Sri Lanka has no water scarcity within the country, and per capita, water availability is adequate to cater for the country’s estimated peak population. Nevertheless, the frequent variability of spatial and temporal water availability and extreme events have built up a water scarcity in Sri Lanka, which has been observed during the last two to three decades. Therefore, effective and efficient water governance is most important in today’s context, and regular review and amendment of policies, laws, and regulations are crucial to mitigate water scarcity. Although a few attempts were initiated, none of them succeeded. In this study, historical and present water governance mechanisms, including coordinating mechanisms and implementing water management agencies in Sri Lanka, were comprehensively reviewed. Further, the previously proposed water policies, their status and reasons for the failures of policies were discussed. Finally, the formulation of a novel institutional arrangement or altering the existing institutional arrangement with shared data and allocating non-shared responsibilities to each institution is suggested for better water governance in Sri Lanka.

The source-to-sea continuum links the interconnected ecosystems of the water cycle with the associated socioeconomic processes, demands and pressures. Maximizing benefits and protecting existing resources through integrated water management and governance at scale capitalizes on existing institutional and governmental asymmetries by developing an outcome-driven management that builds on existing local, national and transboundary legal frameworks to enhance connectivity. This paper presents how to action this through focusing on three areas of governance: benefit-sharing dialogues for shared visioning; a multi-stakeholder platform to increase coordination in decision-making both up- and downstream; and improved agency coordination between basins and coasts.

A review of global trends in water governance reveals a paradigm dominated by political and institutional change which becomes increasingly aligned with global shifts towards sustainability and also a rapid decline in the hydraulic mission. Closely aligned to these trends, but distinct in its own trajectory, South Africa’s water governance dynamics have evolved through a period of considerable socio-political change marked by inequitable resource allocation and water scarcity. This paper presents the results of a review of water governance research and development (Ramp;D) trends in South Africa, aimed at informing the national funding agency the Water Research Commission (WRC) in its agenda-setting process for future water governance research. Through a bibliometric analysis, a data-mining exercise, and stakeholder consultations, this paper distils four key areas of focus for the future of water governance research in South Africa: (i) that future water governance research needs to be more needs-based, solution-oriented and embedded within real-life contexts; (ii) the need for a paradigm shift in water governance research to a constructive, adaptive and rapid response research agenda in an environment of increasing change and uncertainty; (iii) the need for the enabling environment to be strengthened, including acknowledgement of the role of individuals as agents of change, and the role of WRC in establishing a community of practice for water governance experts that can respond to issues with agility; and (iv) a consolidation of fragmented project-based knowledge to a programmatic approach that builds the pipeline of expertise in the water governance Ramp;D domain.

The Middle East and North Africa region experiences severe socioeconomic and political impacts during droughts and faces increasing drought risk in future climate projections. The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction’s Sendai Framework and the International Drought Management Programme provide a global standard (a norm) to manage droughts through natural hazard risk reduction approaches. We use participatory engagement to evaluate whether norm diffusion has taken place in four countries. Data were collected in interviews, focus groups, workshops, and policy documents. Analysis reveals incomplete norm diffusion; stakeholders subscribe to relevant values, but national policies and implementation do not fully reflect the norm. Process tracing reveals that the availability of drought early warning data is a key barrier to risk reduction. Further more, a drought early warning system would not be feasible or sufficient unless paired with policy measures and financial mechanisms to reduce the political and economic costs of a drought declaration.

This article investigates water security in Nepal from the perspective of the water-energy-agriculture (food) nexus, focusing on pathways to water security that originate in actions and policies related to other sectors. It identifies promoting development of Nepal’s hydropower potential to provide energy for pumping as way to improve water security in agriculture. Renewable groundwater reserves of 1.4 billion cubic meters (BCM), from an estimated available balance of 6.9 BCM, could be pumped to irrigate 613,000 ha of rainfed agricultural land in the Terai plains, with a potential direct economic gain of USD 1.1 billion annually and associated benefits including promotion of energy-based industry, food security and local employment. Governance also plays an important role in addressing water security. We conclude that a nexus-based approach is required for effective water management and governance.

Following the National League for Democracy’s landslide victory in the 2015 national election, Myanmar embarked on a series of legal and political transitions. This paper highlights parallel processes alongside such transitions. Linking land governance with the ongoing peace processes, and taking Karen state as a case study, it brings to light how both processes are in fact closely interlinked. Building on legal pluralism research, we argue that in the context of ethnic states, farmers’ strategies to strengthen their land rights resemble the very notion of state transformation.

India’s agricultural economy has undergone profound transformation in the past 50 years with the rapid spread of groundwater irrigation. The tube well revolution has democratized irrigation, made famines history, helped alleviate agrarian poverty and made India food secure. However, the spread of private tube wells has cannibalized canals and tanks. The large-scale withdrawal of groundwater has caused acute groundwater stress in several parts of the country, leading to adverse environmental and sustainability challenges. Unlike the United States, Australia, and Spain, where tube wells are instruments of wealth creation in industrial agriculture, in India groundwater governance pits livelihoods of the poor against environmental protection. This study explores this unique challenge. It discusses several efforts undertaken to effectively manage groundwater such as direct regulation, indirect levers like energy pricing and rationing, and community-based groundwater governance. It emphasizes on the arrival of solar irrigation and its potential to reform the perverse energy-groundwater nexus. The paper stresses on the need to move away from resource development to resource management mode to solve the groundwater challenge.

Lao People’s Democratic Republic is a poorly developed, surface water-rich country that has traditionally given limited priority to its groundwater resources, which has resulted in a situation of inadequate scientific knowledge, technical capacity, and policies within the sector. This is slowly changing as the role of groundwater in socioeconomic development is better recognized. This chapter presents an overview of the country’s groundwater resources. It examines the state of knowledge, challenges, gaps, and barriers for effective groundwater resource development. It also reviews the scope and degree of success of recent efforts to enhance groundwater governance. Finally, it presents a concise outlook for groundwater governance, including policy, capacity development, and research perspectives.

This working paper was produced under the European Union Horizon 2020 funded AGRUMIG project and traces the impact of Covid-19 on migration trends in seven project countries China, Ethiopia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Morocco, Nepal and Thailand. The context of global migration has changed dramatically due to the coronavirus pandemic. Both within and between countries there has been a substantial curtailment of movement. As a result of multiple lockdowns, economic activity has severely declined and labor markets have ground to a halt, with mass unemployment in industrialized economies looming on the horizon. For both migrant hosting and origin countries some are substantially both this poses a set of complex development challenges. Partners of the AGRUMIG project undertook a rapid review of impacts across project countries, exploring the impacts on rural households but also identifying the persistent desire to migrate in spite of restrictions.

Le Burkina Faso, pays enclave dapos;Afrique de lapos;Ouest, est confronte au defi de la penurie dapos;eau. Le pays sapos;est engage dans des reformes liees a lapos;eau, conformement a l’evolution a l’echelle mondiale en matiere de gestion des ressources en eau, et met en oeuvre la GIRE depuis le debut des annees 2000. Ce document passe en revue l’ensemble de la legislation passee et actuelle sur lapos;eau au Burkina Faso, en mettant particulierement lapos;accent sur lapos;approvisionnement en eau potable et les associations d’usagers de lapos;eau en milieu rural. Le document traite des lois et reglements adoptes entre 1960 et 2014, avec un suivi supplementaire en 2019 pour inclure tout nouveau texte. Il aborde les questions liees a la participation des usagers et a lapos;inclusion des femmes dans les processus decisionnels de lapos;approvisionnement en eau en milieu rural.

There is increasing recognition of the need to bring about changes across the full spectrum of agricultural practices to ensure that, in future, food production systems are more diverse, sustainable and resilient. In this context, the objectives of irrigation need to be much more ambitious, shifting away from simply maximizing crop yields to maximizing net benefits across a range of uses of irrigation water, including ecosystems and nature-based solutions. One important way to achieve this is by better integrating fisheries into the planning, design, construction, operation and management of irrigation systems. Irrigation a major contributor to the Green Revolution has significantly improved agricultural production worldwide, with consequent benefits for food security, livelihoods and poverty alleviation. Today, irrigated agriculture represents about 21 percent of cultivated land, but contributes approximately 40% of the total global crop production. Many governments continue to invest in irrigation as a cornerstone of food security and rural development. Investments in irrigation often represent a pragmatic form of adaptation to changing climatic conditions. This guide focuses on how to sustainably optimize and broaden the range of benefits from irrigation development - not only economic but also social and environmental benefits. It emphasizes the opportunities that fisheries could provide to increase food production and economic returns, enhance livelihoods and public health outcomes, and maintain key ecosystem services. The guide considers possible trade-offs between irrigation and fisheries, and provides recommendations on how these could be minimized.

This chapter outlines legal, institutional and political means to support climate change adaptation and mitigation, to enhance resilience, and to reduce vulnerability through more inclusive water management, especially at the country level.

Water-permit systems are widely used across Africa as a blanket requirement for small and micro irrigation enterprises, as well as large enterprises. The present study aimed to, first, further understand the implications of permit systems for both the most vulnerable and the state, and, second, based on the findings, identify options for pro-poor water legislation that also meet the water governance requirements of the state. The growing recognition of the importance of farmer-led irrigation development for food security across the continent underlines the importance of these questions. Focusing on Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Uganda, Zimbabwe, and other African countries, we found that permit systems criminalized instead of protected the water rights of small-scale farmers. Moreover, little if any attention is paid to the logistical burdens and costs to the state of implementing such systems relative to the intended revenue generation. As many small-scale farmers in Africa were found to operate under customary land and water tenure systems, the study proposes a hybrid system of water rights that formally recognizes such practices, along with the use of permits, including enforcement of conditions for large users, to serve the interests of both the state and small-scale farmers.

The last decade has witnessed rapid progress in energy cooperation between the countries of the BBIN (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal) sub-region. Cooperation has been bilateral, with each of the countries entering into separate energy development and trade agreement with India, broadly similar to the water sector where national governments engage bilaterally on transboundary cooperation and dispute resolution. A more recent wave of electrical grid interconnections and hydro-energy cooperation has emerged with governments increasingly shifting from bilateral to multilateral energy-sharing agreements. This trend holds considerable potential for regional transboundary water governance. Based on documentary and media analysis along with interviews of key BBIN policy-makers, we identify and examine in this paper four factors for future progress: 1) technical cooperation can be extended to information-sharing for policies and institutions to regulate and manage water resources; 2) India must seize the opportunities and benefits of enhanced regional leadership in the region; 3) simultaneous informal discussion and diplomatic negotiation of water, energy and their nexus can provide BBIN countries the opportunity to highlight potential gains of cooperation and interstate interdependencies; and 4) regional cooperation can give a strong impetus to nations for advancing structural reforms, building institutions and capacity, developing a shared knowledge base, bridging infrastructural gaps, attracting private sector participation, and addressing poverty alleviation goals including job creation.

Viewing the Salween River as a transboundary commons, this paper illustrates how diverse state and non-state actors and institutions in hybrid and multi-scaled networks have influenced water governance in general, and large dam decision-making processes in particular. Putting power relations at the centre of this analysis and drawing on the conceptual lenses of hybrid governance and critical institutionalism, we show the complexity of the fragmented processes through which decisions have been arrived at, and their implications. In the context of highly asymmetrical power relations throughout the basin, and the absence of an intergovernmental agreement to date, we argue that hybrid networks of state and non-state actors could be strategically engaged to connect parallel and fragmented decision-making landscapes with a goal of inclusively institutionalising the transboundary commons and maintaining connected local commons throughout the basin, foregrounding a concern for ecological and social justice.

Motivation: Power relations, and the politics shaping and reshaping them, are key to determining influence and outcomes in water governance. But current discourse on water governance tends to present decision-making as neutral and technical unaffected by political influences. Purpose: Taking Nepal as a case, this article examines the close interlinkages between bureaucratic and political competition that indirectly influence decisions and outcomes on water governance, while placing this within the context of state transformation. Approach and Methods: An in-depth case study examines the interactions of politicians and bureaucrats shaping decisions on water governance. It draws on semi-structured interviews and power-mapping to reveal insights from key stakeholders with decision-making power in national management of water resources. Findings: Political competition drives the country’s development agenda and planning, resulting in fragmented development planning. It works in tandem with the prevailing bureaucratic competition in water resources management. It highlights the need to link the discourse and analysis water governance with processes of state transformation. The current fragmented development planning processes could serve as entry points for civil society groups and the wider society to convey their voice and exert their influence. Policy implications: Following federalism, the political transfer of power and decision-making, to achieve political representation and social justice, rests with locally elected governing bodies. This coincides with the government’s push to manage water resources through river basin planning. There is a need for greater participation from the local governing bodies and understanding of politics and power shape water governance.

This paper highlights how farmers in a northern Lao village transformed their customary land rights in the face of incoherent overlapping state territorialization attempts into a territorial strategy to secure their land tenure. By planting rubber, some villagers have engaged in a crop boom to lay claim to land which has recently been zoned for upland rice cultivation (and conservation) as part of a state-led land use planning initiative. We show how internal resettlement, ethnic division and the influx of commercial agriculture in the Lao uplands intersect in a novel land use planning process and predetermine the plan’s actual significance.

The world is not on track to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 6 on clean water and sanitation by 2030. We urge a rapid change of the economics, engineering and management frameworks that guided water policy and investments in the past in order to address the water challenges of our time.

Increasing demands for energy to boost the Mekong economies have attracted the keen interest of riparian countries for hydropower development. This is evidenced by extensive investment in hydropower projects across the region over the last few decades. Drawing on interviews with key stakeholders, including officials from Ministry of Energy and Mines, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, private sector actors, civil society organisations and academics, as well as secondary data from public and policy resources, this paper aims to examine how the government of Laos’ (GoL) decisions in hydropower development are influenced by regional energy dynamics, and how these shape the country’s future energy development. The paper argues that the GoL’s decisions on hydropower development are highly dilemmatic, given the current limited institutional capacity in hydropower governance and the accelerating evolution of alternative energy in neighbouring countries. While uncertainty in power markets is recognised, this places greater pressure on new hydropower projects as to how much power could be sufficiently produced and exported. The paper calls for GoL’s policy considerations on the development and planning of alternative energy to secure the sustainable and equitable use of water resources as stipulated in the 1995 Mekong Agreement.

Faced with severe groundwater depletion, many governments have opted to increase the power of the state. Despite calls for more inclusive governance and a role for groundwater users, modes of governance have tended to continue to rely on a diversity of policy tools and state-run strategies in the attempt to control groundwater (over)abstraction. Yet, around the world, the performance of state-centered governance has remained dismal. Beyond common difficulties in terms of data and financial or human resources, this article analyzes in greater depth the limited effectiveness of state groundwater policies that has been observed, emphasizing its political ramifications. The various aspects of weak monitoring and enforcement, as well as of the infamous “lack of political will,” are considered from the perspective of the political economy of groundwater economies. Cases of relative success are then used to identify favorable drivers and contexts for effective state-centered groundwater governance.

Land tenure, or access and rights to land, is essential to sustain people’s livelihoods. This paper looks at how farm households perceive land tenure (in)security in relation to food (in)security, and how these perceptions evolve throughout different policy periods in Laos. The paper highlights the centrality of farmers’ strategies in configuring the dynamic relationships between tenure (in)security and food (in)security, by demonstrating how farmers’ perceived and de facto land tenure insecurity shapes their decisions to diversify livelihood options to ensure food security. While the paper’s key findings reveal the close interlinkages between land tenure (in) security and food (in)security, we argue that the first does not automatically result in the latter. In contrast, we show how perceived and de-facto land tenure insecurity pushes farmers to explore alternative strategies and avenues to ensure food supply, through farm and non-farm employment. From a policy perspective, the paper highlights the need to put people’s livelihoods at the center of land governance, thus moving beyond the current positioning of land as merely a means for agricultural production or environmental conservation.

With decreasing aquifer levels, increasing groundwater pollution, inequitable access, and generally poor management outcomes, better groundwater governance has been put forward as a recipe to address these challenges worldwide. Existing recommendations focus on improved legal frameworks, monitoring and control of access and abstraction through permits or formal rights. In addition, decentralized water management, enforcement of regulations, and supply-side technological solutions are seen as cornerstone components of good groundwater governance systems. However, until now, these approaches have generally failed to reconcile the fundamental dynamics and properties of groundwater as a natural resource and of governance as a social and political phenomenon. This has caused a disregard for local to planetary boundaries, power dynamics, and intra- and intergenerational inequalities in access to benefits from groundwater. As the current general notion of good groundwater governance is limited, solutions put forward are also partial and do not encompass the wider challenges affecting groundwater governance, in effect replacing sustainable management goals and policy for governance as a process. This paper takes a particular look at the Middle East and North Africa and agricultural groundwater use for irrigation to constructively redefine groundwater governance and fully address the multilayered and multifaceted core challenges of groundwater governance. Equally, the paper puts forward a new conceptual thinking that will help support the effective development of governance-based solutions to achieve sustainable, socially acceptable, resilient and equitable resource use.

