The role of stakeholders in water management (original) (raw)
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Formal law and local water control in the Andean region: a field of fierce contestation
Water access and control rights of peasant and indigenous communities in the Andean countries are under continuous attack. Apart from historical processes of rights encroachment by elites and landlords, currently powerful water actors intervene within communities and territories while often neglecting agreements on local water rights and management rules. Vertical state law and intervention practices, as well as new privatization policies, tend to intensify the problem and generally ignore, discriminate or undermine local normative frameworks. Recognition of and security for the diverse and dynamic local rights and management frameworks is crucial not just for improving rural livelihoods but also for national food security in the Andean countries. The paper outlines the efforts of the action-research, exchange and advocacy program WALIR (Water Law and Indigenous Rights) to address these issues. The water policy and legal context in the Andean region, and some of the key conceptual challenges related to the official recognition of local socio-legal repertoires are briefly discussed. It ends with a reflection on conditions for improving rights recognition of marginalized groups and peasant and indigenous communities, through policy and interactive intervention strategies.
Water Justice in Latin America. The Politics of Difference, Equality, and Indifference
Latin America’s objectivist water science-policy-intervention nexus tends to simplify the region’s hugely diverse local water cultures and management practices. Throughout history, rather than understanding locally prevailing, hybrid systems of water rights and identities, policies have adopted universalist, civilizing water expert notions. The ‘living’ water rules, rights and ways of belonging to local water societies were not known but artificially invented. Thereto, dominant imaginaries were based, first, on the construction and imposition of ‘Radical Difference’ and currently, on the invention and subtle imposition of ‘Potential Equality’. Both forms misrecognize actual forms of people’s water control, organizations and identities: they proliferate and deepen the longstanding, discriminatory ‘dark legend of UnGovernance’. In complex ways this water cultural misrecognition entwines with and produces water distributive injustice and political exclusion. Missionary (often well-intended) efforts to reorganize and order ‘unruly’ Latin American water cultures tend to engender policy models and interventions that depoliticize their deeply political choices and dehumanize the water societies they affect. This generates profound indifference towards on-the-ground water user families and territories, and how they suffer from modernist water interventions. In many places, however, affected water user collectives do not remain silent and creatively struggle for water justice. They engage in multi-actor, multi-scalar resistance to interweave and demand for distributive, political and cultural justice and for co-designing their water societies and futures.
Water rights and water markets: lessons from technical advisory assistance in Latin America
Irrigation and Drainage, 2006
Water has unique features, which distinguish it from other natural resources. These characteristics usually result in legal systems in which water belongs to the public domain, but rights granted to economic agents to use it are protected under constitutional guarantee of private property. The allocation and retention of water rights are always contingent upon putting them to a socially recognized beneficial use. For an increasingly scarce resource, new demands can only be satisfied by transferring water rights from existing uses. To deal with the problem of reallocation, countries have to decide whether to use administrative mechanisms or water markets. For the sustainable and efficient functioning of water markets, it is necessary to have an institutional and legal system that is compatible with water marketing as well as with the nature of the water resource itself. A water market without regulations to protect the resource base, third parties and the environment, and to prevent monopolization, will result in uncontrolled private appropriation of a scarce resource and problems in related markets rather than in efficient resource allocation. Source: Solanes, Miguel and Jouravlev, Andrei, ''Water rights and y Droits d'eau et marchés d'eau: leçons tirées d'une assistance technique en Amérique Latine. z Solanes, Miguel and Jouravlev, Andrei, ''Water rights and
Improving Water Allocation for user communities and platforms in the Andes
International Food Policy Research Institute eBooks, 2005
This chapter focuses on how to improve water allocation considering the water user majorities in Andean countries: the needs, capacities, opportunities, and obstacles of the peasant and indigenous communities, and local water management platforms. The water management context and policy debate are first briefly outlined, with a particular focus on watershed management and decentralization. The chapter then discusses the rightsbased orientation of various water policy proposals for improving watershed management, defining four exemplary approaches. A brief overview presents their conceptual underpinning and their practical outcomes for water conflict resolution and integrated water management. The chapter concludes with the presentation of basic elements for analyzing and setting up consensus-oriented water management strategies, and recommendations and process guidelines for user-oriented water policies. F armer-managed water use and production systems form the backbone of local and national economies and food security in most Andean countries, but face increasing problems. 1 Growing demographic pressure contributes to the degeneration of natural resources and local livelihood systems, and the processes of migration, globalization, and urbanization of rural areas, among others, profoundly change the agrarian structure and living conditions. New interest groups enter the territories of local peasant and indigenous communities and often take over a substantive share of existing water resources, thereby neglecting local rules, rights, and agreements. The new water management context leads to increasing inequality, poverty, conflict, and ecological destruction. Consequently, rural communities particularly suffer from the current water crises. Together with other stakeholder groups who lack influence in water policymaking and implementation, they may be characterized as the tail-enders of current water society. Traditionally, water legislation and policies in the Andean countries have paid little attention to locally existing water rights frameworks, their problems, and their solutions. With rapidly growing pressure on water resources and increasing claims and conflicts among multiple use sectors, conventional bureaucratic and free market water allocation approaches seem to have worsened the crisis, instead of contributing to its solution. As in other parts of the world, new policies for