction not to breach the chosen level of environmental needs. There are six redemptive options (rainwater harvesting for example) I suggest that will moderate the situation but not avoid deficit; there are six further redemptive options that can hope to avoid deficit (increased water productivity for example).
Steve

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Message 15- from peter McCornick- Friday 22/4/05
Peter adds a point of clarification on the issue raised by Francois Molle in his message (12).
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Thanks for the feedback. A quick point of clarification. What I was also thinking about with regards to the re-opening was more the case in North America and, I believe, Europe where the river basins management has been adjusted to increase water back to "natural" flows.

Regards

Peter

--
Peter G. McCornick, PhD, PE
International Water Management Institute
PO Box 230610
Centreville, VA 20120, USA

Tel: 202 712 0633

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Message 16- from Francois Molle- Friday 22/4/05

Francois Molle, flip wester and Philip Hirsch propose to stir more discussion before closing temporarily the discussion. Your feedbacks are important.
(you may have already received that message, excuse cross-posting; we experience these days some email distribution failure)
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Dear all

Before closing (temporarily) the discussion we would like to stir some more discussion based on some points raised by earlier messages. The following questions are meant to elicit more interventions from all of you:

1. Is the concept of basin closure clear and how could it be improved? (we recognize its temporal, spatial, and social dimensions). Why is it seen as static [Jetske]?
2. [Jeroen] The RBO model (whatever the RBO’s composition and role) may crowd out other types of institutional building (e.g. polycentric): do we have examples of this?
3. Adaptive management approaches [Will, Jetske]: are they new (in conceptual terms)? Are they really put in practice somewhere? Do they differ from negotiated approaches emphasizing process and social learning?
4. Responses to water-related disasters? Are they a basin issue or should they be handled by national authorities? Do we have examples of ‘local management’ of disaster ? [Jeroen]
5. Peter, could you point to literature on the Okavango?
6. Should we alter the conventional definition of IWRM? (IWRM is a process which promotes the co-ordinated development and management of water, land and related resources, in order to maximize the resultant economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems. GWP)
7. To our NGO colleagues: could you contribute some case studies, literature, on basin (or catchment) dialogues and institutional building?

Best wishes

F.Molle, P. Wester, P. Hirsch

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Message 17- from Nilanjah Gosh- Friday 22/4/05
Nilanjah Gosh comments on the issues raised by Francois Molle (16).
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I would like to respond to some of the issues that you are mentioning.
However, I won't responding in the same order in which the questions have been posed.

The dominant thought process of the last century has been "Scarcity induces Disputes". Eventually, the term "scarcity" became extremely
important. Why is water "scarcity" so very important? Why did it turn out to be a social, economic and political "stressor"? Water is important because of the services that it provides in the form of provisioning services (irrigation for food, drinking water etc.), regulating services (flood control, soil and nutrient management), and cultural services (tourism, nature based recreation etc.). Society or an economy realizes certain values from these services. "Scarcity" prevents the provision of these services, and eventually leads to the loss of the values that could have been generated, had water not been scarce. In my ongoing work, I have referred to this value loss due to scarcity as "scarcity value".

My contention is that a high "scarcity value" induces disputes at the river basin level. If social/economic alternatives are created through which "scarcity value"s can be brought down, dispute intensities at the levels of river basins would also diminish. This is exactly what Israel has done or has been doing in the Jordan-Yarmuk. I have exhibited this contention in the context of two basins (Cauvery River basin in India and Colorado River Basin in US in the interstate context). By addressing scarcity (which responds only to supply development), policy makers have so far subscribed to the old paradigm of water resource development. By addressing "scarcity value" (which responds to the demand side management phenomena like virtual water) policy makers can actually subscribe to IWRM. IWRM at the basin level, according to me, needs to be defined in terms of "scarcity value"s of economic and ecological services of water.

I have developed case studies on basin dialogues and institution building for the Cauvery and the Colorado. Cauvery River Dispute, which is between the South Indian states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, is still a pending case with the Tribunal. It is a classic case where downstream Tamil Nadu had a long history of irrigation development at the basin level, and upstream Karnataka was a late starter in agricultural development in the basin. Within limited water availability, both states have been producing water-consuming staples. The situation has been marred by violent attacks on Tamils residing in Karnataka, movements to the Supreme Court, formation of Tribunals, violating Supreme Court's orders, and what not? Even stakeholders' meetings involved heated discussions.