Groundwater governance has become an intractable policy issue, which has many implications for the living standards and well-being of millions of rural poor in South Asia. Groundwater governance is complex as it is influenced by various hydrogeological, sociopolitical and socioeconomic factors. Unregulated groundwater extraction rates in South Asia have depleted the aquifers causing a raft of socioeconomic, environmental and human health problems. This paper analyzes de facto rights in groundwater markets and other emerging ‘groundwater-sharing institutional arrangements’ in India. Using a multi-dimensional property rights model, the paper decomposes de facto groundwater rights while drawing insights and broad policy lessons. The findings indicate that there is much scope for enhancing the ‘small group groundwater sharing’ governed by social regulatory measures. Moreover, distortionary subsidies for agriculture in general and groundwater development, in particular, have had an adverse impact of the resource use and merit further attention.

Solar-powered irrigation pumps (SPIPs) have been promoted in the Eastern Gangetic Plains (EGP) in recent decades, but rates of adoption are low. This case study assesses the evidence from several solar pump business models being adopted in parts of the EGP, particularly eastern Nepal and northern India, and explores how different models perform in various contexts. It documents lessons for increasing farmers’ resilience to droughts through better groundwater use by promotion of SPIPs. Groundwater access for agriculture in the past was dependent on diesel and electric pumps, respectively constrained by costs and reliability of energy. Both government and nongovernment agencies have promoted SPIPs in the Ganges basin for irrigation and drinking purposes. SPIPs receive different levels of subsidies across countries and states in the region to facilitate adoption and ensure continuous and timely irrigation, which particularly benefits small and marginal farmers. Because the EGP faces variability in water availability, the SPIPs could help in building drought resilience. However, because low operating costs for SPIPs does little to incentivize farmers to use water efficiently, one critical question is how to balance equitable access to SPIPs while ensuring groundwater overdraft is not perpetuated. Farmers’ awareness of efficient water management options is crucial to avoid overextraction of groundwater.

This brief assesses the current state of migration-related policies in Ethiopia, and provides some early recommendations and policy pointers based on work carried out under the AGRUMIG project. In Ethiopia, the scale of migration and its impacts on rural and urban transformations are underestimated and probably increasing. There is a lack of a coherent national migration policy in the country, which is a potential development hindrance. Establishing a national migration policy and improving bilateral arrangements with receiving countries could help Ethiopia reap greater positive impacts from migration and remittance income, including assisting in crucial processes of social transformation in rural areas.

The coastal region of Bangladesh is prone to natural disasters and these events are expected to worsen as a result of climate change. Combined with anthropogenic factors, these events challenge livelihood opportunities, especially crop production. Waterlogging, tidal activity and the lack of proper drainage facilities are major constraints to agricultural production in these areas. The CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) tested, at pilot scale, the combination of innovative agricultural technologies with improved water management to overcome these challenges. This report assesses this intervention by observing the effects, measuring the short-term impacts and understanding the perceptions. The results highlight the need to integrate the interventions into the local context, and acknowledge that institutions and markets need to mature to harness the benefits from innovations. It also underlines the potential of multi-scale interventions combining plot-level and farmer-led innovations, community management and rehabilitation of large schemes.

Water security has emerged in the 21st century as a powerful construct to frame the water objectives and goals of human society and to support and guide local to global water policy and management. Water security can be described as the fundamental societal goal of water policy and management. This article reviews the concept of water security, explaining the differences between water security and other approaches used to conceptualize the water-related challenges facing society and ecosystems and describing some of the actions needed to achieve water security. Achieving water security requires addressing two fundamental challenges at all scales: enhancing water’s productive contributions to human and ecosystems’ well-being, livelihoods and development, and minimizing water’s destructive impacts on societies, economies, and ecosystems resulting, for example, from too much (flood), too little (drought) or poor quality (polluted) water.

The increasing demand for water, energy and food, and the interdependence of these systems could lead to potential human conflict in the future. This was seen in the food crisis of 2008, which stirred a renewed interest in taking a quot;systemsquot; approach to managing resources. The initial flurry of activities led to many nexus frameworks, but there remains a gap between theory and its implementation. This paper tries to look at various frameworks and unpacks the concept of nexus in order to develop matrices to help quantify and understand the interlinkages between the nexus systems. It suggests multi-level and multi-system indices to measure the health of nexus systems and to identify the weak links. It is hoped that such frameworks can be used at country level, and eventually be used to measure and rank countries on the health of their systems. The paper suggests a questionnaire that can be used (after modifying for local conditions) to collect country-level institutional and political-economy data (which is difficult to get from online resources) to be used in the framework.

This report builds on prior work to provide a new, comprehensive, and balanced view of water security in Pakistan, stressing the importance of the diverse social, environmental, and economic outcomes from water. The report highlights the complex water issues that Pakistan must tackle to improve water security and sheds new light on conventional assumptions around water. It seeks to elevate water security as an issue critical for national development. The report assesses current water security and identifies important water-related challenges that may hinder progress in economic and human development. It identifies unmitigated water-related risks, as well as opportunities where water can contribute to economic growth and poverty reduction. The report analyzes how the performance and architecture of the water sector are related to broader economic, social, and environmental outcomes. It models alternative economic trajectories to identify where intervention can lead to a more water-secure future. A consideration of water sector architecture and performance and how these determine outcome leads to recommendations for improving aspects of sector performance and adjusting sector architecture for better outcomes. The sector performance analysis considers (a) management of the water resource, (b) delivery of water services, and (c) mitigation of water-related risks. The description of sector architecture considers water governance, infrastructure, and financing.

The Arab region needs a new generation of policies and investments in agricultural water. Agricultural water management has always posed challenges and opportunities in the Arab world. However, unprecedented and accelerating drivers such as climate change, population growth, and land degradation make agricultural water management a more urgent priority than ever before. In addition, as part of the 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development, Arab countries have committed to work towards an ambitious set of development targets, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Unless the right policies and investments are put in place, it will be difficult to achieve the SDGs, including ending hunger and providing clean water and sanitation for all. This paper is part of an ongoing collaboration between the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Water Management Institute to foster dialogue on agricultural water policies and investments in the context of the FAO led Regional Water Scarcity initiative. The purpose of the paper is to frame the key challenges and opportunities in the sector including emerging innovations in digital agriculture, water accounting, water supply and wastewater reuse and to lay out broad strategic directions for action.

The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development promises to achieve change in almost every aspect of life on Earth. Encompassing 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets, the Agenda marks the first time in history when all nations have agreed on how to chart their future. The SDGs are not just a global reporting exercise, however, but rather involve a global program that embraces country-led efforts. Guided by the ideas contained in the 2030 Agenda, each nation must seek to become more prosperous and sustainable, while contributing to the global effort at the same time. If all the countries achieve this, we will have a sustainable planet and a secure future for all. This document offers guidance on how developing countries can adapt the SDGs to their own contexts and priorities. It indicates important areas for developing countries to consider when creating their own program to achieve the SDGs, and provides examples of success to demonstrate concrete possibilities for progress.

Despite frequent calls for transformative approaches for engaging in agrarian change and water governance, we observe little change in everyday development and research praxis. Empirical studies on transformative engagements with gender relations among smallscale or tenant farmers and water user groups are particularly rare. We explore transformative engagements through an approach based on critical pedagogy (Freire, 1996) and transformative practice (Leder, 2018). We examine opportunities to promote empathy and critical consciousness on gender norms, roles and relations in agriculture and resource management. We developed and piloted an innovative “Participatory Gender Training for Community Groups” as part of two internationally funded water security projects. The training consists of three activities and three discussions to reflect on gender roles in families, communities and agriculture, to discuss the gendered division of labour and changing gender relations over time and space, and to create empathy and resolve conflicts through a bargaining role play with switched genders. The approach was implemented in twelve villages across four districts in Nepal and India (Bihar, West Bengal). Our results show how the training methods can provide an open space to discuss local gender roles within households, agriculture and natural resource management. Discussing own gender norms promotes critical consciousness that gender norms are socially constructed and change with age, class, caste and material and structural constraints such as limited access to water and land. The activities stimulated enthusiasm and inspiration to reflect on possible change towards more equal labor division and empathy towards those with weaker bargaining power. Facilitators have the most important role in transformative engagements and need to be trained to reinterpret training principles in local contexts, and to apply facilitation skills to focus on transforming rather than reproducing gender norms. We argue that the gender training methods can initiate transformative practice with the gender-water-agriculture nexus by raising critical consciousness of farmers, community mobilisers, and project staff on possibilities of social change “in situ”.

This paper reexamines how local governments exercised the legal powers related to their official rights and duties to manage the impacts of both large-scale mining (LSM) and artisanal small-scale mining (ASM) activities, and how local households perceived resource changes and what strategies they have adopted to adapt their livelihoods based on a case study of the Phu-Hae area, in Xieng Khouang province of northern Lao PDR. It reveals that local government agencies have insufficient capacity to exercise their legal powers to protect natural resources and local livelihoods, partly as a result of weak governance mechanisms. The impacts from LSM and ASM had degraded natural resources and changed local livelihood strategies, impacting particularly the poorer households and women who perceived ASM as a means to increase income and sustain precarious livelihoods, which was often as the expense of the environment and their health. It highlights the need to strengthen capacity to local government and technical training targeted at farming and non-farming livelihood activities for the local community as a way of facilitating alternative income sources for poor households involved with artisanal mining.

River flows connect people, places, and other forms of life, inspiring and sustaining diverse cultural beliefs, values, and ways of life. The concept of environmental flows provides a framework for improving understanding of relationships between river flows and people, and for supporting those that are mutually beneficial. Nevertheless, most approaches to determining environmental flows remain grounded in the biophysical sciences. The newly revised Brisbane Declaration and Global Action Agenda on Environmental Flows (2018) represents a new phase in environmental flow science and an opportunity to better consider the co-constitution of river flows, ecosystems, and society, and to more explicitly incorporate these relationships into river management. We synthesize understanding of relationships between people and rivers as conceived under the renewed definition of environmental flows. We present case studies from Honduras, India, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia that illustrate multidisciplinary, collaborative efforts where recognizing and meeting diverse flow needs of human populations was central to establishing environmental flow recommendations. We also review a small body of literature to highlight examples of the diversity and interdependencies of human-flow relationshipssuch as the linkages between river flow and human well-being, spiritual needs, cultural identity, and sense of placethat are typically overlooked when environmental flows are assessed and negotiated. Finally, we call for scientists and water managers to recognize the diversity of ways of knowing, relating to, and utilizing rivers, and to place this recognition at the center of future environmental flow assessments.

State control of land plays a critical role in producing land dispossession throughout the Global South. In Myanmar, the state’s approach towards territorial expansion has driven the country’s system of land governance, resulting in widespread and systemic land grabbing. This article investigates ongoing land governance reforms as key terrains for contesting such abuses of power. Employing a relational land governance approach, we view reform processes as shaped by changing power-laden social relations among government, civil society, and international donor actors. Legal and regulatory reforms in Myanmar potentially act as sites of meaningful social change but in practice tend to maintain significant limitations in altering governance dynamics. Civil society organizations and their alliances in Myanmar have played an important role in opening up policy processes to a broader group of political actors. Yet, policies and legal frameworks still are often captured by elite actors, becoming trapped in path dependent power relations.

This paper examines land use planning processes in Laos, particularly how they are shaped and reshaped by key actors’ interests and strategies across scales and how they are closely interlinked with state logics of territorialization. It critiques dominant perspectives that view land use planning as a tool for bridging policy and institutional divides to generate holistic land governance. Instead, it presents land use planning as a function of power and a contested arena of power struggle, driven primarily by the development targets of sectoral ministries and the interests of powerful local actors. We show how bureaucratic competition and sectoral fragmentation prevail directly within Laos’s National Land Master Plan formulation process. The paper shows how the logics of land governance in Laos are comprised of a disjuncture between national and local land use planning processes and, a disconnect between formal land use planning and actual land use across scales.

Understanding the gender dimensions of community-based groundwater governance is important because men and women differ in their need for and having access to groundwater, and their participation in the development, management and monitoring of the resource. The leading role played by women in obtaining and safeguarding water is not usually reflected in the institutional arrangements for water management. Addressing this gender inequality could lead to the equal participation of men and women in monitoring and sustainable management of groundwater, and women’s empowerment. This paper explores gender aspects of community-based groundwater governance in Dangeshta and Farawocha kebeles in Dangila and Boloso Bombe woredas, respectively, in Ethiopia. The findings suggest that women place a high value on groundwater and could be motivated to play a greater role in governance of the resource. However, the constraints they face in participating in groundwater development and management, particularly exclusion from decision-making, suggest that their effective participation and leadership could be significantly curtailed without specific interventions. Indeed, this is reflected in women’s willingness to participate in groundwater monitoring, as well as men’s reluctance to allow their wives to participate. This is in contrast to a high number of men willing to participate. Citizen science as an entry point for community-based groundwater governance relies on (i) the active involvement of myriad actors (including men and women citizens) whose actions interact with the hydrological processes; and (ii) volunteer interest (i.e., willingness to participate). A gender-sensitive approach to programs, gender awareness training, and partnerships with organizations working for women’s empowerment, natural resource management and adult literacy are recommended to support a citizen science approach to groundwater monitoring.

Building on existing literature and the analysis of a portfolio of development projects (past and under implementation), this paper reviews the evolution of water user associations (WUAs) in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), reflecting on the conceptualization of how they operate, and the promised outcomes related to irrigation development, and the efficient and effective delivery of irrigation services. It also moves one step further from existing studies on WUAs, postulating that additional reflection is needed to understand the limitations of WUAs and proposes alternative, viable and context-based adapted models. This need is particularly strong in SSA where irrigation is incipient, and governments and donors are still consolidating their development approaches. Whereas a growing body of international literature takes into account the sociopolitical context of decentralized irrigation management, practical indication on what remains to be done to address the various limitations found in SSA stays meagre and scattered. The objective of this paper is not to challenge the myth of WUAs but to learn how to better deliver on the promised outcomes. The underlying message is that, if the SSA region is to be made water and food secure while respecting resource sustainability, community development, livelihoods and equality of resource access, the recurrent templates for WUA management and governance need to be revisited and adapted to local needs.

In recent decades, many countries in sub-Saharan Africa have pursued national water permit systems, derived from the colonial era and reinforced by “global best practice.” These systems have proved logistically impossible to manage and have worsened inequality in water access. A new study conducted by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and Pegasys Institute, with support from the UK government, traces the origins of these systems, and describes their implementation and consequences for rural smallholders in five countries Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe. The authors of this report propose a hybrid water use rights system to decolonize Africa’s water law, lighten the administrative burden on the state and make legal access to water more equitable. This would strengthen smallholder irrigation, which is vital for boosting Africa’s food production and making it more resilient in the face of worsening drought.

The karst dolomite aquifers of the North West Province in South Africa are among the most important in the nation. They serve as key water sources for municipal water supply and irrigation, and are also ecologically important in supplying springs that feed important rivers. Over-abstraction and consequent falling groundwater levels jeopardize water supply security, with increasing costs and risks to sustainable development. Better aquifer and conjunctive water management would improve water supply security and lower costs, with wider benefits to many sectors. This GRIPP Case Profile discusses these challenges and management experiences through the examples of two representative North West dolomite aquifers - the Grootfontein and Steenkoppies aquifers. These aquifers are relatively well understood hydrogeologically, and modern South African water law mandates sustainable use. Yet, underperforming collaboration between stakeholders using and managing the aquifers at various levels, and poor support from the national authority have led to an entrenched suboptimal equilibrium where stakeholders are reluctant to change behavior, despite awareness of the negative outcomes. Neither prescriptive local nor top-down organization has been effective. The synthesis argues for prioritized input from a legally mandated and capacitated convening authority (the national Department of Water and Sanitation) to catalyze and support effective local stakeholder groups and other governance initiatives. It calls for a renewed effort by this convening authority and other stakeholders, emphasizing mutually beneficial or “win-win” outcomes.

South Asiaapos;s groundwater economy stands at the threshold of a revolution in adoption of solar irrigation pumps (SIPs). This has potential to unlock the regionapos;s perverse energy-groundwater nexus. In much of South Asia, the price of energy used in irrigation, the only surrogate for water price, fails to signal the abundance or scarcity of groundwater, resulting in myriad distortions. We analyse these in South Asiaapos;s eight distinct energy-groundwater interaction settings. We then explore SIP promotion policies to ease pressure on scarce groundwater in South Asiaapos;s apos;groundwater depletion zoneapos; and accelerate groundwater irrigation for poverty reduction in its apos;groundwater abundance zoneapos;.

