Freshwater Governance for the 21st Century

Front matter

Eiman Karar Editor

Freshwater Governance for the 21st Century

A Springer Open

Preface

This book on freshwater governance contains information that many practitioners in the water field will be looking for. The water-related challenges have reached a climax with an unoptimistic future expected to feature more competition between users. These stresses will be exacerbated by climate change which is likely to increase water demand while shrinking water supplies. Intense competition for water resources will be experienced not only by private users but will also affect the public sector; however, national plans repeatedly fail to show the ability to provide a coherent outlook for development in which water needs are adequately projected and resources smartly shared.

The list of contributors of this book (more than 30 authors from around the globe) reflects a wide range of expertise, and the themes covered will appeal to a broad spectrum of readers. These authors, while attempting to provide workable solutions, draw on their wealth of experience and in many instances share the lessons learnt from what has not worked to what has worked. The tools offered can also assist in furthering the thinking around water governance. Although the focus is on water, there are many synergies with the governance of many other natural resources.

The purpose of this book is to illustrate, in broad terms, the general matters of freshwater governance, mapping the spectrum of decision-making. The book aspires to contribute to the transitioning between techno-centric and eco-centric approaches, or a hybrid concept, to people-centric approaches. The set of book chapters presented in this volume will be based on the existing current knowledge as well as the authors’ experience working in the water sector, using nontechnical jargon in order to reach a wider audience. The target audience of this volume will range from academics, technicians, decision-makers, and managers to students; the aim is to target not just academia but also policy-makers and deep thinkers. This book has been more than 2 years in the making, and for those who know the water sector, many changes will have occurred during these years. Some of the information contained in this book may therefore be dated as new information may have become available in the intervening years; nonetheless, I trust that the content will be of interest to the readers.

vi Preface

This book represents the tireless efforts of many dedicated individuals who devoted their time and resources to making it a reality. I thank them all, particularly our esteemed authors, as well as the reviewers who provided considered comments and valuable input to each chapter. This book was initiated and financially supported by the Water Research Commission of South Africa, which is hereby gratefully acknowledged.

Pretoria, South Africa Eiman Karar

Acknowledgements

This book was contemplated in late 2012 after the International Conference on Fresh Water Governance which was held in South Africa. It was actively pursued after the then newly appointed WRC CEO Mr. Dhesigen Naidoo led the initial authors’ workshop in Madrid. The premise was that freshwater governance indeed needed some serious reflection and collective wisdom to chart its way forward. This is how this book came about.

We thank each and every chapter author for investing time in preparing their chapters and helping us realise this book. We also wish to thank all the reviewers who are listed here by name for providing insightful comments that helped us shape the chapters the way they are presented now:

Mr. Brendan Bromwich (Independent Water and Environment Consultant) (reviewed two chapters)

Dr. Synne Movik (Senior Researcher, Water and Society Division, Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA), Oslo, Norway)

Dr. Larry Swatuk (Associate Professor, School of Environment, Enterprise and Development (SEED), Faculty of Environment, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada)

Dr. Chad Staddon (Professor in Resource Economics and Policy, Department of Geography and Environmental Management, Bristol Group for Water Research, University of the West of England, UK)

Dr. Vinothan Naidoo (Senior Lecturer at the Department of Political Studies at the University of Cape Town, South Africa)

Dr. Catherine Sutherland (Lecturer, School of Built Environment and Development Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa)

Dr. Stefano Burchi (Executive Chairman of the International Association for Water Law, Rome, Italy)

Dr. Richard Meissner (Senior Researcher: Water Governance, CSIR, Pretoria, South Africa)

Vili Acknowledgements

Dr. Robert Varady (Deputy Director and Research Professor of Environmental Policy, Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona)

Dr. Shafick Adams (Executive Manager: Water-Linked Ecosystems, Water Research Commission, Pretoria, South Africa)

Mr. Steve Hedden (Researcher in the African Futures and Innovation Section, Institute for Security Studies (ISS), Pretoria, South Africa)

Contents

Eiman Karar

2 The Establishment of Catchment Management Agencies in South Africa with Reference to the Flussgebietsgemeinschaft Richard Meissner, Sabine Stuart-Hill, and Zakariya Nakhooda