In the case of the seven states of Colorado, which has been extremely well-documented, formation of the Law of the River of US West is known to all.

Regards,

Nilanjan Ghosh

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Message 18- from Madan Kumar Jha-Monday 25 April 2005
Madan Kumar Jha provides some additional inputs on the ways he sees a synthesis chapter on “river basins”. He invites feedbacks.
We have extended the final date for the discussion up to the Friday 29 at the demand of some participants; please take a few minutes to share your ideas and shape this common synthesis before this date.
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Dear All,

After going through all the discussions until now, I want to provide my opinions about the chapter on integrated river basin management.

My opinions are as follows:

1. I feel that the proposed chapter should be written in an easy-to-understand manner and should be free from jargons as well as non-pragmatic definitions of the terms involved. I believe that the main purpose of the present exercise is to have a document which can address current global water management problems adequately in the face of issues like climate change impacts, growing conflicts over national and international rivers, unabated pollution of water resources, and water-related catastrophes. Thus, the proposed report aims at providing clear-cut, concrete, and techno-economically feasible guidelines for real sustainable management of surface water and groundwater resources both in developing and developed nations.

2. In view of the above facts, it is necessary to adequately address the importance of river-aquifer interaction in IWM. Also, the concepts of 'Total Watershed Management', 'Integrated Watershed Management' and 'Integrated Water Management' should be described clearly so that water managers can adopt IWM principles efficiently in practice.

3. Concrete methodology for evaluating the impacts of climate change on water resources systems should find a place in the proposed report/chapter.

4. The roles of emerging technologies such remote sensing, GPS, GIS, numerical modeling, as well as salient soft computing tools in sustainable water resources management should also be succinctly discussed, if possible.

5. In my opinion, the gap between the researchers/academicians and decision makers is a big hurdle in implementing any new techniques/package and practice for solving current water problems, despite the fact that suitable techniques and adequate knowledge exist. This gap is much wider in developing nations. Poor or no coordination between related departments/agencies is another inter-related problem in implementing the concept of IWM in the field. Again, this problem is much more serious in developing nations. I hope the report will also address these problems and their pragmatic solutions.

6. Last but not the least is the lack of adequate and reliable field data, especially in developing nations. AS a result, some water experts emphasize this vital problem through phrase like "data-hungry world" and/or "data-deficient nations". Of course, in absence of good-quality and sufficient field data, all best management practice oriented modeling studies for a river basin will be doubtful and maybe useless! Therefore, a proper emphasis should also be given on a good data monitoring practice and its usefulness.

I will welcome any comments and/or suggestions on my personal opinions given above.

With best regards,

Madan Kumar Jha.

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Message 19- from Jeroen Warner- Wednesday 27/4/05
Jeroen Warner reacts on the message of Arjan Ruijs (13) about multi-stakeholder debates, Francois molle & co (12 & 16).
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Dear all

Great to see a lot of new postings! Allow to me respond to Arjen Ruijs‘ message (#13) and reply to questions that came up in response to my earlier posting (Message 4).. I hope you will find it useful.

1. I very much liked Arjan Ruijs’s point about linkage (Message 13), from different vantage points. Water disputes are very often not about water itself, but are the focus of underlying, enduring conflict. Elsewhere I have argued that upstream actors use water to get power, while downstream actors use power to get water (J. Warner, Tightropes across the water, MERA Occasional paper no. 17, Amsterdam, March 1993). Focusing on water only forces such issues out of the analysis..

In the practice of organising facilitating stakeholder debate, focusing on water only in multi-stakeholder negotiation, too. Research on multi-stakeholder platforms (www.dow.wau.nl/msp) suggests that water quality and quantity, land ownership, health, socio-economic, housing, issues easily spill over into each other in multi-stakeholder negotiations. There are structural links there that invite issue linkage. Flexible boundary setting therefore seems a sensible principle, though don’t ask me how to do it!