This paper assesses a case of co-management of groundwater between the state of Texas, pushing for the rationalisation of groundwater management, and local (mainly farming) communities organised in Groundwater Conservation Districts (GCDs), which are protective of their private groundwater rights. We first describe the main legal and policy steps that have shaped this relationship. The article focuses on the Texan portion of the Ogallala Aquifer in the High Plains aquifer system an almost non-renewable system covering 90,000 km2 and providing 95% of the irrigation needs in northern Texas. With this example, we further highlight the strategies of both parties, the different political, administrative, legal and regulatory complexities of the struggle around the definition of GCD-level aquifer management rules (the so-called apos;Desired Future Conditionsapos;). We end by reflecting on the power balance that has resulted from successive adjustments to a co-management form of governance, the advantages and disadvantages of a multi-layered state water governance system, and whether the de facto apos;managed depletionapos; of the Ogallala Aquifer in Texas should be seen as an achievement or a failure.

Study region : Transboundary aquifers (TBAs) of Africa.; Study focus: Review of work on TBAs in Africa, including an overview of assessments and management efforts that have taken place over the last half century.; New hydrological insights : Seventy-two TBAs have been mapped in Africa. They underlie 40% of the continent, where 33% of the population lives, often in arid or semi-arid regions. TBA inventories have progressed since 2000 and remain work in progress. Despite their importance only eleven TBAs have been subjected to more detailed studies. Cooperation has been formalised for seven TBAs. Most of these TBAs are in North Africa and the Sahel. The recent global Transboundary Waters Assessment Programme compiled information at the national level to describe TBAs in terms of key indicators related to the water resource, socio-economic, and legal and institutional conditions. Availability of data at national level is low, hampering regional assessment. Comparing indicators, from questionnaire surveys, with those from a global water-use model showed variable levels of agreement, calling for further research. Reports on agreements scoping TBA management, indicate that this may be dealt with within international river/lake agreements, but reported inconsistencies between TBA sharing countries also indicate that implementation is limited. Increasing awareness and support to joint TBA management is noticeable amongst international organisations. However, such cooperation requires long-term commitment to produce impacts at the local level.

Land grabbing has transformed rural environments across the global South, generating resistance or political reactions “from below”. In authoritarian countries like Laos, where resource investments are coercively developed and insulated from political dissent, resistance appears absent at first glance. Yet, it is occurring under the radar, largely outside transnational activist networks. In this article, we examine how resistance can protect access to rural lands in contexts where it is heavily repressed. Resistance here occurs with, rather than against the state by foregrounding the contradictions of land use and ownership within state spaces, such as competing goals of large-scale industrial plantations versus smallholder agriculture and national forest conservation. Such contradictions are engaged by using historical, place-based political connections to exploit the scalar frictions of a fragmented state and occupying plantation clearance sites to highlight contested lands in situ. Nonetheless, such strategies remain spatially and socially uneven amongst the Lao peasantry.

This article presents a pilot and baseline African Green Growth Index (AGGI). The work is premised on the importance of Africa implementing green growth strategies. Baseline indicators allow countries to monitor progress towards green growth transition. The AGGI incorporates 48 indicators applied to 22 countries that had the requisite data. What emerges is that 18 out of the 22 African countries sampled scored 50 percentage points and above. The countries scoring below this threshold were: Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria and South Africa. The top five countries on the AGGI (as ranked from 1-5) were: Namibia, Zambia, Ghana, Tanzania and Togo. The authors recommend that for wider acceptance across the continent, the AGGI should work towards incorporating all 54 nations.

Degradation of freshwater ecosystems and the services they provide is a primary cause of increasing water insecurity, raising the need for integrated solutions to freshwater management. While methods for characterizing the multi-faceted challenges of managing freshwater ecosystems abound, they tend to emphasize either social or ecological dimensions and fall short of being truly integrative. This paper suggests that management for sustainability of freshwater systems needs to consider the linkages between human water uses, freshwater ecosystems and governance. We present a conceptualization of freshwater resources as part of an integrated social-ecological system and propose a set of corresponding indicators to monitor freshwater ecosystem health and to highlight priorities for management. We demonstrate an application of this new framework the Freshwater Health Index (FHI) in the Dongjiang River Basin in southern China, where stakeholders are addressing multiple and conflicting freshwater demands. By combining empirical and modeled datasets with surveys to gauge stakeholdersapos; preferences and elicit expert information about governance mechanisms, the FHI helps stakeholders understand the status of freshwater ecosystems in their basin, how ecosystems are being manipulated to enhance or decrease water-related services, and how well the existing water resource management regime is equipped to govern these dynamics over time. This framework helps to operationalize a truly integrated approach to water resource management by recognizing the interplay between governance, stakeholders, freshwater ecosystems and the services they provide.

The purpose of this Guide is to provide an overview of the major considerations and steps to be followed in organizing new irrigation farmers’ organizations or Irrigation Water Users’ Associations (IWUAs). The Guide should support developing or strengthening a specialized formal IWUA for implementing a program aimed at creating or improving a collectively managed irrigation scheme. The Guide is focused on programs involving construction of new irrigation schemes; rehabilitation, modernization or revitalization of existing irrigation schemes; or supporting farmers wishing to improve the performance of their irrigation scheme. While based on extensive research and evidence, the intended audience for this Guide is the set of practitioners responsible for planning and implementing communal irrigation programs. This may include managers of publicly or externally supported projects, government agricultural and irrigation officials, private investments and nongovernmental organizations.; The Guide draws on over 50 years of experience organizing farmers to participate in the creation, improvement and management of both farmer-managed and government-managed irrigation schemes. The major lesson learned is that investing in the “software” component training and institutional development of irrigation is critical for success. If the IWUA is weak or ineffective, the scheme will fail to achieve its potential, no matter how good the hardware is.; The Guide seeks to avoid imposing a specific organizational design for what an institution should look like and do, but suggests a process organized around six ‘steps’ to be followed, more or less in sequence. Using these steps creatively as a guideline, not as a recipe to be followed precisely, will increase the likelihood that irrigation investments achieve the desired project goals.

Overall high annual precipitation in Sri Lanka belies significant spatial and temporal variation in surface water availability. The ‘dry zone’ comprising two-third of Sri Lanka’s land area receives significantly less rainfall and has high precipitation rates and a five-month dry season. Nevertheless, these regions account for the majority of rice production, the staple crop, thanks largely to the ancient hydraulic civilization based on networks of rainwater harvesting (irrigation) tanks. This manipulation of surface water resources including modern surface irrigation schemes continues to form the backbone of dry zone farming. Groundwater irrigation has remained in the shadows except in the North where surface flows are absent. This scenario is now changing as population growth; poorly maintained infrastructure; commercial agriculture; sectoral competition for water and climate change combine to exert severe pressure on surface water resources. Since the dry zone is also home to a large number of Sri Lanka’s poor households, and a close association exists between high poverty clusters and access to irrigation, the implications of water insecurity for a range of poverty indicators are clear. Not surprisingly, these pressures have prompted an increasing recourse to groundwater in several parts of the dry zone, as governments and farmers recognize the imperative to increase agriculture output, promote crop diversification, and improve agrarian incomes. Yet, with limited groundwater potential, limited detailed knowledge of this resource, and under-developed groundwater-oriented institutions, it is far from certain whether future groundwater exploitation can steer away from anarchy.

This paper presents a historical analysis of the different policy tools used to manage and regulate groundwater abstraction in the Western Mancha aquifer. Without much initial regulation and control, groundwater resources and aquifer levels decreased dramatically, threatening agriculture and also highly valuable groundwater-dependent wetland ecosystems. The interplay between sticks and carrots used in La Mancha shows the necessity for regulatory bodies to complement soft management approaches based on incentives with the threat of sanctions and limitations. However, as this case study shows, each policy modality has its legal, administrative and practical loopholes, which can be negotiated and exploited by groundwater users to their own advantage. The paper also studies the distribution of decision-making power and how local dynamics and individual behaviors are linked to higher level policies and their impacts on groundwater management, with an emphasis on the effectiveness and limitations of these tools.

Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) still stands today as one of the most influential governance models in the water sector. Whereas previous analyses of IWRM have focused on the effectiveness of the institutional models it embodies and on policy implementation gaps, we examine the meanings that IWRM discourses have given to water management issues and how these meanings have in turn supported certain policy choices, institutions and practices. We use discourse analysis to study IWRM discourses in Nepal, where IWRM was introduced as the guiding policy principle for water management more than a decade ago, but not yet operationalised. We argue that IWRM discourses have operated a discursive closure in policy debates, thereby limiting the range of policy and institutional choices perceived as politically possible. In particular, we found that the promotion of IWRM as an institutional holy grail has obscured critical issues of social (in) justice related to water resources development by promoting an apolitical and techno-managerial vision of water development, largely centralised and relying on expert knowledge. We defend the need to move away from institutional panaceas and towards deliberative processes that allow alternative voices, discourses and knowledge.

The control of groundwater over abstraction is a vexing problem worldwide. Jordan is one of the countries facing severe water scarcity which has implemented a wide range of measures and policies over the past 20 years. While the gap between formal legal and policy frameworks and local practices on the ground is widely acknowledged, few studies investigate how local users react to state regulations and document their tactics to circumvent them. This paper examines the major tools implemented by the Jordanian government to control well expansion and water abstraction and how farmers in the Azraq basin have responded to these measures. It then documents how, in response, the Ministry of Water and Irrigation has recently enacted a series of creative counter-measures, both direct and indirect, in an attempt to toughen law enforcement and raise pressure over groundwater users. The lessons learned are highly relevant for countries with similar situations, both in the region and elsewhere.

Regional economic integration has become the dominant development pathway promoted, endorsed, and followed by many developing country governments in South East Asia and globally. Focusing on hydropower development, this article shows how forces of globalization manifested in the Myanmar government’s strategies to promote economic growth are shaping the Salween River basin’s development trajectory. Contesting the general belief that economic development would help the country’s transition to full democracy and achieve peace, it illustrates how hydropower development plans in the basin are closely interlinked with human rights issues. Well known for its long histories of violent conflict involving the Myanmar military and ethnic armed groups in various states, hydropower development in the Salween River is not only linked to the ongoing peace process in Myanmar but could also have direct implications on the actual significance of the process. Despite the signing of nationwide ceasefire agreements in 2012, hydropower dam projects could contribute to and trigger reoccurrences of violent armed conflict. Recognizing this conflict-prone and politically fragile condition as the main characteristics of Salween water governance is essential if we are to strive for sustainable and just development.

The rapidly growing population in Uzbekistan has put massive pressure on limited water resources, resulting in frequent water shortages. Irrigation is by far the major water use. Improving irrigation water use through the institutional change of establishing water consumer associations (WCAs) has been identified as a way to increase agricultural production and meet the food demand in the area. However, most WCAs are not fully able to organize collective action or generate sufficient funds to carry out their responsibilities. This study investigated the water-resource-related challenges faced by WCAs and local farmers in Kashkadarya Province in Uzbekistan, using semi-structured expert interviews and focus group discussions. The resulting data were analyzed using qualitative analysis software (Atlas.ti). The results indicated that outdated infrastructure, poor governance, and farmers’ non-payment of irrigation service fees hamper sustainable water management. Greater trust and communication within the WCAs would make an important contribution to effective collective action and to the long-term sustainability of local associations.

Since independence, India has emerged as the world’s largest groundwater economy, with annual groundwater use increasing from less than 50 BCM in the 1950s to over 230 BCM today. While this groundwater boom has been the bedrock of India’s agricultural growth, it has also created formidable challenges in groundwater governance. Meeting the challenge of water security in the face of hydro-climatic change requires a paradigm shift in our official thinking about groundwater governance. Although the Central Ground Water Board is the custodian of the nation’s groundwater resource, in reality, multiple agencies in public and private sectors have emerged as major players in India’s groundwater economy. This paper reviews international experience in groundwater governance and argues for greater synergy and coordination among various stakeholders group to improve productivity, equity and ecological sustainability of India’s groundwater economy.

Challenges of governance often constitute critical obstacles to efforts to equitably improve livelihoods in social-ecological systems. Yet, just as often, these challenges go unspoken, or are viewed as fixed parts of the context, beyond the scope of influence of agricultural, development, or natural resource management initiatives. What does it take to get governance obstacles and opportunities out in the open, creating the space for constructive dialogue and collective action that can help to address them? We respond to this question by comparing experiences of participatory action research (PAR) in coastal and floodplain systems in four countries (Zambia, Solomon Islands, Bangladesh, and Cambodia) with a focus on understanding how to build more equitable governance arrangements. We found that governance improvement was often an implicit or secondary objective of initiatives that initially sought to address more technical natural resource or livelihood-related development challenges. We argue that using PAR principles of ownership, equity, shared analysis, and feedback built trust and helped to identify and act upon opportunities to address more difficult-to-shift dimensions of governance particularly in terms of stakeholder representation, distribution of authority, and accountability. Our findings suggest that the engaged and embedded approach of researcher-facilitators can help move from identifying opportunities for governance change to supporting stakeholders as they build more equitable governance arrangements.

Water resources planning and management requires technical knowledge as well as social and environmental considerations and enabling environment for sustainable and equitable development. In this context, this paper highlights the Digo Jal Bikas project which is using a multi-disciplinary framework to generate science-based understanding required for sustainable irrigation development. The project is creating a knowledgebase including an inventory of irrigation and hydropower projects; water availability under current and future climatic conditions; environmental flows requirements for various types of river systems; tradeoff analysis of various water resources development scenarios; and water governance analysis. We present here how the project is generating such a multi-disciplinary knowledgebase that is key for promoting sustainable irrigation development in the Karnali-Mohana basin in the western Nepal.

Groundwater is integral to water security. It is the largest store of unfrozen freshwater on earth, and it serves almost half of the global population for basic water needs. In addition, it contributes more than 40% of the irrigation water globally. Groundwater also secures critical ecosystems and ecosystem services, on which people and the environment depend. This paper gives an overview of the significance of groundwater and the critical interlinkages in the WaterFoodEnergyClimateEnvironment nexus. It also discusses how opportunities for bringing in groundwater as part of the solutions to water security at various levels are often missed out. Examples are given of how research can contribute to moving forward to ensure that groundwater plays a stronger role in achieving the SDGs. Realizing that sustainable groundwater development, use and management hinges on conscious and pro-active governance, the presentation gives an highlight of the upcoming book on Advances in Groundwater Governance. Finally, some recent developments in terms of developing global platforms and initiative to work across disciplines, sectors and levels and geographic boundaries to address groundwater management challenges are presented, including GRIPP, the Groundwater Solutions Initiative for Policy and Practice and the Working Group on Groundwater Management under the Sustainable Water Future Program. These initiatives are emerging with strong buy-in from stakeholders at various levels, from local to global.

The International Water Management Institute (IWMI) is a non-pro t, scienti c research organization focusing on the sustainable use of water and land resources in developing countries. IWMI works in partnership with governments, civil society and the private sector to develop scalable agricultural water management solutions that have a real impact on poverty reduction, food security and ecosystem health. IWMI is a member of CGIAR, a global research partnership for a food-secure future.

Irrigation systems cannot ensure the equitable distribution of water among users and sustainable operation and maintenance of the schemes without capable irrigation institutions. In Ethiopia, traditional institutions have emerged with the expansion of traditional irrigation schemes and most of them were established and operated on the initiative of the farmers. These often have very limited financial and technical capacities. Current trends show that developing infrastructure is the major concern in irrigation development efforts. However, managing the schemes is largely overlooked, particularly for externally initiated irrigation schemes. Operation and maintenance of the irrigation schemes, particularly those at tertiary levels, are commonly not well set and often neglected or left to farmers without building their capacities. The overarching objectives of the study were to: i) assess the nature and diversity of irrigation institutions in the study schemes; ii) evaluate existing institutions service delivery with respect to selected attributes and draw useful lessons; and iii) identify appropriate interventions. This study focused on 10 irrigation schemes located in four regional states of Ethiopia (Tigray, Amhara, Oromia and SNNP). Various approaches were used to generate data required for this study, such as household interview, transect walk and systematic observation, focus group discussion, key informant interviews and the review of existing literature. We clustered the study schemes as modern, semi-modern and traditional, using selected criteria (operation and maintenance service delivery, managing financial service delivery, level of inequity) to generate empirical evidence for evaluation of their performances. The results found two forms of irrigation institutions: irrigation water users associations (IWUA) and irrigation cooperatives or water committee. More than 30% of the irrigation schemes considered in the study, regardless of their typology, had no institution. Membership in the irrigation institution for traditional schemes was 100%, while the average membership both in modern and semi-modern schemes was about 70% of the respondents. This contrasts with the new proclamation in Ethiopia on IWUA which suggest mandatory membership for any water user in a scheme. Without exception bylaws were either not detailed enough to address scheme specific problems or not recorded at all. Ambiguity associated with these, and probably presence of non-member water users, deterred the decision-making processes and the enforcement of rules and regulations for water use, thus create opportunities for free riders. This also explains the reason for occasional conflict between irrigators and the inequity of water distribution within scheme. In many cases, irrigation institutions service delivery limited to operational management and other services, such as financial management, were not common even at those schemes where irrigation fee exists. Problems

With increasing pressures from global changes (urbanization, climate change, etc.), cities in Africa will experience difficulties in efficiently managing water resources. Most of the urbanization in Africa over the next 30 years will occur in fast-growing small towns that lack mature infrastructure. This offers a unique opportunity to implement innovative solutions based on integrated urban water management (IUWM). While IUWM approaches have been widely reported in the literature, their application has been limited. This paper describes the African Water Facility’s experience in applying the approach to three projects, in the Seychelles, Zimbabwe and Democratic Republic of Congo, which illustrate the types of challenges faced in different institutional frameworks and contexts (such as islands, a small town and a megacity). The paper identifies the critical issues for improving uptake and scaling up, including strong leadership, the commitment of government and the institutions involved, and a formal programme of capacity building and technical assistance.

