Policymakers' Reflections on Water Goverance Issues (original) (raw)
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Policymakers’ Reflections on Water Governance Issues
Ecology and Society, 2013
The two cultures theory argues that policy makers and scientists have different cultures and difficulty in communicating with each other. Others argue that there is increasing co-production of knowledge. This essay aims to assess the concerns of policy makers based on our policy work, policy-related research work, and our day-today experiences in terms of three questions: What are the perceived major issues for water governance? What are the major challenges in the structure of the existing global water governance approach? What is the vision for improving global water governance? This essay combines views from governmental, hybrid, inter-and non-governmental policy makers. It argues that water covers so many issues, aspects, and sectors that a key challenge is whether water should be governed as a sector or as a cross-cutting issue. It looks at how this challenge plays out within the United Nations system and leads to specific goal setting, while missing an overall visionary approach and a legally binding system of governance; within the hybrid arena, where it leads to inclusive discussion but not necessarily triggering consensus decisions; within nation states, where it has led to a loss of focus and a multitude of gaps and overlaps; and within transnational cooperative projects, where it has led to multiple interpretations of what is good practice. It then identifies a series of research questions.
Policymakers’ Reflections on Water Governance Issues
Ecology and Society, 2013
The two cultures theory argues that policy makers and scientists have different cultures and difficulty in communicating with each other. Others argue that there is increasing co-production of knowledge. This essay aims to assess the concerns of policy makers based on our policy work, policy-related research work, and our day-today experiences in terms of three questions: What are the perceived major issues for water governance? What are the major challenges in the structure of the existing global water governance approach? What is the vision for improving global water governance? This essay combines views from governmental, hybrid, inter-and non-governmental policy makers. It argues that water covers so many issues, aspects, and sectors that a key challenge is whether water should be governed as a sector or as a cross-cutting issue. It looks at how this challenge plays out within the United Nations system and leads to specific goal setting, while missing an overall visionary approach and a legally binding system of governance; within the hybrid arena, where it leads to inclusive discussion but not necessarily triggering consensus decisions; within nation states, where it has led to a loss of focus and a multitude of gaps and overlaps; and within transnational cooperative projects, where it has led to multiple interpretations of what is good practice. It then identifies a series of research questions.
Global Governance of Water: A Practitioner's Perspective
Journal of Global Governance, Volume 14, Issue 4, pp. 409-417, October-December 2008. , 2008
The wide-ranging contents of this special issue on the global governance of water have stimulated a number of thoughts on my part as a former practitioner in this area. My views are grouped below around seven topics: the concept of global water governance itself; the levels at which governance can be handled; Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) as a leading paradigm of governance; water rights; accountability and voice; transparency and corruption; and the options of financing governance at national and international scales. I conclude by anticipating some themes from the forthcoming third edition of the World Water Development Report (WWDR-3). Sound management of water is a function of a complex interaction of numerous factors, including demographics, economic development and trade, social and cultural processes, consumption patterns, technology, and climate. Moreover, many of these factors are changing rapidly, adding further complexity. This situation rules out any possibility for universal templates or onesize- fits-all solutions to water management. That said, when properly planned and implemented, governance instruments can affect water’s drivers and uses to improve efficiency, equity, and sustainability. Unfortunately, however, the most important decisions impacting water today are often being made in domains outside that of water, without water being considered as a priority topic. For example, decisions about health, food, and energy on a sector basis or about poverty reduction and sustainable development in broader frameworks can have a major impact on water resources.
Global Challenges in Water Governance
2017
After a century of massive human interventions into the hydrological cycle, governing water is a critical global concern in the new millennium. Growing evidence that human impacts on the planet are shaping global and local hydrology is challenging long-held assumptions regarding resource management, development, and sustainability. Global Challenges in Water Governance introduces and examines physical, social, and ethical factors that affect how relationships to water amongst humans, social institutions, other species, and Earth systems are governed. Each volume in the series tackles issues of critical importance to water governance— from relationships of science to policy, to water politics and human rights, to ecological concerns—in order to clarify what is at stake and to organize the complex contexts in which decisions are made. Broadly interdisciplinary, the series provides fresh, accessible insights across the sciences, social sciences, and humanities from established academic...
Discussions on Water Governance: Patterns and Common Paths
Ambiente & Sociedade
Water governance is a prominent theme in the discourse of international agencies and organizations, and in the research field. Given the continuous importance of this theme in discourse, politics and science, this article presents the results of a comprehensive literature review aiming to provide an overview of discussions on water governance. With the ample body of material reviewed, the main contributions were collated and summarized in terms of their motivations and core ideas. The discussions presented herein may be a starting point for those intending to study or improve water governance systems at different levels and scales. We have mainly concluded that there is no ideal “model” of governance - water governance is totally dependent on a particular social, cultural, environmental, economic, political and institutional context.