Linkage politics can find your way out of deadlocks, help you break through an impasse. I am not promising that linkage brings sustainable water policies! But from a negotiation perspective, linkage politics allows package deals. It is of course also true that linkage can totally frustrate decision-making, if one actor deliberately makes a concession conditional on impossible-to-achieve concessions in other fields. The point is therefore not whether linkage is good or even effective, it is important to recognise it’s there and not to foreclose it by limiting the space for negotiation to water management – that way, one easily loses the flexibility that is vital to negotiation. I would very much like that message to go into the chapter.

2. Francois Molle, Flip Wester and Phil Hirsch wondered (in Message 12) what governs the existence of social resources? Let me first note that Leif Ohlsson uses the UNDP’s Human Development Index as an indicator of such resources. The question (if I understand it correctly) then becomes: what is it that makes a country invest in hospital beds and education, in water and sanitation services rather than in missiles and mustard gas? HDI does not correlate perfectly with Gross National product, and while we know that democracies usually don’t go to war with each other, but not all democracies score well on the HDI.

Is it a consequence of reflexive modernisation, a seemingly necessary response to the pitfalls of the ‘hydraulic mission’, as Turton and Ohlsson (‘The Turning of the Screw (1999) seem to argue? I am not a strong believer in necessity, and am not decided on what are the drivers of social resources - would be curious to learn what other participants would say on this. Maybe a peace studies expert can help us answer this challenge!

3. Francois Molle (Message 16) asked if water-related disasters are a national or basin issue. I would argue for a basin, provided there is smooth co-ordination with the national level. Despite the best efforts of government agencies and international aid institutions, most disaster management in actual practice is down to locals (for an eye-opening account, read for example F. Christie and J. Hanlon, Mozambique and the Great Flood of 2000, James Currey, Oxford and Indiana University Press, 2001). In many countries, flood relief is centralized and highly bureaucratic. A good example is the cty of Ica, Perú, which experienced an unexpected flood in 1998 and organised its own ‘El Nino platform’, a coalition of neighborhoods organizations, women’s organizations, universities, professionals, private-sector actors, local government..., a case described by Maria Teresa Oré in J. Warner & A. Moreyra (eds.), ‘Conflictos y Participación’, Montevideo: Nordan, 2004 – an English version of the case study is not yet in print but available from me.) Because the centralized response came far too late and was hopelessly inadequate, locals organised disaster relief for citizens whose houses were flooded. Such responses is necessarily makeshift – it would make sense to decentralize resources and mandates to the relevant level (see P. Waalewijn, J. Warner and D. Hilhorst, ‘Public Participation for Disaster-Prone Watersheds: Time for Multi-Stakeholder Platforms?‘; Water and Climate Dialogue Thematic Paper / Disaster Sites No.6, Wageningen University.

Best wishes to all

Jeroen Warner

Co-ordinator, Multi-stakeholder Platforms for Integarted Catchment Management project
Wageningen University
Jeroen.warner@wur.nl

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Message 20- from maria de la fuente- Wednesday 27/4/05
Maria de la Fuente brings in the discussion interesting insights from south america on international river basin management.
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Dear all,

I would like to point out the importance of a multi-disciplinary approach to international river basin management. There is a trend in South America to get most actors involved in the projects. Most of them are just starting so we will look back at results in at least a couple of years.

Getting most actors involved is not an easy task. The first problem is to get groups to understand they do not carry the same weight. I will give and example using the framework of Argentina: you have the State [federal government: you have to include Foreign Affairs Ministry (international relations with riverine States in the basin) ; Interior Ministry -dealing with provinces and towns-; Treasury; Environment & Water resources; Energy -if a dam is projected- and the list goes on]; then you have Provinces government [our Constitution establish their property of the natural resources] and towns [riverine communities]; you have to allow room for environmental groups; other NGO's with major interests / stakes; universities; scientific groups. Within these actors you have to establish a country position; protect your interests and think of the future. Across the basin each State does the same and if things go right you have only one position per country.

Some approaches allow scientists to gather together. If that's the case, I have found out it is easier to reach agreements because sometimes political issues make it harder to move forward when technical and scientific bridges have been built.

With so much going on it takes time to advance -it takes longer if projects have to funded by international donors or organizations- and the focus on what's best for the basin and the people involved -communities; settlements- gets blurred.