Uganda lies almost wholly within the Nile Basin and is a country characterised as well-endowed with water resources. Receiving considerable inflows of aid since the early 1990s, some of this aid emerging after the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro enabled the country to begin a process of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), taking the lead from Chapter 18 of Agenda 21. With a focus on more comprehensively managing the country’s critical water endowment amidst growing pressure on the resource, bilateral technical assistance and financial support played a large part in backstopping these national efforts. Nevertheless, in spite of this support and government backing, some two decades later implementation on the ground remains thin and the exercise of IWRM in practice is limited. This paper examines the Ugandan IWRM experience and identifies complex political-economy issues lying at the heart of current challenges. It argues that rarely is there likely to be an easy fix to sustainable financing and suggests the need for stronger citizen engagement and buy-in to the wider logic of IWRM to support longer-term effectiveness and sustainability.

In Tanzania like in other parts of the global South, in the name of apos;developmentapos; and apos;poverty eradicationapos; vast tracts of land have been earmarked by the government to be developed by investors for different commercial agricultural projects, giving rise to the contested land grab phenomenon. In parallel, Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) has been promoted in the country and globally as the governance framework that seeks to manage water resources in an efficient, equitable and sustainable manner. This article asks how IWRM manages the competing interests as well as the diverse priorities of both large and small water users in the midst of foreign direct investment. By focusing on two commercial sugar companies operating in the Wami-Ruvu River Basin in Tanzania and their impacts on the water and land rights of the surrounding villages, the article asks whether institutional and capacity weaknesses around IWRM implementation can be exploited by powerful actors that seek to meet their own interests, thus allowing water grabbing to take place. The paper thus highlights the power, interests and alliances of the various actors involved in the governance of water resources. By drawing on recent conceptual insights from the water grabbing literature, the empirical findings suggest that the IWRM framework indirectly and directly facilitates the phenomenon of water grabbing to take place in the Wami-Ruvu River Basin in Tanzania.

The historical legacy in South Africa of apartheid and the resulting discriminatory policies and power imbalances are critical to understanding how water is managed and allocated, and how people participate in designated water governance structures. The progressive post-apartheid National Water Act (NWA) is the principal legal instrument related to water governance which has broadly embraced the principles of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). This translation of IWRM into the South African context and, in particular, the integration of institutions related to land and water have faced many challenges due to the political nature of water and land reforms, and the tendency of governmental departments to work in silos. The paper explores the dynamics surrounding the implementation of IWRM in the Inkomati Water Management Area, and the degree of integration between the parallel land and water reform processes. It also looks at what these reforms mean to black farmers’ access to water for their sugar cane crops at the regional (basin) and local levels. The empirical material highlights the discrepancies between a progressive IWRM-influenced policy on paper and the actual realities on the ground. The paper argues that the decentralisation and integration aspects of IWRM in South Africa have somewhat failed to take off in the country and what apos;integratedapos; actually entails is unclear. Furthermore, efforts to implement the NWA and IWRM in South Africa have been fraught with challenges in practice, because the progressive policy did not fully recognise the complex historical context, and the underlying inequalities in knowledge, power and resource access.

Secretariats are an increasingly common feature in Africa’s transboundary river basin organizations (RBOs). Non-secretariat-based forms of transboundary RBOs nonetheless also exist, and such forms of cooperation have often functioned effectively. These realities drive questions about the rationale and role for secretariats. This paper employs two approaches to compare secretariat-based RBOs vis--vis RBOs without secretariats in Africa. First, we compared the degree to which five governance instruments, determined to enable effective transboundary water management, are contained in treaties creating secretariat-based RBOs versus treaties creating non-secretariat-based RBOs. Second, the costs and benefits of six African transboundary RBOs three with secretariat and three without were compared based on a survey of regular costs and volume and number of projects. Key findings are that RBOs with secretariats have achieved stronger governance and secured more investment than RBOs without secretariats. Costs associated with operating secretariats appear justified by their benefits. These findings help to lay an improved basis for selecting desired models of RBOs in Africa’s transboundary basins.

The Decentralised Water reform process in Zimbabwe has largely been informed by the Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) process based on the 1992 Dublin Principles onWater. The attempt to reform one sector (water), under the IWRM rubric, when other key sectors are in disarray (agriculture, energy) and when social and government institutions, in general, are not functioning as they should, made it more complicated. The decentralised water reform process, with support from a number of donors, was perceived to be a technical process which would result in better water management in Zimbabwe. The research in Zimbabwe, however, shows that instead of establishing order within the water sector, the reform process has largely been disorderly since it downplays the political nature of the water reform process. In attempting to change the water legislation, the reform brought out the different and competing interests on water. The economic crisis, the contested land reform process that ensued, resulted in disorder which benefited those who are politically connected. This paper contributes to the scholarship on the need to have a better political economy approach to development interventions such as water reform as they have to play out in political, social and economic contexts which will impact on human livelihoods.

Reduced river runoff and expected upstream infrastructural developments are both potential threats to irrigation water availability for the downstream countries in Central Asia. Although it has been recurrently mentioned that a reduction in water supply will hamper irrigation in the downstream countries, the magnitude of associated economic losses, economy-wide repercussions on employment rates, and degradation of irrigated lands has not been quantified as yet. A computable general equilibrium model is used to assess the economy-wide consequences of a reduced water supply in Uzbekistana country that encompasses more than half of the entire irrigated croplands in Central Asia. Modeling findings showed that a 1020 % reduction in water supply, as expected in the near future, may reduce the areas to be irrigated by 241,000374,000 hectares and may cause unemployment to a population of 712868,000, resulting in a loss for the national income of 3.64.3 %. A series of technical, financial, and institutional measures, implementable at all levels starting from the farm to the basin scale, are discussed for reducing the expected water risks. The prospects of improving the basin-wide water management governance, increasing water and energy use efficiency, and establishing the necessary legal and institutional frameworks for enhancing the introduction of needed technological and socioeconomic change are argued as options for gaining more regional water security and equity.

Around 27% of aquifers in Tunisia are being overexploited. Groundwater extractions is mainly for the irrigation sector, where more than 40% of the water used for irrigation comes from GW sources. The objective of this study is to critically review and analyze GW management instruments adopted in Tunisia during the last four decades. Evaluation of current instruments was based on a set of criteria (the impact of the instrument on increasing water productivity, reducing aquifer withdrawals, acceptability of the instrument and its implementation cost) assessed through interviews with policy makers and experts, in addition to discussions at farmersapos; focus groups. Results show that regulatory instruments are widely used but weakly enforced, which can explain their limited impact. To be more effective, economic instruments need a better vertical interplay between different stakeholders. Analysis of stakeholders’ participation shows limited awareness by farmers and a lack of collective actions for GW management at local levels. The alignment of GW policies to other cross-sectorial policies, the enhancement of the vertical interplay between water users’ associations and local and national water administrations, and the horizontal integration of different water users and managers at the local and regional levels, are among the main recommendations of this study.

Groundwater provides nearly 100 % of the water supplies in some districts of Sri Lanka and is a major source of domestic water in all other districts. However, the resource remains largely neglected and invisible to society and policymakers. Groundwater offers the advantage of being a more reliable and readily available resource for agriculture, and offers the basis for a ‘silent revolution’ in many areas. A groundwater-supported agricultural boom has, while imparting a large number of benefits, created its own set of obstinate problems, including over-exploitation and depletion of groundwater resources. In some districts, over-exploitation is putting the livelihoods of farmers that have come to depend on groundwater resources in jeopardy. Micro-irrigation technologies have been widely promoted as a means of reducing water demand by enhancing farm-level water-use efficiency. These technologies are proven to improve irrigation uniformity; increase irrigation application efficiency, by reducing soil evaporation and seepage losses; and increase crop productivity. It is assumed that using these technologies will enable water to be reallocated for other uses. The Government of Sri Lanka has made repeated attempts to promote micro-irrigation as a means of improving irrigation performance to minimize water scarcity in areas of the Dry Zone. These attempts have involved providing substantial heavy subsidies, but have met with little success in terms of adoption of ‘professionally designed’ installations. However, in Kalpitiya, farmers have adopted a locally designed sprinkler technology within a short period of time without subsidies and professional design inputs. This paper reviews the evolving agricultural boom as a result of groundwater and sprinkler irrigation that has occurred on the Kalpitiya peninsula. The development of a farmer-led sprinkler technology is assessed with reference to improving livelihoods of the people, and the potential consequences on sustainable management of groundwater resources. The experiences in Kalpitiya show that, in the absence of effective groundwater governance and policies, supported with appropriate institutions, micro-irrigation has enabled the expansion of the cultivated area and crop intensification. This has increased, rather than decreased, net water use on the peninsula. The estimated increase in water withdrawals is 14,490 m3/ha /y. This indicates that promoting efficient technologies alone is not sufficient to achieve water savings, which requires control of overall abstractions and recharge levels to stabilize aquifer storage. In the absence of an appropriate regulatory framework and lack of political will to manage groundwater, it is recommended that the social framework and community governance arrangements are developed and strengthened to enable sustainable use of groundwater resources.

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 specifi c 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 fulfi l 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.

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 50100 l per capita per day. Turning to the state’s mandates and authority in allocating water resources, the chapter identifi es three forms of unfair treatment of smallscale 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.

Water cooperation has received prominent focus in the post-2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While proposals for measuring water cooperation appear to be converging toward a small set of indicators, the degree to which these proposed indicators draw on past work is unclear. This paper mines relevant past work to generate guidance for monitoring the proposed SDG target related to transboundary water cooperation. Potential measures of water cooperation were identified, filtered and applied in three countries (Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe). Six indicators were ultimately determined as being suitable for measuring water cooperation. As the SDG process turns its focus to the selection of indicators, the indicators proposed in this paper may merit consideration.

Le projet WISE UP to climate vise a demontrer lapos;utilite des infrastructures naturelles comme une solution basee sur la nature pour lapos;adaptation au changement climatique et le developpement durable. Dans le bassin de la Volta, les infrastructures naturelles, comme les construites, offrent des benefices pour la subsistance des personnes. Comprendre les interrelations entre ces deux types dapos;infrastructures est une condition indispensable a une gestion et un developpement durables des ressources en eau. Cela est particulierement vrai dans un contexte ou les pressions sur les ressources en eau sapos;intensifient, et ou les impacts du changement climatique augmentent. Ce rapport donne un apercu des caracteristiques biophysiques, des services ecosystemiques, et de leur relation avec les moyens de subsistance dans le bassin.

The ‘WISE-UP to climate’ project aims to demonstrate the value of natural infrastructure as a ‘nature-based solution’ for climate change adaptation and sustainable development. Within the Volta River Basin, both natural and built infrastructure provide livelihood benefits for people. Understanding the interrelationships between the two types of infrastructure is a prerequisite for sustainable water resources development and management. This is particularly true as pressures on water resources intensify and the impacts of climate change increase. This report provides an overview of the biophysical characteristics, ecosystem services and links to livelihoods within the basin.

This paper assessed water management by households from three ethnic groups in two contrasting ecological settings (upland and lowland) in the Upper Ping River Basin in Northern Thailand. Important gender differences in the use and management of water were identified. Women are major users of water for agriculture in the uplands, but less so in the lowlands. In the lowlands irrigation is viewed as a masculine activity. In the uplands the role of women is more widely accepted, with women frequently being members of water user groups. Men, however, dominate ‘decision-making’ positions in communitybased and state-led water organisations in both upland and lowland areas. Perceptions of contributions to daily tasks, and behavioural traits important to governance roles, differed between men and women, and sometimes also across eco-cultural contexts, underlining the complexity of factors influencing gender relations in water governance.

Wastewater constitutes an alternative water source for the irrigation sector. To fully benefit from it, and reduce possible adverse effects on public health and the environment, we need to look at the regulation of the practice. A prerequisite for this is an institutional analysis, and the points to consider are the institutional mandates. We used the city of Hyderabad, India, as a case study. There, irrigation with wastewater is not supported or recognized, but it happens in practice. It takes place in an indirect and unplanned way. Institutions fail at enforcing regulations, and little attention is given to formalization of the practice. With this article, we aim to untangle the institutional setup, and by doing so, identify the constraints surrounding development of a formal practice. Ultimately, we aim at contributing to the discussion on the agricultural use of wastewater.

Ongoing discussions on water-energy-food nexus generally lack a historical perspective and more rigorous institutional analysis. Scrutinizing a relatively mature benefit sharing approach in the context of transboundary water management, the study shows how such analysis can be implemented to facilitate understanding in an environment of high institutional and resource complexity. Similar to system perspective within nexus, benefit sharing is viewed as a positive sum approach capable of facilitating cooperation among riparian parties by shifting the focus from the quantities of water to benefits derivable from its use and allocation. While shared benefits from use and allocation are logical corollary of the most fundamental principles of international water law, there are still many controversies as to the conditions under which benefit sharing could serve best as an approach. Recently, the approach has been receiving wider attention in the literature and is increasingly applied in various basins to enhance negotiations. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the costs associated with benefit sharing, particularly in the long run. The study provides a number of concerns that have been likely overlooked in the literature and examines the approach in the case of the Ferghana Valley shared by Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan utilizing data for the period from 1917 to 2013. Institutional analysis traces back the origins of property rights of the transboundary infrastructure, shows cooperative activities and fierce negotiations on various governance levels. The research discusses implications of the findings for the nexus debate and unveils at least four types of costs associated with benefit sharing: (1) Costs related to equity of sharing (horizontal and vertical); (2) Costs to the environment; (3) Transaction costs and risks of losing water control; and (4) Costs as a result of likely misuse of issue linkages.

Feeding over 9 billion people by the second half of this century will require a major paradigm shift in agricultural systems. Agriculture uses approximately 40 % of the terrestrial surface, is the major user of fresh water resources and contributes 17%of greenhouse gas emissions. In turn, agriculture will be detrimentally affected by climate change in many climatic regions. Impacts of agriculture on ecosystem services include land clearing, loss of forest cover and biodiversity, significant soil degradation and water quality decline. Agricultural production will have to increase, even if we can reduce the rate of increase in demand for food. Given the current pressures on natural resources, this will have to be achieved by some form of agricultural intensification that causes less environmental impact. Therefore, it is not just intensification of agriculture, but ‘sustainable intensification’ that must be at the forefront of the paradigmshift. There is also a need to assess the situation holistically, taking into account population growth and resource intensive consumption patterns, improved systems of governance, changing diets and reducing waste. We review how and where natural resources are being placed under increasing pressure and examine the Becological footprint^ of agriculture. Suggested solutions include the application of existing scientific knowledge, implementation of emerging principles for sustainable land and water management and reclamation of salinized land. Encouragement of community action and private sector supply chain and production codes, backed up by improved national and regional governance and regulation also need to be encouraged if we are to see agricultural production become truly sustainable.

Institutional design for water governance assumes the possibility of intentional introduction of policy innovations into the new contexts or amending existing institutions. Such institutional design has been common in the water sector and examples include participatory irrigation management, integrated water resources management plans and water privatization programmes. With increasing application of institutional design across various political, socio-economic and cultural settings, the importance of the context is increasingly accepted. The key question is therefore how to reconcile institutional design and contextual variability. Based on our research on the introduction of water user associations in parts of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan, we conclude that a top-down institutional design implemented nation-wide and not involving multiple stakeholders and engaging their views, is doomed to failure. As an alternative, we offer interactive institutional design, which is based on collaborative approaches to institutional design and treats design as works of assemblage.

Hydropower development is occurring at a rapid, though controversial, pace in the Mekong. We highlight the role of scientific assessment in shaping the Mekong hydropower debate, taking the strategic environmental assessment of the twelve planned mainstream dams as a case study. While environmental impact assessments are designed as science-based decision-making tools, they have often been criticized in practice as a political means to justify already made development decisions. In this case we demonstrate how the Mekong River Commission, operating in a constrained political environment, has instead used environmental impact assessment as a way of providing political space and opening the discussion on dams to a wider public. The main argument of this paper is that scientific assessment can be politically maneuvered to shape governance alliances at both national and transboundary levels, and to a certain extent democratize decision-making processes.