3 Towards Inclusive Water Governance: OECD Evidence and Key Aziza Akhmouch and Delphine Clavreul

Chapter 1 Introduction and Reflections Eiman Karar

This book explores the challenges most countries face in dealing with governance issues and highlights the advantages and disadvantages of various approaches to achieve effective freshwater governance for the twenty-first century. The idea for writing this book was triggered by the successful hosting of the International Conference on Fresh Water Governance for Sustainable Development, 5-7 November 2012, at the Champagne Sports Resort, Drakensberg, KZN, South Africa. At that conference, the need to bring together the research communities from different disciplines and practitioners at different levels of jurisdictions from around the world was tangible. The exchange of experiences and the interrogation of frameworks, policies and perceptions around best practice were invigorating. This book is not a direct result of that conference, but the exchange of experiences provided the impetus to embark on this undertaking.

The intention of this book is to pool some salient ideas around the thinking of water and its governance, tackling it from a global view to a local reality, from within and outside the numerous watersheds that fall under various administrative agencies to end users, the private sector and civil society. It can also identify sovereign boundaries and regional or transnational boundaries. As fluid as water is, so is the concept of its governance. A striking feature is that the term “governance” means different things to different people. The aim of this volume is not to provide a universal definition of governance; instead, each chapter will frame its own meaning in the context of the specific topic covered.

But first, one might ask why freshwater governance is of such importance and what is so special about the twenty-first century governance to warrant writing a book about it.

In his closing address at the Fresh Water Governance Conference on 7 November 2012, the CEO of the WRC, Dhesigen Naidoo, highlighted the fact that the global

E. Karar (%4) Water Research Commission (WRC), Pretoria, South Africa e-mail: eimankarar3 @ gmail.com

© The Author(s) 2017 1 E. Karar (ed.), Freshwater Governance for the 21st Century, Global Issues in Water Policy 6, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-43350-9_1 dialogue on water is generally unanimous that we are moving into a very difficult water future, on the back of factors including unprecedented population growth combined with rapid levels of economic movement, particularly in the developing world. The latter has resulted in growing middle classes with the resultant change in consumption patterns. This in many ways is starting to define the new Malthusian challenge of the twenty-first century. At the same time, years, decades and indeed centuries of environmentally insensitive and water-wasteful mining and industrial practices have come back to haunt us. This, combined with the newer challenges of global climate change, has defined the “water challenge” of the twenty-first century. We are also clear that developments in water sciences and engineering alone have not delivered adequately to engage this challenge, and there is a strong need to consider the social dynamics, culture and heritage issues towards more holistic and complete solutions. In fact, we have for a while in our individual corners been lamenting the lack of a reasonable dialogue on this very important matter of water governance.

The challenge of both water quantity and quality has become a sharp focus of our time. The global water conversation has taken a new turn on the back of increased information access and the world reaching a point where it is now impossible to ignore the scarcity of the resource. It is also important that the dialogue now includes business partners as the World Economic Forum recognises the availability of good quality water as a principal business risk globally. Those countries that have relatively larger successes in meeting the water challenge have done it on the back of four principal pillars. Firstly, the water management in these more successful areas is informed by high levels of science, technology and innovation. The decision-making is highly informed, and water is a critical upfront consideration in any development plan. The second is good, well-maintained infrastructure. The third is the development and availability of large pools of skilled talent to plan, develop, operate and maintain the water management system at all levels. The fourth and in many cases differentiating factor in most systems is water-use behaviours across the spectrum from large industry and agriculture to the individual at household level. It is easy to see that each of these elements and the quartet as a whole depend fundamentally on levels of water literacy and consciousness and the model of water governance.

Freshwater governance, as it has been discussed in the realm of peer-reviewed papers and equivalent conferences, has been seized with models of institutional arrangements and the critique of the hierarchies of laws. This has certainly been the obsession in democratic South Africa over the past 19 years. The most important learning in the frustration of insufficient implementation of what has been deemed the best national water law in the world, the South African National Water Act of 1998, is that a smartly conceived internationally leading model law is not enough. That while such a law represents the apex summary of the governance basket, its effective roll-out depends on the building of the various governance building blocks using the blueprint of the law as both the design eventuality and an indicative roadmap. Water governance is seen as a multisectoral, dynamic process, a complex socioecological system involving continuous learning and the capacity to adapt effectively to unpredictable outcomes, where the results of system interventions are not predictable.