From my specific area of knowledge -law- it is a good challenge to sit down with the existing norms and design / adapt a system that unifies the basin (from a geographical point of view); takes into account the specific needs of the community; respects each countries' institutions and traditions and makes room for the future.

I am not disappointed with the road we have travelled since 1969. It is true that we could have gone faster but we are since Rio (1992) moving forward as a region. We have still some differences to overcome but we are negotiating and studying our options. But the most important thing is that we are aware we have to approach the basin management from a multi-disciplinary view point and keep in mind our future.

Other important matter is the international experience from other regions that teaches us which model worked better than other and if that basin has similarities with ours. We have received -usually through academics- visits; lecturers from abroad. We had the chance of travelling and seeing and being taught of other projects. We have sent for example scientists for exchange and learning overseas.

I have to acknowledge that despite our sometimes lack of means I have had great technical support from Argentine professionals in the field of sciences -environmental; water; fisheries; public works among others-. We organized seminars with our neighbours and exchanges to build human relations and share knowledge.

In the process of planning and designing basin management, I believe one should consider a policy on knowledge management -ranging from techinical data sharing among countries to setting up common environmental standards and policies-.

Maria de la Fuente
Argentina

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Message 21- from Andreas Neef- Wednesday 27/4/05
Andreas Neef reacts to the message of the authors (16) on the issue of IWRM and the question on adaptative management approaches.
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Dear authors of the river basin chapter,

Concerning your latest call for comments, I would like to add a few things.

To your question no. 6: Should we alter the conventional definition of IWRM?

To me this definition sounds somewhat like trying to quadruple the circle. Is it really realistic “to maximize economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without compromising sustainability”? I think this definition is too normative and tends to negate that there are potential trade-offs between the goals that need to be negotiated between all concerned stakeholder groups rather than just co-ordinated (by whom?). I think the issue of equity is often overemphasized in the IWRM discourse. Isn’t it just a noble, but utopian dream that everybody will get an ‘equal share’ of water resources? There are certainly groups (such as farmers relying on water for irrigation) who will continue to consume more water than others (e.g. non-farming stakeholders). I believe the issues that matter more in this respect are
‘fairness’ (which is often wrongly equated with ‘equity’) and ‘transparency’ in water governance.

The Aarhus Convention adopted in 1998 at the Fourth Ministerial Conference in the ‘Environment for Europe’ process could be taken as a reference for IWRM. It emphasizes three main pillars for a new relationship between people and governments with regard to environmental management, including water governance: (1) access to information, (2) public participation in decision-making, and (3) access to justice.

To question no. 3: Adaptive management approaches.

To my knowledge, the European Union Water Framework Directive of 2000 puts much emphasis on adaptive management approaches in IWRM. I am wondering whether there should be some reference in the chapter to this rather revolutionary legal framework which shapes the way water will be managed in the years to come within the EU member countries. For a critical review of the potentials and challenges of the EU WFD, there are some very interesting contributions from Timothy Moss (2003 & 2004, see below).

MOSS, Timothy (2003): Solving Problems of 'Fit' at the Expense of Problems of 'Interplay'? The Spatial Reorganisation of Water Management following the EU Water Framework Directive. In: Heiko Breit, Anita Engels, Timothy Moss, Markus Troja (Hg.): How Institutions Change. Perspectives on Social Learning in Global and Local Environmental Contexts. Leske + Budrich, Opladen, 2003, S.85-121

MOSS, Timothy (2004): The Governance of Land Use in River Basins. Prospects for Overcoming Problems of Institutional Interplay with the EU Water Framework Directive. In: Land Use Policy, Vol 21/1, pp. 85-94

To my view, the concept of adaptive management is an attempt to get away from the “normative notion of ‘good governance’ to the practices of ‘actual governance’, and how to get from the latter to the former” (I took this quote from a concept note for a roundtable discussion on “Water, politics and development” funded by German Science Foundation which I attended last week at the Center for Development Research in Bonn).

Hope these comments are of any use for the further discussion.