Because of the logics of both colonization or de-colonization, the need to counter the anarchy of groundwater use, or the dissemination of global apos;best practicesapos; of IWRM, states have often assumed full ownership or custody of groundwater. Regulating groundwater use includes giving drilling and abstraction authorizations/licenses, establishing an inventory of wells and reducing use in existing wells. Although laws and regulations look neat and straightforward on paper, registration, regularization, and metering have been bedeviled by a host of logistical nightmares, policy contradictions, legal challenges, and vested private interests. The overall outlook is bleak and questions the overstating of state power in reordering groundwater use. Co-management with users, while in itself not sufficient to ensure success, often arises as a possible way out of the failure of state control.

Ever since the oil, financial and food crises of 2008, sub-Saharan Africa has witnessed a marked increase in large-scale investment in agricultural land. The drivers of this investment are varied and include growing food, water and energy insecurity as well as social and economic interests of investors and recipient countries. The shape of these investments and their eventual outcomes are equally influenced by the existing land and water governance systems in the host countries. Based on fieldlevel research conducted in Ghana and Mali which covered six large-scale agricultural investments, this paper analyzes the current land and water governance systems in these two countries through the lens of land and water acquisition and initial outcomes. It highlights missed opportunities for sustainable and equitable large-scale agricultural land investments due to uncoordinated governance systems and failure to rigorously apply detailed rules and regulations that are already in place. It offers suggestions for revamping land and water governance to promote large-scale investments that will lead to equitable distribution of benefits and sustainable management of natural resources.

Water is absent in the ‘Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of Food Security’ (FAO, 2012). This paper explored whether and how the people-centred approaches and the human rights values that underpin this document can be better applied in the water sector and how more recognition of the land-water interface can support this. This is elaborated for participatory approaches in which people, especially the rural and peri-urban poor, better oversee the many interdependencies of natural resources and their multiple uses than the compartmentalised public sector. Further, human rights values are discussed for the development of land-bound water infrastructure, tracing the upcoming debates about a core minimum water service level that includes small-scale productive uses. Lastly, entitlements to land and to naturally available water resources are compared. While the water sector should replicate the current strong recognition of customary land rights to customary and informal water entitlements, an important difference is discussed as well: states are water regulators in a public interest. In this capacity, they should also to protect water entitlements by the vulnerable in negotiations about large-scale land-based investments through procedural and water prioritization arrangements.

This article unravels the notions of justice in statutory water law in Sub-Saharan Africa in general and South Africa in particular. These laws, which allocate and regulate water resources, are licence (or permit) systems. Three forms of injustices are identified for small-scale water users who typically encompass all poor water users: the reinforcement of the historical injustices by which colonial powers captured ownership of water resources and undermined customary water law; administrative discrimination as a result of governments’ lack of capacity to license the large numbers of small-scale users; and discrimination of the smallest-scale users whose exemption from the obligation to apply for a licence relegates them to a second-class entitlement to water. Based on the texts and implementation experiences of the National Water Act (1998) and the pro-poor prioritisation rules in the National Water Resource Strategy-2 (2013), the authors propose the transformative legal tool of priority General Authorisations for black small-scale users to overcome these injustices. Via this tool all black small-scale users, including the poor, would obtain equal access to minimum quantities of water needed to progressively achieve constitutional rights to water, food, and non-discrimination, while the remaining water resources would be allocated to high-impact users through licences with strict and enforceable conditions.

Notions of benefit sharing play an increasingly important role in shaping the debate around the merits of existing and future hydropower development in the Mekong region. In this paperwe assess how the concept of benefit sharing is articulated and applied in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. We discuss the conceptual strengths and weaknesses of benefit sharing, within the broader context of land and water resources and environmental governance. We argue that while benefit sharing provides an entry point for placing the current debate on hydropower development within the perspective of social justice, better understanding of governance structures and processes is needed. Our primary message is that innovations in policies and programs should not be analyzed in isolation from the wider governance structure, processes, and outcomes. To this end, we are pleased also to introduce this Special Issue of Water Resources and Rural Development, in which several authors analyze current benefit sharing programs in the Mekong region, with a focus on governance, process, and policy implications.

A political-science perspective of anarchy holds that anarchy is the absence of a ruler. In the water sector, especially in terms of irrigated agriculture, emerging deficiencies of public irrigation systems as well as the budget crisis of governments to sustain irrigated agriculture, resulted into increased water user participation. Understanding the apparently increasing smidgeon of anarchy in the water sector includes the appreciation of the complexity of water governance developments such as the introduction of Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM), Irrigation Management Transfer (IMT), basin councils, Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) and Multi-Stakeholder Platforms (MSP), as well as the limited role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and grassroots organisations (GROs), for decades considered the ‘magic bullet’ in taking over and providing state services to the public. We conclude that governance is anarchy by other means.

Vietnam’s irrigation development policy directions are divided between the objective to continue increasing rice production through agricultural intensification and to improve farmer’s livelihoods through crop diversification and integrated farming. While the first objective requires the construction of new large-scale irrigation system in deeply flooded area of the Vietnamese Mekong River Delta, the latter demands the modification in management of existing irrigation physical infrastructure for non-rice crops, in particular brackish aquaculture in the coastal zones. This article looks at Vietnam’s irrigation policy formulation processes in the last three and half decades in relation to the idea of polycentric governance. It discusses the current shortcomings and potential role of polycentric governance networks to capture stakeholders’ interests at multiple governance levels essential for future policy development. It partially sheds light on the dark side of water governance, bringing to light the fragmented polycentric decision-making processes in Vietnam’s irrigation development policies.

Since the early 2000s, governance has been at the core of the international water agenda. This has elicited calls for reforms in the irrigation sector, including efforts to address the problem of corruption. Nevertheless, the history of policy reform in the irrigation sector is one of repeated institutional refinements, which have hardly materialized into grounded policy measures and practices. Though international donors, policy makers, irrigation scholars and practitioners have long agreed to invest in the ‘soft issues’ of irrigation, most policy interventions have retained a focus on infrastructure-oriented development. This paper identifies decisive factors that preserve the status quo in irrigation development. We draw our analysis on empirical data from countries with a recent (Ghana, West Africa) and long (Indonesia) irrigation history. Beyond the idiosyncrasies of the two case studies that highlight that everyday practices are embedded in, and constrained by, existing institutional rules and mechanisms, but also contribute to shaping these, we make a broader theoretical point. We argue that the ‘business-as-usual’ trajectory that characterizes the irrigation sector is also rooted in the very concept of governance, which is fundamentally about “governing”, that is a practice aiming at steering people towards defined ends, and through different means such as infrastructure, management practices and policies.

Instituting effective groundwater governance is highly challenging in a least developed country such as the Lao PDR where groundwater resources need to be developed for a variety of reasons but the levels of understanding, awareness and technical capacity are extremely limited. This paper discusses the current state of knowledge and management of groundwater and suggests some pathways forward. Whilst the level of governance remains very low, there is growing interest in tackling the entrenched technical and non-technical issues and constraints. Various initiatives have recently emerged, resulting in positive institutional change.

Integrated water resources management provides a set of ideas to help us manage water more holistically. However, these ideas have been formalized over time in what has now become, in capitals, Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), with specific prescriptive principles whose implementation is often supported by donor funding and international advocacy. IWRM has now become an end in itself, in some cases undermining functioning water management systems, in others setting back needed water reform agendas, and in yet others becoming a tool to mask other agendas. Critically, the current monopoly of IWRM in global water management discourse is shutting out alternative thinking on pragmatic solutions to existing water problems. This paper explains these issues and uses examples of transboundary water governance in general, groundwater management in India and ruralurban water transfer in China to show that there are (sometimes antithetical) alternatives to IWRM which are being successfully used to solve major water problems. The main message is that we should simply get on with pragmatic politics and solutions to the world’s many individual water challenges.

The food security crisis, international “land grabs,” and new markets for environmental services have drawn renewed attention to the role of natural resource competition in the livelihoods of the rural poor. While significant empirical research has focused on diagnosing the links between natural resource competition and (violent) conflict, much less has focused on the dynamics of whether and how resource competition can be transformed to strengthen social-ecological resilience and mitigate conflict. Focusing on this latter theme, this review synthesizes evidence from a wide range of cases in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Building on an analytical framework designed to enable such comparative analysis; we present several propositions about the dynamics of conflict and collective action in natural resource management, and a series of recommendations for action. These propositions are: that collective action in natural resources management is influenced by the social-ecological and governance context, that natural resource management institutions affect the incentives for conflict or cooperation, and that the outcomes of these interactions influence future conflict risk, livelihoods, and resource sustainability. Action recommendations concern policies addressing resource tenure, conflict resolution mechanisms, and social inequalities, as well as strategies to strengthen collective action institutions in the natural resource sectors and to enable more equitable engagement by marginalized groups in dialogue and negotiation over resource access and use.

The Multi-stakeholder Policy Formulation and Action Planning approach was applied in the context of a multi-city study to influence and/or change policies that govern urban agriculture practices in three African and two Asian countries. Although the approach was successful and resulted in remarkable outcomes, it showed space for improvement to facilitate its application. The study also showed that there are significant regional differences in how best to achieve policy change, which require careful attention in order to achieve the highest returns on investment in the facilitation of impact pathways.

Community participation, defined as engaging users of schemes in the decision-making processes for the planning and implementation of irrigation projects, is critical for the sustainability of irrigation schemes. This study was carried out in three regional states of Ethiopia to investigate the contribution of Water User Associations (WUAs) to sustaining participation in irrigation projects. The paper demonstrates that the poor understanding of community participation and institutional development by project staff in donor-supported irrigation projects results in the poor performance of WUAs in enhancing participation in irrigation systems. The interventions of external bodies in setting up the WUA by-laws and in determining the responsibilities of users and WUA committees contributed to the low level of participation. The transfer of schemes to WUAs without building WUA committeesapos; abilities in operation and maintenance constrained their ability to sustainably manage irrigation schemes. The WUA committees are male-dominated and the views of women are hardly represented in the decision-making. Therefore, establishing WUA committees that reflect the interests and inputs of scheme users is crucial to achieve fair decision-making. Local authorities and non-governmental organizations could do more to change perceptions and behavior on the importance of gender equity in sustaining the positive outcomes of irrigation at household and community levels.

Using city wastewater in agriculture for its water and nutrient values is a widespread practice that entails varying degrees of risk depending on the context of use. This paper presents the ‘multiple realities’ of wastewater use, describing the complex set of drivers that impels prevalent practices. These drivers in turn define a set of emerging issues and priorities. The paper emphasizes that recent thinking on the use of city water in agriculture has evolved rapidly, leading to gaps between the existing knowledge base and the knowledge needed to respond effectively and maximize benefits. In this paper we attempt to address these gaps by presenting a cross section of concepts, approaches and tools that are relevant to policy and can be utilized for agenda setting and good governance.

In this paper we present a framework for analysing transboundary water governance complexes, illustrated in the Mekong Region. In this region, the sharing of waters between countries adds a critical dimension to decision making about producing food and energy, maintaining vital ecosystems, and sustaining livelihoods. Hydropower, dams, diversions, expanding cities and irrigation schemes are all in the mix. The key elements of the framework are: context, drivers, arenas, tools, decisions and impacts. The use of deliberation, technical and advocacy tools is explored and normative governance improvements are suggested.

Media stories often speak of a future dominated by large-scale water wars. Rather less attention has been paid to the way water conflicts play out at local levels and form part of people’s everyday lives. Based on case study studies from Vietnam, Bolivia and Zambia, this paper examines the strategies of poor households in local water conflicts. It is shown how such households may not only engage actively in collaborative water management but may also apply risk aversion strategies when faced with powerful adversaries in conflict situations. It is further shown how dependency relations between poor and wealthy households can reduce the scope of action for the poor in water conflicts. As a result, poor households can be forced to abstain from defending their water resources in order to maintain socio-economic and political ties with the very same households that oppose them in water conflicts. The paper concludes by briefly discussing how the poorest can be supported in local water conflicts. This includes ensuring that alternative spaces for expressing grievances exist and are accessible; facilitating that water sharing agreements and rights are clearly stipulated and monitored; and working beyond water governance to reduce the socio-economic dependency-relations of poor households.

Aquatic socio-ecological systems show pervasive cross-scale interactions and problems of fit between ecosystems and institutions. Nested bio-hydrological processes within river basins are prone to thirdparty impacts, and equitable/sustainable management of water resources requires adequate governance patterns that both cover relevant scalar levels and handle cross-scale interactions. This paper provides the example of the Zayandeh Rud basin, in central Iran, and describes the historical evolution of water use at three different nested scales. It shows how the gradual overallocation of water resources (basin closure) and the manipulation of the hydrological cycle by the state and other actors have resulted in a constant spatial and social redistribution of water use and associated benefits and costs. State-centered modes of governance characterized by the priority to large-scale infrastructure, vested political and financial interests, lack of attention to local processes and hydrological interconnectedness, and the neglect of environmental degradation, must give way to forms of comanagement that better articulate the different levels of control and governance.

Contemporary water management decisions use many sources and forms of data. The paper discusses the implementation results of data management activities in the water sector carried out in five countries of the Central Asia region. Geoinformation systems, remote sensing tools and databases have been applied worldwide for improving water resources management with differing levels of success. Water management organisations, equipped with data management tools will have better capacities to adapt their decision-making in the changing availability and scarcity of water resources. Application of data management tools for improving collection, storage and processing of data and information are a first step towards improved water governance.

This paper examines the water dimensions of recent large-scale land acquisitions for biofuel production in the Ashanti, Brong-Ahafo and Northern regions of Ghana. Using secondary sources of data complemented by individual and group interviews, the paper reveals an almost universal lack of consideration of the implications of large-scale land deals for crop water requirements, the ecological functions of freshwater ecosystems and water rights of local smallholder farmers and other users. It documents the factors responsible for this apparent oversight including the multiplicity of land and water governance systems, sharp sectoral boundaries between land and water policies, property rights and institutions, outdated statutes, poorly resourced and ineffective regulatory agencies, and unequal power relations in land acquisition deals. The paper shows that due to a lack of an approach that jointly considers land and water management policies and institutions in acceding to large-scale land deals, the benefits derived by local people were insufficient to cover the involuntary permanent loss of their water rights and livelihoods and the risks posed to ecosystem services. Options for establishing alternative institutional arrangements that will allow water availability, use and management as well as social and environmental standards to be factored, ex ante, into large-scale land deals are explored. The paper offers recommendations which can help the government to achieve its stated objective of developing a quot;policy framework and guidelines for large-scale land acquisitions by both local and foreign investors for biofuels that will protect the interests of investors and the welfare of Ghanaian farmers and landownersquot;.

Previous analysis of transboundary water governance has been focused primarily on state-centred approaches. The articles in this special section move us forward from this focus in three ways. First, they highlight the crucial role played by non-state actors in shaping water governance outcomes. Second, they show us how these actors can increase the ‘room for manoeuvre’ in negotiations. Third, they provide an entry point for developing process-focused approaches in transboundary water governance research. This article argues such an approach might improve our understanding of transboundary water outcomes and suggests new focus on how key actors form networks of alliances and shape decision-making landscapes at multiple governance levels and arenas. From a scholarly perspective, it brings to light the blurred boundary between state and non-state actors, as derived from a better understanding of the elusive links between actors and organisations; it unravels additional layers of complexity in the hydro-hegemony concept and bends the rigid notion of power asymmetry, towards the subtleties of power relations and interplays in transboundary decision-making processes.

Effective implementation of participatory environmental governance faces a number of challenges, including the need for appropriate mechanisms and incentive systems that can operate across multiple-use landscapes. This study demonstrated scenarios for such governance from three agro-ecological zones in different geographical, biophysical and socio-cultural settings: (i) Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary in the temperate forests of the Central Himalayas, (ii) Kolleru Lake, a freshwater lake in the Krishna Basin and (iii) the downstream Ganges seasonal floodplains in Bangladesh. The cross-disciplinary set of approaches in these examples involves the use of spatial tools and socioeconomic surveys to build a scenario-based framework with cross-scaling prospects. The comparative analysis between these sites is significant in the context of providing guidance for trans-boundary environmental governance and the underlying challenges that occur in politically complex and common property resource institutional arrangements. Meeting these challenges will assist in the efforts, locally and nationally, to make wise use of all wetlands, as required under the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary symbolizes a case of increasing anthropogenic pressure, limited livelihood options and with gaps in the governance structure. Kolleru Lake represents a case of inadequate understanding of the ecological dimensions of livelihood interventions and the consequential community conflict. The case of floodplains in Bangladesh illustrates the potential of collective action, supported by appropriate institutional arrangements, for improving rice-fish productivity. The case studies support the argument that monitoring and assessment of the resource structure and its dynamics, with the application of geospatial tools, adds value when shaping a framework for policy debate and for ensuring the wise use of wetlands.

