Have water sector professionals thought enough about governance?  Supporters of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) have set out a vision of equitable, affordable and sustainable water services – but what type of governance is needed to make it a reality? How can decentralisation and gender mainstreaming be incorporated into water governance?

A report from the Global Water Partnership (GWP) helps water sector professionals understand the links between good governance, water management and development. It recognises that water governance reforms generate resistance and political debate. Achieving effective water governance must not be rushed using imported blueprints, but should instead merge international best practice with local needs.

Examining the theoretical and historical underpinnings of various forms of governance, GWP endorses the combination of formal and informal institutions, which has become known as distributed governance. Recognising that the modern state no longer exercises a monopoly on the orchestration of governance, it searches for means by which society can manage itself via formal and informal state-society interactions and civil society networks. With distributed governance, more open competition, accountable public administrations and transparent processes may address the corruption which plagues many developing states.

The paper analyses the range of water governance failures inherent in most countries – inappropriate price regulation and tax incentives, perverse subsidies, absence of entrepreneurial incentives for internal efficiency, conflicting regulatory regimes, imprecise reflection of consumer preferences, monopoly provision, non-payment for services, bureaucratic inaction, ill-defined property rights and ignorance and uncertainty about water markets. Weak regulation of utility providers (both public and private) risks incurring public disillusion, particularly if private utility owners can negotiate provisions that jeopardise public benefits and permit extravagant guaranteed returns.

Good examples of IWRM in practice can be found:

• Chile has become a world leader in water governance: twenty years after embarking on reform, it has corrected earlier shortcomings with regard to transparency, participation and ecosystem concerns.
• Mexico has shown how a rigidly hierarchical state irrigation agency can decentralise decision-making and devolve responsibilities to farmers’ groups.
• The way Russia and Estonia have worked to save Lake Peipsi demonstrates how states and civil society can manage transboundary waters.
• The Nile Waters Initiative is showing how patient dialogue can contribute to stability.

GWP offers a variety of instruments to address governance failures. Creating an enabling environment for IWRM and efficient private and public sector initiatives will require proper sequencing, patience, long time-frames and:

• a coherent legal framework with a strong and autonomous regulatory regime and conflict-solving mechanisms
• a climate of trust with shared responsibility for safeguarding water resources, the management of which affects many people but at present is the responsibility of none
• national and local dialogues which bring together public, private and civil society actors to examine regulatory issues and determine adequate subsidies to meet the needs of the poor
• involving non-traditional players – strengthening local water associations, efficient public water resource management and building capacity of stakeholders
• recognition that western governance is often founded on a social fabric with strong public watchdogs that may not be readily transferred to developing countries.

Source(s):
‘Effective water governance’, TEC Background Paper No 7, Global Water Partnership, by Peter Rogers and Alan W. Hall, February 2003 Full document.

id21 Research Highlight: 16 October 2003

Further Information:
Global Water Partnership Secretariat
Hantverkargatan 5, House 6 (2nd floor)
SE-112 21 Stockholm
Sweden

Tel: +46 8 562 51 900/922
Fax: +46 8 562 51 901
Contact the contributor: gwp@gwpforum.org

Global Water Partnership Secretariat, Sweden

Other related links:
'Tapping the market. Can private enterprise supply water to the poor?' Insights #37

'Water and sanitation goals: is progress in the pipeline?' Insights #45

'The commodification of water: leaving us high and dry?'

'Water without frontiers: improved management of transboundary water resources'

'Bridging troubled waters. How to agree on shared resources despite environmental change'