Facing the Challenges of Water Governance
2018
Looking at the issues of water governance through the perspective of the social sciences, books in the Palgrave Series in Water Governance take a global perspective on one of the key challenges facing society today: the sustainable development of water resources and services for all. In stepping away from the traditional focus on engineering and geophysics, the series takes a more holistic approach to both consolidate and generate knowledge that can be applied to different geographic areas by academics, researchers, policy-makers, NGOs and the private sector. This series emphasises the link between science and policy through considering water as a socio-ecological system, water and the territoriality of action, and water in the context of conflicts.
Distinguishing between international design failures and national implementation problems is a subject of some concern in the area of international natural resource and environmental policy such as water policy. Many observers have traced the failings of existing global governance architectures to the lack of hard law at the international level. However, recent work on international regimes, especially that dealing with regime fragmentation and the interplay between regimes, suggests that the ‘failure’ of a regime to develop ‘hard law’ may simply reflect the lack of need for such efforts. This work has highlighted the corresponding need to deal with an issue at a national or local level. Efforts at these levels, however, have also often failed, in large measure due to the inability of national governments to control private sector actors. Much can be learned in water policy from other sectoral experiences in institutional policy design and this paper examines the nature of regime complexes in Forestry and Migration in order to draw lessons for international water policy-making. Both experiences suggest the correct approach to the problem on the part of domestic governments is to focus on multi-level governance (MLG) and the tools and instruments required to put an effective multi-level architecture in place. Water policy-making may be better served by regional agreements than by efforts to develop national or international regimes.
absTraCT This article offers an overall synthesis of the contents of a number of selected papers on water governance and policy presented at the 5th iWHa Conference 'Pasts and Futures of Water' that took place in Tampere, Finland, on 13–17 June 2007. Therefore, the authors do not intend to present here their own views on the topics covered, which they have described in more detail elsewhere, but rather seek to capture the key issues emerging from the broad range of perspectives on water governance and policy that informed the papers presented at the Conference. There is growing consensus that the global water crisis is mainly a crisis of 'governance'. in most countries plentiful water resources can no longer be taken for granted. More and more people in an increasing number of countries are experiencing water differently – as a limited resource that must be carefully managed for the benefit of people and the environment, in the present and for the future. The emerging paradigm is one of resource constraints, conservation, and awareness of the fragility of water's life cycle. Yet, it is still open to debate what 'water governance' exactly means. Moreover, simple definitions of water itself have become obsolete and there is a heated global debate on the topic. Water has multiple functions and values, most of which are incommensurable. While in some of its uses water has increasingly become a commodity, in many other functions water takes the form of a social or public good. For many, the hydrosphere is a common good that must be governed and managed as such. is the access to essential volumes of safe water a human right or not? Does it really 236 Environment and History 16.2 matter? Water serves many roles depending on the wider political, economic, social, cultural and environmental context. Perhaps the crucial question is: is there truly a new paradigm of water governance emerging, or are we simply engaging in delusionary rhetoric? Many signs all over the world suggest that the way water is perceived, governed, and managed is indeed changing, but the direction of this change is highly uncertain. This is reflected in the ongoing contradictions that characterise the global debates about water governance policy, some of which were captured in the papers presented at the iWHa Conference that we summarise here. The focus of this theme paper is on identifying some of the key building elements of water policy and governance, which we identified as a common thread running through the different presentations. The paper also explores the challenges and opportunities facing the international community for living up to the principles of democratic water governance in a context of increasing global uncertainty. kEYWorDs Water governance, water policy, water functions and values, legislation, human right to water, common heritage, iWHa
Unpacking Water Governance: A Framework for Practitioners
Water
Water governance has emerged as an important topic in the international arena and is acknowledged to be a crucial factor for adequate and sustained progress towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6. However, there is not enough clarity about the practical meaning of the term “water governance” and how to work with it. This paper reviews the term’s use, to reveal how the concept is understood, referred to, and implemented in practice by different stakeholders. Based on literature review and consultations with experts, we identify and describe the core components of water governance (functions), describe their potential qualities when performed (attributes), and how they interrelate with the values and aspirations of the different stakeholders to achieve certain outcomes. These different components are described in detail to construct an operational framework to assess and work with water governance, which covers water and sanitation services delivery, water resources ma...