This article provides an institutional analysis of the Mekong River Commission and brings to light the institutional dissonances between regional and national decision-making landscapes in the Lower Mekong Basin. The current scalar disconnect between regional and national decision-making processes reflects how international donors and member country representatives obscure potential conflict/tension in transboundary water governance in the Mekong. From a scholarly perspective, it questions academic approaches that assume that the state is the sole or primary actor in international relations.

The Niger River Basin covers 7.5% of the African continent and is shared between nine riparian countries. The human population of the basin is growing at an average annual rate of about 3%, which makes the Niger River Basin one of the areas with the highest fertility rates in the world. The desert margin is expanding; climate change is negatively impacting rainfall; and urbanization, industrialization, and the human and livestock population are threatening the quantity and quality of available water resources. The basin population already suffers from chronic poverty. Based on a literature review, this paper suggests some key water-related and other interventions that are capable of easing the basinapos;s development challenges.

Agricultural (water) development is once again at the fore of the development agenda of sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, corruption is seen as a major obstacle to the sustainability of future investments in the sector but there is still little empirical evidence on the ways corruption pervades development projects. This paper documents the planning and implementation processes of two specific small reservoir programmes in the north of Ghana. We specifically delve into the dynamics of corruption and interrogate the ways they add to the inherent unpredictability of development planning. We argue that operational limitations of small reservoirs such as poor infrastructure, lack of managerial and organisational capacity at the community level and weak market integration and public support are the symptoms rather than inherent problems of wider lapses in the planning processes that govern the development of small reservoirs in Ghana and plausibly worldwide. A suite of petty misconduct and corrupt practices during the planning, tendering, supervision, and administration of contracts for the rehabilitation and construction of small reservoirs results in delays in implementation, poor construction, escalating costs, and ultimately failures of small reservoirs vis--vis their intended goals and a widely shared frustration among donor agencies, civil servants, contractors, and communities. Such practices hang on and can only be addressed through a better understanding of the complex web of formal decisions and informal rules that shape the understanding and actions of the state.

Water governance has emerged as perhaps the most important topic of the international water community in the 21st century, and achieving “good” water governance is now a focus of both policy discourse and innumerable development projects. Somewhat surprisingly in light of this attention, there is widespread confusion about the meaning of the term “water governance”. This paper reviews the history of the term’s use and misuse to reveal how the concept is frequently inflated to include issues that go well beyond governance. Further, it highlights how calls to improve water governance often espouse predetermined goals that should instead be the very function of water governance to define. To help overcome this confusion, the paper suggests a more refined definition of water governance and related qualities of good water governance that are consistent with broader notions of the concepts. In light of the substantial resources allocated in its name, this paper’s findings show there is significant potential to strengthen efforts at improving water governance.

Improving water productivity depends on how local communal water and grazing resources are governed. This involves institutional and organizational issues. In the mixed farming systems of the Amhara Regional State, Ethiopia, non-participatory water users’ associations, neglect of traditional water rights, corruption, village power relations, inequitable allocation of irrigated land and free-grazing practice impact the governance of local common pool resources (CPR). Indigenous governance structures for CPR such as the kire are participatory and effective in terms of rule enforcement. Externally initiated governance structures lack acceptance by farmers and sufficient support from local government. In order to improve water productivity in the mixed farming systems, institutional deficiencies need attention and existing indigenous governance structures require recognition and support.

Benefit sharing is a mechanism that can enable riparian countries to share diverse benefits derived from water rather than physical water per se. This approach transforms transboundary water governance from a Zero Sum Scenario (ZSS) to Positive Sum Outcomes (PSO), where all stakeholders benefit from cooperation. The Zero Sum Scenario undermines collective action because gains by one actor or country results in loss to others as in the Chayanovian model. Zero sum scenarios imply sharing a cake of a fixed size. Viewed through a Boserupian lens, benefit sharing opens up the possibility of expanding the size of the ‘cake’ so that all users can gain from effective water utilization. Some researchers argue that although benefit sharing sounds simple and logical, the application of the concept is difficult in practice. This study aims to assess how transboundary institutions could adopt benefit sharing framework in the Eastern Nile River Sub-basin in the context of the shifting political landscape in Egypt and the reconfiguration of political boundaries due to the division of Sudan into two countries which is most likely going to increase chances of cooperation within the Blue Nile.

Of the various types of irrigation system in the Dry Zone of Sri Lanka and South India small tank systems are the least well-endowed in terms of the quantity and reliability of water. Yet, these systems have existed for centuries and continue to support a sizeable proportion of the population. The Tank systems generally provide or regulate water for multiple uses: irrigation, domestic needs, livestock, inland fishery and sub-surface moisture for upland crops The multiple use of resources was facilitated by moderating the strategic behavior of agents in a semicommons setting where the tank and water conveyance structures were held as common property and a system of private property rights exercised over scattered parcels of land in the command area. The resilience the system was further strengthened strengthened by operating the system within the framework of a moral economy. In recent decades the economic significance of minor tanks is on the wane. Important performance indicators such as area irrigated, cropping intensities, productivity levels, efficiency in water use are below potential. Farmers are increasingly compelled to rely on off farm employment and rainfed cultivation for their subsistence needs. Underlying many of the problems is a set of circumstances creating a vicious cycle which starts with pollution pressure, sub-division of land, fragmentation of in property rights regimes from semi-commons to private property, degradation of the catchment area, deterioration of the water conveyance systems and the proliferation of groundwater development resulting in differential access to water and consequently significant socio-economic differentiation in a traditionally egalitarian society and weakening the moral economy. This paper is an attempt to grasp the complex dynamics that characterize the transitional nature of agrarian systems and the fragmentation of property rights in tanks systems in Sri Lanka and Tamilnadu due to changes in social, economic, political, cultural processes and technological innovations, This paper identifies potential vulnerable areas in the management of commons property resources in the villages especially in the context of less reliance l on local resources; change in the individual preferences; enhanced economic, social, and geographical mobility of people; the high transaction costs of social arrangements to manage local resources; gradual loss of common interests and group identity, and greater integration to the market, The paper attempts to examine the shape and the role of the institutions managing the small tank systems under such changing circumstance and propose institutional arrangements for the effective governance of the tank systems.

Global reports and major funding agencies herald the comeback of agriculture on the international development agenda as a means of achieving the Millenium Development Goals. Within this renewed interest, irrigation is presented as pivotal to increasing food production and alleviating poverty. This is especially the case in subSaharan Africa, where macro indicators point to an underdeveloped and underperforming agriculture-cum-irrigation sector. While large dam projects are still prevalent, small-scale irrigation has also become the focus of increased attention from researchers, national decision-makers and the international development community. Indeed, small-scale irrigation fits well within the development narratives of decentralization and participation. This paper questions such perceptions. It uses the example of small reservoirs in sub-Saharan Africa to highlight that small scale irrigation projects are, firstly, based on narrow visions of the ‘commons’ and participation that rarely consider the experiences and perceptions of local populations; secondly do not account for the de-facto institutional “bricolage” and the diverse land and water claims that they contribute to; thirdly, and in contrast to the new vocabulary of development, continue to regard intended beneficiaries as ‘recipients’ rather than participants with agency; and, finally, largely ignore power distribution issues that characterize decentralization reforms within and outside of communities. Further investments and reforms are said to be the remedy. These are unlikely to succeed, so long as they adhere to a narrowly-defined notion of development. This paper calls for a new approach, which acknowledges the multiple claims and uses of natural resources, and which recognizes that projects contribute to shaping new meanings of space and relationships to environments, whose fairness depends on the vantage point considered.

Global reports and major funding agencies herald the comeback of agriculture on the international development agenda as a means of achieving the Millenium Development Goals. Within this renewed interest, irrigation is presented as pivotal to increasing food production and alleviating poverty. This is especially the case in sub-Saharan Africa, where macro indicators point to an underdeveloped and underperforming agriculturecum-irrigation sector. While large dam projects are still prevalent, small-scale irrigation has also become the focus of increased attention from researchers, national decisionmakers, and the international development community. Indeed, small-scale irrigation fits well within the development narrative of participation. This paper engages with such a view. It uses the example of small reservoirs in northern Ghana to highlight that small scale irrigation projects are, firstly, based on narrow visions of the ‘commons’ and participation that rarely consider the experiences and perceptions of local populations; secondly do not account for the de-facto institutional “bricolage” and the diverse land and water claims that they contribute to shape; thirdly, and in ontrast to the new vocabulary of development, continue to regard intended beneficiaries as ‘recipients’ rather than participants with agency; and, finally, largely ignore broader institutional issues that characterize the water sector in the country. Further investments and reforms are said to be the remedy. These are unlikely to succeed, so long as they adhere to a narrowly-defined notion of development. This paper calls for an approach that which acknowledges the multiple claims and uses of natural resources, and which recognizes that projects contribute to shaping new meanings of space and relationships to environments, whose fairness depends on the vantage point considered.

In developing countries urban wastewater management often fails to cope with increasing wastewater generation. Financial, technical and institutional limitations force authorities to discharge substantial amounts of untreated or partially treated wastewater into surface waters. Consequently, uncontrolled use of polluted water is increasingly common in the downstream peri-urban areas. Although wastewater use bears a significant risk on human health, such use is also productive and an asset for many. Agricultural use of wastewater is a strong manifestation of the urban-rural connection and transfers a waterborne risk from the wastewater disposal system to the food chain, requiring a paradigm shift in the approaches applied to risk minimization. Conventional models for urban wastewater treatment and management are based on top-down, mechanically driven approaches that do not, or do not sufficiently, consider the links between the social, economic and health aspects. This situation is understandable from historical and technological points of view, but does not provide innovative solutions to current problems in developing country cities. A different approach is required, one that rethinks conventional wastewater system design and management. By adopting a systems approach to analysing both the water and food chains, one discovers the interactions of different stakeholders that treat and use (or abuse) water, the impacts on overall productivity and the risks. Governance systems to manage wastewater use in agriculture must incorporate decentralization to accommodate thinking at the bottom layer, encourage stakeholder engagement and provide coordination and policy cohesion for managing risks jointly from both the water and food chains.

Increasing water withdrawals for urban, industrial, and agricultural use have profoundly altered the hydrology of many major rivers worldwide. Coupled with degradation of water quality, low flows have induced severe environmental degradation and water has been rendered unusable by downstream users. When supply of water falls short of commitments to fulfil demand in terms of water quality and quantity within the basin and at the river mouth, for part or all of the year, basins are said to be closing. Basin closure is an anthropogenic process and manifested at societal as well as ecosystem levels, and both its causes and consequences are analyzed. Implications in terms of increased interconnectedness between categories of users and between societal processes and ecosystems in different parts of river basins are emphasized. Finally, several possible responses to the challenges posed by the overexploitation of water resources are reviewed.

The basins of the Indus and Ganges rivers cover 2.20 million km2 and are inhabited by more than a billion people. The region is under extreme pressures of population and poverty, unregulated utilization of the resources and low levels of productivity. The needs are: (1) development policies that are regionally differentiated to ensure resource sustainability and high productivity; (2) immediate development and implementation of policies for sound groundwater management and energy use; (3) improvement of the fragile food security and to broaden its base; and (4) policy changes to address land fragmentation and improved infrastructure. Meeting these needs will help to improve productivity, reduce rural poverty and improve overall human development.

As economies develop and societies change, emerging sets of challenges are placed on water resources and its governance. Population growth and economic development tend to drive the demand for more water, and push river basins into situations of scarcity. Agriculture, globally the largest user of water, is a major driver of water scarcity, and also the sector that has to bear the consequences of scarcity. Yet governance arrangements the world over have difficulty coming to grips with the management of agricultural water within the larger water resource context. The four major agricultural water governance challenges are: to manage transitions from abundance to scarcity; to deal with the large informal sectors of the agricultural water economy; to adapt to the changing objectives of society; and within each of these challenges, to craft contextspecific solutions. This paper presents examples of these challenges and uses them to derive a conceptual framework to help us understand present agricultural water-use contexts, and to develop context specific solutions. The framework is based on two important and shifting contextual dimensions: the degree of scarcity within a basin, and the degree of formality in water use. Looking at agricultural water governance within this framework shows that some standard prescriptions for water problems may not always be appropriate and that ‘second best’ solutions can in fact be the best way forward. The challenge for governance is to facilitate the development of these solutions.

There has often been a gap between policy intentions and outcomes in the field of natural resource governance. Analysing the factors for these discrepancies requires multi-level approaches that relate policy decisions formulated at the national and international level with the decisions of local resource users. A key asset of the Institutional Analysis and Development framework is precisely its ability to link multiple governance levels. Yet most commons literature has been limited to the study of collective action among local communities without considering higher institutional and government levels. To overcome this limitation, I posit for a methodological development of the framework, which bridges the gap between institutional analysis, power-centred and historical approaches, and discourse analysis. The application of the extended framework to the study of state afforestation policies in Vietnam highlights the need to simultaneously consider institutions, the politico-economic context and discourses across governance and government levels. As illustrated in this paper, such a framework does not only facilitate the analysis of policy shortcomings but also supports the design and dissemination of policy recommendations.

This is the third volume of the proceedings of the national conference on ‘Water for Food and Environment’, which was held from June 9 11, 2009 at the Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall (BMICH). The volumes 1 and 2 have been produced as separate documents of this report series. In response to a call for abstracts, 81 abstracts were received from government institutes dealing with water resources and agriculture development, universities, other freelance researchers and researchers from the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). Forty seven of the eighty-one abstracts that were submitted were accepted for compiling full papers.; In the past couple of years the sharp increase in food prices worldwide has raised serious concerns about food security, especially in developing countries. To effectively address these concerns a holistic approach is required that encompasses improved agricultural water productivity, adaptation to climate change, targeted and appropriate institutional and financial measures, and a consideration of environmental issues. The main purpose of the conference was to share experiences in these areas and to find opportunities to improve farmers’ incomes and food production, and to promote environmentally sustainable practices in Sri Lanka in the face of growing water scarcity and the challenges of climate change.

Water development projects punctuate the landscapes of the rural South where water sector reforms are endlessly pursued. On the one hand, these new projects and reforms emerge on the ground that they enhance rural livelihoods and are central for food production and sound use of natural resources. On the other hand, the social and environmental inequalities they can induce are often not properly anticipated or recognized. When acknowledged, these effects are attributed to shortcomings in implementation; the remedy is said to be further reforms and projects. In this way, water projects have locked themselves into a ‘business as usual’ approach, which we argue is unlikely to succeed in delivering equitable water access and control. We do so by investigating the links between procedural (which say do water users have in water development projects?) and distributive justice (how are the benefits distributed?), based on case studies of large irrigation infrastructures in Western India and small reservoirs in West Africa and Eastern India. We draw from the fields of political ecology, development and governance studies and combine institutional and discourse analysis to understand the realities of water projects and their environmental justice dimension. We defend that water projects are grounded in environmental and development narratives that are co-produced by science and policy. Those narratives wield notions of sustainability and justice as universal, hence ‘black-boxing” the realities of water resources management. Crucially, and in contrast with the new vocabulary of development, they continue to regard intended beneficiaries as ‘recipients’ rather than actors with agency. Water projects induce new and multiple claims over resources thus influencing the distribution of goods and bads and related perceptions of justice. Global environmental justice discourses need to recognize that the fairness of any intervention is shaped by, and depends on, the vantage point considered to effectively address current issues of inequality.

As climate change unfolds, media stories often speak of a future dominated by large-scale water wars. Rather less attention has been paid to the way water conflict already plays out a local levels and form part of people’s everyday lives. Based on case study studies from Zambia, Vietnam and Nicaragua, the paper examines the strategies of poor households in local water competition. It is shown how poor households will engage actively in collaboration where possible, but that they may apply risk minimization strategies when faced with powerful adversaries in conflict situations. This includes refraining from explicit, direct opposition, drawing instead on other approaches such as relying on more influential parties to act in their interest. The paper further shows how dependency relationships between poor and wealthy households may limit the scope of action for the poorest, who are forced to refrain from defending their water resources in order to maintain wider socioeconomic ties with the very same households that oppose them in water conflicts. The paper concludes by briefly discussing the implications for local water governance from an equity perspective.

Minimizing the negative impacts of groundwater over-exploitation, while preserving the benefits from such intensive use has emerged as the key natural resources management challenge in South Asia. Direct regulation of groundwater is not a feasible option in the region given over 20 million pumps and the huge transactions costs involved. In this context, indirect mechanism, such as regulation of electricity supply and changes in electricity pricing and subsidies can provide an effective tool for governing groundwater. This chapter documents two such cases of electricity reforms that have had profound impact on groundwater use in Indian states of Gujarat and West Bengal.