Kind regards,
Andreas Neef

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Message 22- from Dhruba Pant- Thursday 28/4/05
Dhruba Pant brings an example from NEPAL on the debate for the implementation of IWRM at basin.
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Dear all,

In the context of IWRM, the policy formulation, legislative provisions for regulation and instituional arrangements for operationalisation of policy and legislative provisions are important. Both vertical and horizontal linkages among the various agencies/actors involved in the water management are crucial for the evolvement of IWRM principles where IWRM concept is emerging. For example, the recent formulation of Water Resources Strategy in Nepal recognises the importance of IWRM and advocates for the preparation of National Water Plan to manage water resources based on this principles. However, conceptual clarity of IWRM is still emerging. During a river basin study in Nepal, we found that there exists a gap between policy provisions and the local arrangements in water management.

It was observed that in practice the central level agencies are not that aware of the problems at the local level and more concerned in designing policies which could be applied uniformly across the country. Besides lack of coordination among the central agencies has led to the sector focused policies. IWRM demands coherent policies because the water allocation at local level is dependent on provisions at the policy, legal and institutional level. We find ambiguities at the policy level that are manifested in the legislative provisions also. This is fundamental to the identification of rights, role and delineation of authority among various stakeholders involved in the management of water resources at the local level. The work of the government agencies at the district/basin level are guided by the sectoral policies also. Each of the agencies is competing to achieve their ministries goal. In case of Nepal the elected institutions at the district level are supposed to coordinate the development program at the district level. The Local Governance Act has this provision but the various acts governing the sectoral activities are in contradiction to the provisions in the Local Governance Act. This is not contributing to the creation of enabling environment for the management of water and other resources at the district level. In essence the role of local elected institutions in IWRM is not recognized which is impeding the coordination of natural resources management activities at local level. At present the stakeholders are managing conflicts at the local level through their groups/associations. But the forum for multi stakeholder consultation is lacking at present at the local level. Therefore, to facilitate the implementation of IWRM at the local level, following seems to be necessary conditions.

1. Coherence in the formulation of policies, legislative provisions and creation of appropriate institutional arrangement at the local level.
2. Strengthening of local elected institutions through legislative provisions to enable them to facilitate IWRM at local level.
3. Recognition of the roles and rights of the various users associations and creating a forum for facilitating their consultation process among stakeholders (users group, I/NGOs, government agencies and local elected institutions at the local level). This was found to be effective when a short case study was carried out at the basin level and dialogue was held among stakeholders to identify the mechanism for resolving disputes for water allocation for irrigation and park environment.

Best regards

Dhruba Pant

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Message 23- from Didier Orange- Thursday 28/4/05
Didier Orange from IWMI/IRD in Laos adds his views on river basin management in particular when looking at floodable area.
(sorry for cross-posting)
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Dear all,

My comments will be maybe too late. I just want to give to you some feelings on the river basins management and a comparison with the specificity of the floodable area.

On the base of my experience between water management on large basins (Senegal River, Niger River) and on small watersheds (in Mali then in Vietnam), it seems to me that the concept of basin depends largely of the scale of observations. In fact, if this notion is very useful at the supra-national level, it is no so evident at the level of the farmers' strategies. Often, for the farmers, the decision depends firtsly on the policies taken by the administrative structures (cf the results from MSEC program, IWMI-SEA).

Specific comments on floodable areas
However, in the inner delta of the Niger River, we have shown (Orange et al., 2002) that in floodable area the decision level of farmers depends firstly on the floodable area limits. Indeed, floodable areas represent an exceptional concentration of renewable natural resources. Complex societies have grown in these often exploited areas, societies which depend to a large extent upon the great diversity and temporal variability of natural processes such as flood seasons, or on spatial variability such as geomorphologic units. Floodable areas are therefore home to high concentrations of complex vital phenomena, coupled with the temporary passage of water. They are also inter and intra median spaces: from the inside out, they are interface environments for several ecosystems; they are also zones of exchange and sharing. More than other environments, managing these areas implies a systemic approach requiring both knowledge of the natural environment and the societies living in it, as well as understanding the dynamics of natural processes and user strategies.