the regulation, intervention, and adaptation of water management are being developed as an answer to water crises. These often refer to participation, decentralization, and transferring management to local government. In principle, these could be major steps toward strengthening users' organizations, by granting them greater decisionmaking power and security in their water rights and respecting sufficient autonomy for water management according to their needs and potential. However, in these times of radical state downsizing in the Andean countries, the slogan of participation is often also a facade for the underlying intention to abandon essential public tasks and cut back on public spending in water management (Dourojeanni and Jouravlev 1999a; Boelens and Hoogendam 2002; Hendriks et al. 2003). Looking beneath participatory words and promising statements, one must ask whether transfer policies are also a strategy to maintain or even strengthen state control over water at the local level. Alternatively, as first evidence in many cases shows, the proposals may be questioned as being part of private-sector projects to accumulate water rights, gain control over water supply services, and multiply business profitability, free from governmental control and public regulation (Moreyra 2001; Bustamante 2002; Guevara et al. 2002). Obviously, the challenge of making water laws and policies is strongly complicated by the multiple forms of water use and management systems in a context that is extremely diverse. All Andean countries have great differences in ecological and climatic regions as well as in institutional and technological environments, and also show impressive, historically grown diversities with respect to organizational and political structures, cultural backgrounds, and production rationalities. Thus, the plural management forms and socioeconomic stratification make the problem of protecting natural resources even greater, since rules and regulatory mechanisms necessarily have to adjust to the issues and actors at stake. In the case of corporations and formal entities, governments can, to a certain extent, draw on the experience and environmental instruments, laws, administrative techniques, and
Adequate supply of drinking water at local level depends, in many cases on community participation. We compare three governance regimes for drinking water management based on multilevel collective action: 1) ASADAS in Costa Rica, 2) Water Boards (JAA, for its acronym in spanish) in Honduras and 3) Water User Committees (CA, for its acronym in spanish) in Mexico. Our data is based on participant observation, and formal and informal interviews. Legal framework, structure and operation, and efficiency for provision and conservation of water resources are analyzed. ASADAS and Water Boards are legal entities with recognized community participation and collective action, while Water Committees have no legal support by the Mexican Government. Regimens showed similar structures and operation, but different economic capabilities and efficiencies in the provision of water and in ensuring water recharge. Recognition and empowerment of the Water Committees in Mexico could increase and ensure water provision in the long-term. RESUMEN El abastecimiento del agua para consumo humano a escala local puede depender de la participación social. Se compararon tres regímenes de gobernanza para gestión del agua basado en acción colectiva y en entidades anidadas: 1) Asociaciones Administradoras de Sistemas de Acueductos y Alcantarillados Sanitario (ASADAS) en Costa Rica, 2) Juntas Ad-ministradoras del Agua (JAA) en Honduras y 3) Comités de Agua (CA) en Oaxaca, México. Se analizaron el marco legal, la estructura y operatividad y la eficiencia en la provisión y conservación de los recursos hídricos mediante revisión documental, observación partici-pativa y entrevistas informales. ASADAS y JAA son reconocidas legalmente, mientras que los CA no tienen soporte en el marco legal mexicano. Los regímenes mostraron estructuras y operatividad análoga, así como tendencias similares hacia eficiencia en la provisión del agua y en asegurar la recarga hídrica, pero capacidades económicas diferentes. Reconocer y empoderar los CA en México podría aumentar y garantizar el abastecimiento de agua a el largo plazo.
Effective water governance in the Americas: a key issue
2003
This report would not have been possible without the inputs of the many participants in the 20 workshops on governance organised by the South American Technical Advisory Committee for the Global Water Partnership (SAMTAC). The Annexes present in more detail the activities carried out in the individual countries of the region. The report refers to water, whether surface water or groundwater, in all its forms and conditions. The term "institution" is used in the wider sense, to include regulations, organisations and other processes that determine the context in which water should be managed, allocated and protected. INDEX c h a rged to the Global Water Partnership (GWP). Preparatory activities for this large-scale dialogue on governance included electronic workshops and forums at various levels in many countries and regions of the world. The meeting called "The Water Forum for the Americas in the 21st Century", convened by the Mexican government, proved to be a particularly valuable contribution. This document is based on the original document presented in Mexico, with subsequent contributions and comments, especially those from the Regional Workshop organised by the South American Global Water Partnership, held on 12-13 January, 2003, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Although this report is based mainly on the Dialogues and debates held in South America, in general it is applicable to the whole of Latin America. In line with this, the text of this report makes no distinction between the terms "South America" and "Latin America", and will use Latin America in the generic sense throughout. At the United Nations Millennium Assembly (2000), the Heads of State stressed the importance of water conservation and management, both for environmental protection and, in particular, "to stop the unsustainable exploitation of water resources, by developing water management strategies at the regional, national and local level, which provide both equable access and adequate supplies". Finally, at the Fresh Water Conference in Bonn (2001), the ministers recommended taking action regarding water governance. Their proposal was that "Each country should have in place applicable arrangements for governance of water affairs at all levels and, where appointed, accelerate water sector reforms". The Third Global Water Forum, planned for March 2003 in Japan, and its Ministerial Conference, will not only review progress in the implementation of agreements made at previous international meetings, but will also give significant attention in its discussions to the capacity for effective governance of water resources, in order to achieve a greater commitment to attaining tangible results from governments and the community. Consequently, one of the main topics of the Third Global Water Forum will be the "Dialogue on Effective Water Governance", the organisation of which was