From cities to biofuels, competition for water is accelerating. Climate change threatens to intensify the onset and severity of the water crisis in several regions of the developing world: this is already happening throughout much of Asia, the Mediterranean, southwestern Australia, and the southwestern US. Along with water shortages, unsafe water becomes an increasingly widespread problem, too. As water crises trigger food and health crises, billions may slip further into poverty, leading to greater social and political unrest, new wars, and worsening national security. Out of Water doesnapos;t just illuminate the coming global water crisis: it presents innovative solutions in agriculture, engineering, governance, and beyond, including state-of-the art techniques for integrated water management. This book will help raise the level of debate about water to the highest levels of government, and identify workable reforms and incentives to help water users utilize this crucial resource far more efficiently.

From cities to biofuels, competition for water is accelerating. Climate change threatens to intensify the onset and severity of the water crisis in several regions of the developing world: this is already happening throughout much of Asia, the Mediterranean, southwestern Australia, and the southwestern US. Along with water shortages, unsafe water becomes an increasingly widespread problem, too.As water crises trigger food and health crises, billions may slip further into poverty, leading to greater social and political unrest, new wars, and worsening national security. Out of Water doesnapos;t just illuminate the coming global water crisis: it presents innovative solutions in agriculture, engineering, governance, and beyond, including state-of-the art techniques for integrated water management. This book will help raise the level of debate about water to the highest levels of government, and identify workable reforms and incentives to help water users utilize this crucial resource far more efficiently.

This book provides a baseline understanding of how people and wetlands are connected, why these linkages are vital and how they can be better managed. It calls for action to integrate wetland management and WASH approaches, so as to benefit the health and development of people in rural and peri-urban areas in developing countries without compromising ecosystem functioning. It has been written predominantly for the core staff, planners and coordinators of international organisations and their implementing partners dealing with either wetlands conservation and management or WASH provision.

Wastewater irrigation is a widespread and growing phenomenon that carries varying degrees of risk. Whether spontaneously practiced in urban and periurban agriculture or planned as part of water reuse programmes, food and fodder production using untreated sewage or treated effluent can have serious human health implications for farmers and consumers, and can irreversibly degrade the environment. In low-income countries water pollution is often the result of inadequate wastewater collection and treatment, and unplanned release to receiving water bodies. Making wastewater irrigation safer depends on a location-specific combination of different pathogen barriers including, where possible, appropriate wastewater treatment. Ensuring that these strategies work in an integrated, mutually supportive manner requires a multi-sectoral paradigm shift in the common approach of wastewater management for disposal. Additionally, it is crucial to continue research (especially in developing countries) on the types and severity of risk, locally feasible mitigation options, the cost-effectiveness of safer wastewater irrigation practices compared to other interventions against diarrhoea and facilitating the adoption of ‘non-’ or ‘post-treatment’ options. This concluding chapter presents an outlook for wastewater irrigation by integrating the major findings of the present volume, synthesizing key elements of the current global status and challenges of sanitation and wastewater irrigation with emphasis on the WHO Guidelines. It also highlights wastewater-governance opportunities with the greatest potential to support safe wastewater irrigation that simultaneously address the combined challenges deriving from the global sanitation, water and food crises.

In developing countries urban wastewater management often fails to cope with increasing wastewater generation. Financial, technical and institutional limitations force authorities to discharge substantial amounts of untreated or partially treated wastewater into surface waters. Consequently, uncontrolled use of polluted water is increasingly common in the downstream peri-urban areas. Although wastewater use bears a significant risk on human health, such use is also productive and an asset for many. Agricultural use of wastewater is a strong manifestation of the urban-rural connection and transfers a waterborne risk from the wastewater disposal system to the food chain, requiring a paradigm shift in the approaches applied to risk minimization. Conventional models for urban wastewater treatment and management are based on top-down, mechanically driven approaches that do not, or do not sufficiently, consider the links between the social, economic and health aspects. This situation is understandable from historical and technological points of view, but does not provide innovative solutions to current problems in developing country cities. A different approach is required, one that rethinks conventional wastewater system design and management. By adopting a systems approach to analysing both the water and food chains, one discovers the interactions of different stakeholders that treat and use (or abuse) water, the impacts on overall productivity and the risks. Governance systems to manage wastewater use in agriculture must incorporate decentralization to accommodate thinking at the bottom layer, encourage stakeholder engagement and provide coordination and policy cohesion for managing risks jointly from both the water and food chains.

This module is about water resources, their complex relationship with the environment and the economy and the growing problem of water scarcity and the various options that exist to deal with this problem. The module examines how water is allocated between various competing demands and explores the role that water plays in food security, public health, people’s livelihoods and other aspects of social and economic development. The module seeks to critically evaluate the benefits, costs and impacts of water resources development, particularly those aspects most relevant to social and economic development in rural areas. Coverage includes the key water management challenges communities are facing today and the solutions that people have developed. Parts of the module concentrate on the ways in which economic concepts, methods and judgements can inform water resource management strategies and policy decisions that affect the resource. Economic efficiency in resource allocation is only one of many criteria used by policy-makers to evaluate the appropriate approach to a given issue. However, the insights given by the application of economic theory are often ignored in the face of conflicts over the use of water. The module also introduces a range of techniques, methods and information resources that can be used by professionals for the assessment of water resources and planning. Good information and good applied science are keys to improved water resource management and should be considered as necessary but not sufficient. It is also vital to develop the institutional arrangements and policies necessary for sustainable water use and environmental conservation. Thus governance arrangements in relation to water management are also a leading theme of the module.

This unit provides an introduction to the key characteristics of fisheries and aquaculture and the distinctions between them. It looks at their significance in farming systems and the water requirements involved. It proceeds to discuss the methods and tools available to assess water requirements for fisheries and aquaculture. The final sections of the unit look at the trade-offs for water allocation for fisheries and aquaculture and introduce perspectives on water governance and associated implications for water policies related to fisheries and aquaculture. Unit aims: To define and explain the nature of fisheries and aquaculture and the differences between them in relation to water resource management; To highlight the importance of fisheries and aquaculture to livelihoods; To explain the basis for assessment of fisheries and aquaculture water requirements in terms of quantity and quality; To present existing methods for assessing water needs in fisheries and aquaculture; To present existing methods for assessing water needs in fisheries and aquaculture; To introduce water resource management options for fisheries and aquaculture and related governance and policy implications.

This unit provides an introduction to the key concepts, challenges, perspectives and issues associated with the governance of water resources. Section 1 presents an introduction to the specific challenges of managing water and the issues that frame institutional and policy responses to water resource governance. Section 2 introduces local and community scale water governance systems as a way to improve the access, efficiency and distribution of water through the active participation of water users. It uses the case of Irrigation Management Transfer (IMT) to highlight important issues in local water governance. Section 3 evaluates the limitations of local governance and introduces alternative and complementary mechanisms designed to address those limitations by operating at ‘higher’ scales. It examines how the simultaneous use of governance mechanisms across scales can take advantage of each mechanism’s positive attributes while overcoming its limitations. Section 4 examines how factors beyond the water sector including trade policy, increasing appreciation for the environment and urbanisation impact water governance. The section thus highlights how successful water governance requires a broad understanding of not only water but the larger political economy in which water is used.

This module is about water resources, their complex relationship with the environment and the economy and the growing problem of water scarcity and the various options that exist to deal with this problem. The module examines how water is allocated between various competing demands and explores the role that water plays in food security, public health, people’s livelihoods and other aspects of social and economic development. The module seeks to critically evaluate the benefits, costs and impacts of water resources development, particularly those aspects most relevant to social and economic development in rural areas. Coverage includes the key water management challenges communities are facing today and the solutions that people have developed. Parts of the module concentrate on the ways in which economic concepts, methods and judgements can inform water resource management strategies and policy decisions that affect the resource. Economic efficiency in resource allocation is only one of many criteria used by policy-makers to evaluate the appropriate approach to a given issue. However, the insights given by the application of economic theory are often ignored in the face of conflicts over the use of water. The module also introduces a range of techniques, methods and information resources that can be used by professionals for the assessment of water resources and planning. Good information and good applied science are keys to improved water resource management and should be considered as necessary but not sufficient. It is also vital to develop the institutional arrangements and policies necessary for sustainable water use and environmental conservation. Thus governance arrangements in relation to water management are also a leading theme of the module.

The report focuses on the establishment of the Red River Basin Organization (RRBO) in Vietnam, but expands its analysis to the wider transformations of the water sector that impinge on the formation and effectiveness of this organization. A few reflections on the policy process are drawn from this analysis, albeit in a tentative form given the relatively limited period of time considered here. The report shows that the promotion of IWRM icons such as RBOs by donors has been quite disconnected from the existing institutional framework. However, the establishment of RBOs might eventually strengthen a better separation of operation and regulation roles. Institutional change is shown to result from the interaction between endogenous processes and external pressures, in ways that are barely predictable.

This paper gives an overview of water resources, its availability and use, problems and constraints, the present and future challenges and the ensuing opportunities in water resource sector of one of the most populated river basins of the world; the Indus-Gangetic basin. Large-scale development of water resources in the Indus basin has led to the resource base being depleted, both in terms of quantity as well as quality. Well-developed surface irrigation systems in the Indus basin tap most of the surface water available in the basin, leaving only 10% of the net runoff to the sea, whereas from Ganges basin, the net runoff flowing to the sea is about 40%. Groundwater, which is expected to serve as buffer source to compensate for the reduced surface water availability, is also getting depleted. Energy and agricultural sector policies followed also favour large scale exploitation of groundwater resources in the basin, which has led to water table decline and a reduction in environmental flows. In the Gangetic part of the basin, it is the economic water scarcity which is more prominent. Equally important is the deterioration of water quality of Ganges river, especially when it flows along the plains accumulating municipal, industrial and domestic waste from the rapidly growing cities situated along its banks. Compounded with these issues is the role played by climate change. Since both Indus and Ganges rivers are heavily dependent on snow and glacier melts, the streamflow in these rivers is highly sensitive to climate change. Recent years have witnessed some responses to the water scarcity problem in IG basin the form of popularization of resource conservation practices, growing high yielding short duration varieties of paddy, micro and precision irrigation, regulations to control groundwater use and management. The article presses the need for water resources in the basin to be managed in a conjunctive manner, considering rain water, surface water, soil water and groundwater in continuum. Considering the inter-linkage between groundwater extraction, energy and food policies, groundwater management strategies should have a focus on energy pricing, food pricing and procurement policies also. Nevertheless, devising long-term strategies on water resource management in the basin need not overlook the likely impacts that the changing climate is going to have on water resources.

The concept of a river basin as a management or planning unit has gone through several stages and is in a state of flux. From its western ‘‘discovery” in the 18th century to its advent as the overriding concept behind European water policy, the river basin has been conjured up and mobilized in evolving contexts with varying intentions. Associated with utopian ideas of the late 19th century, it supported ideas of full control of the hydrologic regime and multipurpose dam construction in the 19301960 period, then partly faded and was revived to address water-quality problems, before reemerging in the 1990s as the cornerstone of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), enriched and blended with watershed- and ecosystem-management approaches. This article recounts the evolution of the concept of a river basin and how it has been associated with various strands of thinking and sometimes co-opted or mobilized by particular social groups or organizations to strengthen the legitimacy of their agendas. Beyond its relevance as a geographical unit for water resources development and management purposes, the river basin is also a political and ideological construct, with its discursive representations and justifications, closely linked with shifting scalar configurations, both ecological and in terms of regulatory regime or governance. How interconnected and nested waterscapes can be managed by discontinuous nested political/administrative and social levels remains a fundamental question fuelling an endless search for elusive governance systems that would unite nature and society.

Indian wetlands have witnessed dramatic socio-environmental transformations whose drivers unfold at multiple scales. Changes in the structure of governance of natural resources are needed. Past and current approaches are based on the assumption that a commonly defined level at which management would be optimal do exist be it the local, the regional, or the national, etc. But, the relationships that societies nurture with their environment unfold at multiple and sometimes overlapping levels: true polycentric governance is based on the recognition that multiple claims and values are a reality of natural resources management: nested arenas of negotiation are needed to create a democratic space where multiple voices can be considered in the decision-making process.

In densely populated coastal wetlands with rich biodiversity, multiple, but generally competing, economic activities are common. This paper adopts a polycentric perspective to the study of wetlands management in India to assess the scope for sustainable and equitable use of these remarkable and threatened ecosystems. The analytical framework proves to be useful and highlights that the intertwined processes of environmental and social changes result from, and shape, governance patterns. The three wetlands studied share commonalities in their trajectories: high population pressure, the enclosure of the commons and subsequent capitalization of resources and social marginalization, conflicting interests and intense local politics, a disconnect between global conservation discourses and local concerns, weak institutional arrangements, and global economic forces. The intense politics of access, control and use of natural resources challenge the implementation of a true polycentric regime in the Indian context due to a tendency to bureaucratization and a lack of participation, and existing limits to democratic citizenship. Creating a democratic space where multiple voices can be considered in the decision-making process remains a challenge. The paper concludes that inclusion of power and politics in the study of governance of natural resources should be of prime concern for researchers and decision makers.

Water management is commonly assumed to be a mere technical matter where experts and managers endeavour to match supply and demand by using technology, through rational problem-solving and by engaging stakeholders. This article, in contrast, emphasizes that river basin development and management is about the shifting patterns of access to a contested and scarce resource and is inherently a political process. An investigation of the physical and social characteristics and constraints of river basins must be conducted in parallel with an analysis of the convergent interests manifest in capital intensive water investments, and an attention to how discursive power is used in the justification of large-scale investments. Thus, repoliticizing river basin management offers a different and complementary perspective that allows a better understanding of society/environment relationships.

Wetlands contribute in diverse ways to the livelihoods of millions of people in Sub-Saharan Africa. In many places they are inextricably linked to cropping and livestock management systems. At the same time, increasing population in conjunction with efforts to increase food security is escalating pressure to expand agriculture within wetlands. The environmental impact of wetland agriculture can, however, have profound social and economic repercussions for people dependent on ecosystem services other than those provided directly by agriculture. Currently, the basis for making decisions about the extent to which wetlands can be sustainably used for agriculture is weak. This paper provides an overview of wetland distribution, type and condition across Sub-Saharan Africa. Findings from an investigation of wetland use conducted in Tanzania are presented. These highlight the reliance of communities on both wetland agriculture and natural resources, and show that the nature of household dependence varies significantly from place to place and as socio-economic status changes. Consequently, incentives to manage wetland resources will differ markedly, not only from one location to another, but also across socio-economic groups within the same community. This complexity highlights the need for critical analysis of the social and economic factors that underpin the dynamics of wetland resource use in the development of sustainable management plans.

The Ferghana Valley Project, initiated in 2001, has promoted institutional change in the post-Soviet irrigation sector in this part of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. This paper presents the short-term (5-year) impacts of integrated water resources management project activities focused on water user participation in the South Ferghana Canal of Ferghana Province in Uzbekistan on irrigation water delivery and crop productivity. Irrigation performance assessment indicators indicate only slight improvements in water delivery and crop yields. Although water was important, larger changes in the agricultural sector of Uzbekistan dominated outcomes in this relatively short time span.

After the independence of Central Asian countries, many international projects have been launched to promote water users’ inclusion into the water management at different levels. The aim of such projects is to achieve sustainable water management through inclusion of interests of different groups on day-to-day water management. Although IWRM in Central Asia has been already promoted for a decade, there are only a few examples of the implementation in real life situations. The Integrated Water Resources Management in Ferghana Valley (IWRM FV) is a pilot project on implementing integrated water resources management elements at the main canal levels and below. The experience gained from IWRM FV project and lessons learnt could be useful for the national and international organizations for their future work on IWRM implementation at the different regions of Central Asia. IWRM FV project has been active since 2001 in the Ferghana Valley, one of the largest irrigated areas of Central Asia. The project has promoted and implemented participatory irrigation management for three pilot canals. This paper presents the process of implementation and some preliminary outcomes of the IWRM VF project.

Before indigenous practices and institutions can be evaluated, they first have to be identified, described and characterized. This tool describes the methods used to answer a specific question: “Which indigenous practices, legal frameworks and institutions are most conducive to equitable, win-win, and pro-poor investments within sub-Saharan African transboundary basins”? It describes case studies on transboundary issues and local water governance institutions from the Volta amp; Limpopo Basins.