The extreme variability of situations implies a multitude of functional management levels at different and often complementary degrees. This complementarity does not, however, mean that they can be easily coordinated since they often obey different logics, be they ecological, historical, administrative, political or other. Moreover, the social aspiration for sustainable growth is coupled with development activities to create (1) a temporal constraint requiring long term vision and (2) an equity constraint implying a wished-for and consensual sharing. Development policies in tropical floodable areas should bring solutions to the two associated problems of, on one hand, competition or even conflict for one single productive tract of land and, on other hand, harmonisation of strategies and decisions on different spatial and temporal levels. Actions to resolve this paradox between ‘integrated management’ and ‘local management’ have yet to be found. In such a process, the social sciences become the permanent motor of, and continually accompany, development activity.

To conclude on the specificity of the floodable area in term of management, we can say that floodable area, as a natural and social system, is a pertinent functional management unit which allows to take into consideration the multitude of actors and the multitude of temporal and spatial levels; the idea of integrated management is therefore perfectly adapted to the sustainable development of this type of ecosystem. It is not so evident for the other kinds of watershed.

Which perspectives for river basin management ?
Very briefly, I list here some evident assertions not always taken into account :
- The idea of sustainability implies the definition of long-term policies while taking scientific evolution into account;
- Sustainability must be associated with an economic approach requiring feasibility studies associated with environmental studies, since the environment comes at a cost;
- Information quality and sharing are primordial: information traffic must be quick and multi-level, and the information itself must be multi-scale, pertinent and user-friendly for all actors;
- Data bases must be frequently renewed due to the extreme variability of the situation. Mutations must be tracked with scientific follow-ups, leading to continual updates which imply surveillance and/or control systems;
- The diversity and complexity of living resources imply a multitude of actors and therefore different scales of understanding: in this context, discussion and negotiation are needed before and to justify decision making;
- Decision-making must be an on-going and pro-active process, development action is organised over the long-term: it therefore depends upon the evolution of knowledge and requires continual research activities;
- On the other hand, research then becomes a development process actor in order to build and analyse prospective developments, as a decision making tool and therefore as a response to the direct demand civil society makes on the scientific community.

To conclude :
For the water management in large river basin, we have to resolve the paradox between 'integrated management' at large level of decision and 'local management' at small level of decision, because the large decisions are taken to be applied by individual (i.e. farmers, workers, local decision-makers...). I think we must learn to communicate differently, notably by increasing the number of support systems which will allow us to increase our levels of intervention and understanding: workshops, meetings, scenarios, simulations, discussions, written reports, radio programmes, etc., are all commonly built links. In this framework, the ‘observatory’ becomes a real communication tool which transmits ‘raises’ information to every user level. Information traffic becomes an integrating agent since it is an element of dialogue. Also, integrated management, which is an on-going, adaptable and participative process, also and above all requires implying all development actors, from the local population right on through to researchers, right from the moment sustainable development objectives begin to be defined. This is necessary so as to be able to define or identify the usage functions expected from the environmental information system under construction.

For the researchers, the objective will then be to place knowledge within the decision-making framework while bringing laymen into the scientific debate. Social demand transforms the content and intervention means of scientific research; in return, researchers will change the way the questions they have been asked were worded. Improving this cycle decreasing response time, better information traffic flow and diversity of actors will lead to better use of living resources and an improvement in knowledge and know-how. These two results will satisfy both researchers and users.

Many of the ideas developped above came from a book in French language :
Orange D., Arfi R., Kuper M., Morand P., Poncet Y., eds, 2002. Gestion intégrée des ressources naturelles en zones inondables tropicales. Colloques et Séminaires, IRD, Paris: 987 p.

Best regards
didier Orange

Dr Didier Orange,
hydrologist and geochemist
IRD-IWMI-NISF

Mail : IRD, Amb. France, 57 Tran Hung Dao, Hanoi , Vietnam
Tel. : +84 (4) 754 32 57 / sec. : +84 (4) 972 06 29
mobile : +84 (9) 0414 0501
Fax : +84 (4) 972 06 30
email : d.orange@cgiar.org
email : orange@ird.fr
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web site : www.iwmi.cgiar.org/msec or www.ur049.ird.fr

NISF National Institute for Soils and Fertilizers, Hanoi, Vietnam
IWMI International Water Management Institute
IRD Institut de Recherche pour le Développement
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