People living in arid areas often experience highly variable rainfall, droughts, floods and have insecure livelihoods. Small multi-purpose reservoirs are a widely used form of infrastructure for the provision of water. They supply water for domestic use, livestock watering, small scale irrigation, and other beneficial uses. Although clusters of reservoirs store significant quantities of water and effect on downstream flows, they have rarely been considered as systems, with synergies and tradeoffs resulting from their numbers and their density. Often reservoirs were constructed in a series of projects funded by different agencies, at different times, with little or no coordination among the implementing partners. That a significant number are functioning sub-optimally and/or are falling into disrepair indicates that there is room for improvement in the planning, management, operation, and maintenance of small reservoirs. This first version of the Small Reservoirs Toolkit was produced by the Small Reservoirs Project. It is a project of the Challenge Program for Water and Food, sponsored by the German Technical Cooperation (Gesellschaft fuer Technische Zusammenarbeit, GTZ), led by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) with six partners: Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuaria (Embrapa), L’Institute de recherch pour le development (IRD), Stockholm Environment Institution (SEI), Delft University of Technology (TUD), University of Zimbabwe (UZ), Ghana Water Research Institution (WRI). In 2005 the project began with two paired objectives. The basin/watershed level objective is to promote and support the planning, development, and management of small reservoir ensembles. The local/community level objective is to support use of small multi-purpose reservoirs that are properly located, well designed, well maintained and operated to improve the livelihoods of the local residents. A multi-disciplinary team was assembled to develop a set of tools based on socio-economic and biophysical research. The hydrologic, economic, ecological, health, and institutional dimensions of small reservoirs were considered. By harmonizing the interests of individuals served by small multi-purpose reservoirs and other people living in the basin we will come closer to our paired goals: 1) to maintain water related ecosystem services, the long-term sustainability of local water supplies, and adequate downstream flows as we make use of small reservoirs and 2) to improve food security and increase sustainable livelihoods through the use of those small multi-purpose reservoirs. There are approximately 30 tools and techniques presented in four topic areas: i) Intervention Planning; ii) Storage and Hydrology; iii) Ecosystems and Health; iv) Institutions and Economics. This tool kit is intended for the use of NGOs, research institutes, universities, donor agencies, multilateral organizations, and government agencies. These tools are not meant to replace other methods o

This proceeding provides the papers and discussion results of a two-day workshop that was organized at International Water Management Institute (IWMI) office in Addis Ababa during the period of February 6-8, 2009 in relation to CPWF Project 19 Improved water and land management in the Ethiopian Highlands and its impact on downstream stakeholders dependent on the Blue Nile. Short title: Upstream Downstream (USDS) in the Nile. The project is being under implementation during the last one and half years in partnership with various institutions that include International Livestock Research Institute, Cornell University, Omdurman Islamic University-UNESCO Chair in Water Resources, Addis Ababa University, Bahir Dar University, Amhara Regional Agricultural Research Institute and Forum for Social Studies. The main aims of the workshop had been: Bring together key stakeholders relevant to the project; Present, debate and validate the intermediate results of the project; Disseminate key results to wider audiences through workshop participating stakeholders; Follow up on the progress of the project and plan remaining tasks of the project. The workshop focus themes were: General characterization of the Blue Nile Basin; Watershed modeling and analysis; Water demand and allocation modeling and simulation; Policy and institutions of the water management in the Blue Nile basin.

Introduction/Problem Identification: Managing externalities of groundwater use in order to minimize the negative impacts of over-exploitation while preserving the benefits derived from such use has emerged as the key natural resources management (NRM) challenge in South Asia. Direct regulation of groundwater is not a feasible option in the region given the large number of pumps (over 20 million or so) and the huge transactions costs involved. However, the urgency of the problem is such that groundwater can no longer remain un governed. In this context, indirect mechanism, such as regulation of electricity supply and changes in electricity pricing and subsidies can provide an effective handle for governing groundwater. Indeed, prompted by dire financial straits, most state electricity boards (SEBs) have embarked upon electricity reforms. These reforms have profound influence on groundwater use. This paper will document the impact of electricity reforms and pricing on groundwater. Analysis/Results and Implications for Policy and/or Research Indian policy discourse on the most suitable mode of agricultural electricity tariff has come full circle. Until the early 1970s, all state electricity boards (SEBs) charged their tubewell owners based on metered consumption and this was later changed to flat tariff. However, over time flat tariff rates became downwardly sticky and the SEBs started making huge losses. Low flat tariffs also led to over-exploitation of groundwater in arid and semi-arid states of India. Therefore, recently, there is a renewed interest in reforming the electricity sector. States of Gujarat and West Bengal have adopted different approaches to electricity reforms. Gujarat has separated electricity supply to agriculture from those of domestic and industrial feeders and started rationing electricity supply to agriculture. West Bengal opted the path of metering of agricultural tubewells. Both these initiatives had profound impact on groundwater. This paper analyses the impact of electricity sector reforms and pricing policies on groundwater use. As a part of the ongoing power sectors reforms in India, the state of West Bengal is in the process of metering agricultural electricity supply. This state has a thriving informal groundwater market. Results suggest that the majority of the pump owners benefit from the reforms in two ways: first by having to pay a lower electricity bill for same usage and second through increased profit margins by selling water. This is because in response to changed incentive structure, water prices rose sharply by 30-50% immediately after metering. In contrast, water buyers have lost out by having to pay higher water charges and face adverse terms of contract. Impact of metering on operation of groundwater markets and volume of groundwater extracted is less clear; they may expand, contract or remain unchanged, though water use efficiency is likely to go up. At current tariff rates, the electricity utilities are

Transboundary water resource governance is premised on equitable water and water-related benefit sharing. Using the case of the Blue Nile (Ethiopia and Sudan), we explore the conceptual issues that need consideration in the crafting of cross-border cooperation within the water sector. First, drawing on global experiences with transboundary water management, we evaluate how upstream and downstream concerns are addressed by transboundary water management institutions. Second, we explore the kinds of institutional design and the issues which need to be considered to result in ‘win-win’ scenarios for both upstream and downstream users, as well as the mechanisms of benefit sharing negotiated amongst different stakeholders. Third, we examine ways of addressing equity and livelihoods in transboundary institutional arrangements. Finally, we attempt to assess how transboundary institutions can address broader historical, political and economic issues and their implications for sustainable transboundary water governance. This paper raises key issues that need to be addressed in establishing transboundary governance institutions.

In low- and middle-income countries, people need water for drinking, personal hygiene and other domestic use. But they also use it for livestock, horticulture, irrigation, fisheries, brickmaking, and other small-scale enterprises. Multiple-use water services (MUS) are best suited to meeting people’s needs. However, most water services are designed only for domestic water or only for agriculture, and fail to reflect its real-life use. The action research project ‘Models for implementing multiple-use water supply systems for enhanced land and water productivity, rural livelihoods and gender equity’ developed case studies in eight countries (Bolivia, Colombia, Ethiopia, India, Nepal, South Africa, Thailand and Zimbabwe) involving 150 institutions. The project analysed two models: homestead-scale and community-scale MUS and developed a ‘multiple-use water ladderapos; to show how better livelihoods flow from increased access to water. This book shows how livelihoods act as the main driver for water services and how access to water is determined by sustainable water resources, appropriate technologies and equitable ways of managing communal systems. Climbing the water ladder requires a small fraction of total water resources, yet has the potential to help people climb out of poverty. Local government can be the pivot to make this happen. But, it needs support to implement its mandate to meet multiple-use demand and to become more accountable to people in communities.

Africa is a continent of extreme water resource environments with arguably the greatest spatial and temporal natural water supply variability in the world. Africa is also a land of transboundary waters. With the exception of island states, every African country has territory in at least one transboundary river basin. These basins cover 62% of Africa’s total land area, and virtually every one greater than 50,000 km2 crosses at least one national boundary. The management of these transboundary waters in conditions of such variability has been made even more complex by the unique political and economic history of the continent, in particular as related to the involvement of outside actors. In the first half of the 20th century this involvement was related to colonialism. From the second half to the present, it has involved bi-lateral and international donors, lenders and international NGOs. In this paper, we examine the impacts of this influence by first reviewing the development of transboundary water law in Africa. We then examine how the global norms now mentioned in African law, in particular equity in water allocation, have actually influenced agreement content. Finally, we examine the extent to which influences wielded by international actors are a logical response to conditions in Africa’s international basins. The results highlight the tangible influences of international actors on the orientation and content of basin level agreements and suggest the use of greater discretion in the application of international paradigms to water management agreements in extreme environments.

This document was prepared by the Consumer Industry Team of the World Economic Forum as part of the Industry Partner Programme. Industry Partners are select member companies of the World Economic Forum that are actively involved in the Forum’s mission at the industry level. Partnership brings visibility and insight to strategic decision-making on the most important industry and cross-industry related issues and the opportunity to engage in actions of global corporate citizenship. Partners: Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Nestl; Member of the FoundationBoard of the World Economic Forum. Margaret Catley-Carlson, UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation. Colin Chartres, Director- General, International Water Management Institute (IWMI). E. Neville Isdell, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, The Coca-Cola Company. Andrew N. Liveris, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, The Dow Chemical Company. Graham Mackay, Chief Executive, SABMiller. Julia Marton-Lefvre, Director General, IUCN. David Molden, Coordinator, Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management, International Water Management Institute (IWMI). Indra Nooyi, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, PepsiCo. Letitia Obeng, Chair, Global Water Partnership. Ralph R. Peterson, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, CH2M HILL Companies. Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum.

While the importance of flow variability in water treaties is acknowledged, little work has been done to identify those mechanisms that have actually been employed. The present study uses a content analysis of a large number of water treaties in order to identify approaches used in practice. It was found that flow variability has been governed using a variety of mechanisms. While some mechanisms explicitly address variability, the majority use more subtle, open- ended approaches. Most of the mechanisms adopted deviate from an ‘‘ideal’’ state of being both flexible in the face of change but binding in enforcement. Instead, they reflect trade-offs between flexibility and enforcement. These results are used to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of particular variability management strategies.

Gujarat, a rapidly industrializing state in western India, is notorious for groundwater over-exploitation. A perverse link between energy subsidies and groundwater overdraft has left the state with a bankrupt electricity utility and depleted aquifers, especially since the late 1980s. Moreover, this perverse relationship has meant that groundwater irrigators have essentially held Gujarat’s non-farm rural economy to ransom. Efforts to regulate groundwater overdraft since the early 1970s have been unsuccessful, as have attempts to charge a rational electricity tariff to groundwater irrigators. During 20032006, drawing upon a proposal outlined by researchers, the government launched the Jyotigram (lighted village) scheme, which invested US$ 290 million to separate agricultural electricity feeders from non-agricultural ones, and established a tight regimen for farm power rationing in the countryside. By 2006, Gujarat covered almost all of its 18,000 villages under the Jyotigram scheme of rationalized power supply. With this, two major changes have occurred: (a) villages receive 24 h three-phase power supply for domestic uses, in schools, hospitals, village industries, all subject to metered tariff; (b) tubewell owners receive 8 h/day of power of full voltage and on a pre-announced schedule. The Jyotigram scheme has radically improved the quality of village life, spurred non-farm economic enterprises, halved the power subsidy to agriculture, and reduced groundwater overdraft. It has also produced positive and negative impacts on medium and large farmers, while notably harming marginal farmers and the landless, who depend for their access to irrigation on water markets which have become much smaller, post-Jyotigram. In addition, the water prices charged by tubewell owners have increased by 3050%. We propose that the Jyotigram scheme, with some refinements, can be implemented successfully in other regions of South Asia facing similar challenges of groundwater governance.

Although a lot more needs to be done to evolve a better strategy for managing the groundwater economy, a copybook transposition of the Californian and Spanish formula as argued in these columns ‘Groundwater Management and Ownership’ (February 16) seems nave, even disingenuous. A groundwater governance regime for a country like India cannot be dealt with only from the earth science perspective but involves a broader grasp of the organisation of the groundwater economy and its underlying socio-economic dynamics.

The world currently faces food, water and energy crisis. All are interlinked, in that water underpins food production and water is also under competition for use in the energy sector including hydropower generation and biofuels production. However, until recently, we have continued to use water as if it is an infinite resource and we squander millions of litres through inefficient management practices in many sectors of the economy. Furthermore, once used in agriculture, industry and domestically, water is returned to the environment frequently contaminated with salts, pesticides, persistent organic compounds, sewage and heavy metals. Elsewhere, literally cubic kilometers of untreated effluent are dumped in the oceans, polluting fisheries and the environment alike. Storm water runoff is often similarly discharge straight into rivers, and lakes, or the ocean rather than being seen as a valuable resource. Whilst many developed countries have done much to clean up their act with respect to sewage treatment, there are many developing countries that have few, if any, operational sewage treatment plants. Where sewage is discharged into rivers, it is often reused almost immediately in its untreated form by poor farmers. Whilst the nutrients in the water can be regarded as useful fertilizer, other contaminants including fecal coliform bacteria, helminths, viruses and chemical and metal contaminants pose immediate health risks for those using the water for irrigation and for those who consume their produce. This paper addresses some of the key issues associated with the utilization of waste water in agriculture in terms of viewing waste water as an important resource that can assist in fighting the water and food crises. It examines the major contaminants in waste water being used in agriculture and considers these from risks that they pose to human health and the environment. It also considers the types of responses that are required from government to ensure that management, regulation and policy actions are introduced to ensure that risks are adequately minimized. The paper is focused around work in developing countries and will use examples from West Africa, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Wastewater use is already a common reality on some 20 million hectares, where inadequate local sanitation facilities mean that farmers often have no alternative to the use of heavily polluted irrigation water. In many cases farmers have to stand in the polluted water to extract it and the water is then irrigated directly onto the leaves of green vegetables and fodder crops. Furthermore, little may be done between the field and the point of sale to wash off biological contaminants. In other cases, heavy metals and persistent organic compounds may also be found in the irrigation water and these may accumulate in the soil and the edible leaves and tubers of food crops causing long term damage to consumers. Whilst immediate effects of contamination are usually most notic

Groundwater irrigation has emerged as a major socio-technical reality and has added substantive economic gains in the Indo-Gangetic Basin countries. In the Indo-Gangetic Basin the hydrology and socio-ecology and the associated agriculture and human livelihoods undergo significant shifts as one traverses from the semiarid and water-scarce Indus Basin in the northwest to the sub-humid and water-sufficient eastern Gangetic Basin. However, basin-wide analysis shows that stage of development and utilization of the groundwater resource has limited relationship to the abundance of resource availability. Studies made at five sites in the basin under the CPWF Groundwater Governance in Asia (GGA) Project revealed that groundwater use produced higher benefits as compared to canal irrigation and conjunctive water use. Small and marginal farmers with scattered land holdings do not, however, have sufficient resources to install their own pump sets, and must depend upon their neighbors for purchase of groundwater. Furthermore, a mismatch between the basin hydrological conditions and the energy policies are leading to over-exploitation of the resource in the Indus Basin and constraining the optimal use of the resource in the eastern Gangetic Basin. We present policy options for improving the productivity, livelihoods, and resource sustainability for the small and marginal farmers of the basin.

Starting from the assessment that past efforts at reform in agricultural water management in developing countries have achieved very little, this article argues that a fundamental change is required in the approach to policy and institutional transformation if the present deadlock in the internalisation of ecological sustainability, human development/poverty alleviation and democratic governance into the ‘core business’ of water bureaucracies is to be overcome. ‘Social engineering’ approaches need to be replaced by ‘strategic action’ approaches that acknowledge the inherently political character and the plurality of actors, institutions and objectives of water management a perspective operationalised here around the notions of ‘problemshed’ and ‘issue network.’

Using the case of Mafungautsi Forest Reserve, this paper discusses continuities and changes in policy and practice at the communal and reserved forest interface in Zimbabwe. Colonial forestry policy in Zimbabwe has often been labelled as oppressive, as communal area citizens were not allowed to participate effectively in its formulation and implementation. Independence in 1980, it was thought, would usher in an era of greater participation within the forestry sector. However, the hope that local communities would have greater input in the forestry policies and management has largely remained unfulfilled. The state institutions responsible for managing forests have largely remained unsympathetic to the involvement of local communities in the management of forestry resources despite the pre-independence rhetoric. Alongside the co-management attempt to make local peasants citizens through their inclusion in decision-making has been the continuity of the colonial policy that treated local peasants who used resources as criminals destroying trees and forests. This paper examines how the fundamental policy perspective of forestry in Zimbabwe still perceives local peasant farmers to be unsustainable exploiters of forests. The local resource users have not remained passive recipients of the repressive forestry policies and practices based on science but have actively contested them since the 1950s.

Recurring water crises, global water initiatives, and demands for water reforms by development banks, have all pushed water up the agenda of most Mekong-region countries. Many changes have already been made. Now decision makers need to know what has worked, what hasn’t, and why. To find out, IWMI has reviewed new water policies, plans and laws, and assessed participation, the new water ‘apex bodies’, and integrated water resources management (IWRM). The findings show that top-down state policies based on ‘blueprints’ are widely applied in a one-size-fits-all approach, without taking local realities into account. Water planning is still largely expert-driven, and focused on procedures and targets. There is little room for decision-making that is based on negotiations between users, line agencies, NGOs and politicians, for example. Although much mention is made of participation and IWRM, little is being done on the ground. To bridge these divides, better forms of governance are needed. And greater efforts need to be made to understand complex local situationsso that policymakers are better informed, and new policies are appropriate and workable. Key to this will be an understanding of what causes new policies to succeed or fail in different contexts.