Three main messages have emerged from the discussions and analyses that are summarised in the pages that follow. First, old forms of governance in both the public and private sectors are becoming increasingly ineffective. Second, the new forms of governance that are likely to be needed over the next few decades will involve a much broader range of active players. Third, and perhaps most importantly, two of the primary attributes of today’s governance systems — the usually fixed and permanent allocations of power that are engraved in the structures and constitutions of many organisations and the tendency to vest initiative exclusively in the hands of those in senior positions in the hierarchy — look set to undergo fundamental changes.

The objective of this book is to illustrate, in broad terms, the general matters of freshwater governance, mapping the spectrum of decision-making, from a techno-centric and ecocentric approach, or a hybrid concept, to a people-centric approach, mapping the transition. The challenges to water governance models will be considered as well as examining the multilevel provisions, the integration challenge, the hierarchy for decision-making, the emergence of water-sensitive designs in urban as well as rural settings, the interdependencies between the stakeholders, the power play in inclusive participation and the issue of geographic scales and boundaries. This information will be presented in an integrated and a comprehensive way building on some detailed case studies from around the world. The set of book chapters presented in this volume will be based on the existing current knowledge as well as the authors’ experience working in the water sector, using non-technical jargon in order to reach a wider audience. The target audience of this volume will range from academics, technicians, decision-makers and managers to students; the aim is to target not just academia but also policy-makers and deep thinkers.

There are 12 chapters in this book; in Chaps. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 the lead authors and their contributing authors share their experiences and introduce some novel approaches to freshwater governance, articulated as related issues in three main baskets: the first basket includes the framing of water governance issues from a water security dimension, a multilevel dimension, the transboundary dimension, a water integrity dimension and a regional/national dimension; the second basket offers some regulatory aspects such as market forces and regulation of achieving equity, development and sustainability; while the third basket is around governance mechanisms for portfolio-based urban planning and management, for inclusive governance, groundwater governance and governance futures in South Asia and Africa.

The main water governance issues are shared by Chad Staddon; the development and extension of water services infrastructure has been a key foundational element of industrialisation and urbanisation since at least the “Great Sanitary Awakening” of the mid-nineteenth century. As urban areas became both larger and more densely inhabited, the collective need for better water services (drinking water and sanitation in particular) became overwhelming. Cities simply could not grow beyond a certain relatively modest size without the simultaneous articulation of an integrated water services infrastructure to replace the piecemeal local arrangements then in place. The mid-twentieth century completion (in Europe, North America and parts of Australasia) of the resulting “project” of mass provision of standardised water supply and sanitation services, explored elsewhere and called “hydromodernism”, was then followed by several waves of restructuring in the water services value chain, based particularly on new ideas about the respective roles of the public and private sectors, new technologies and water needs of the natural environment. Of course, in much of the developing world, even “hydromodernism” is as yet unattained and perhaps unattainable. In addition, rapid urbanisation in many developing nations has gone hand in hand with the growth of what are called “peri-urban” areas that combine “urban” and “rural” characteristics and present new challenges to water (and other) services provision.

Fortunately, they claim, there is a way of easily presenting the historical progression from a low to a higher level of water services provision. More to the point, it is possible to indicate the key drivers of water services development or, conversely, the key impediments to same. Cities around the world can be understood from the point of view of their location within the “urban hydrosocial transition (UHT)”, a historical geographical framework that sees cities as manifestations of successive “hydrosocial contracts” between agents of economic, political, cultural and technological change. This concept builds on work undertaken by Brown et al. (2011) on “water-sensitive cities’, Lundquist (2001) on the “hydrosocial contract’, Swyngedouw (2005) on “urban metabolism” and Thapa, Varady and Scott (2014) on “water security indices”. A key innovation offered here is the simplified three-part historical geographical schema based on a limited number of readily available key indicators and associated drivers. Brief case studies from around the world are presented by way of illustration.

Aziza Akhmouch offers an analytical framework to assess the impact of stakeholder engagement on water-related decision-making and policy implementation based on interdependent components. Citizens increasingly demand to be more engaged in how public policy decisions are made. In this environment, stakeholder engagement has emerged as a principle of good water governance. However, despite extensive research and case studies on the topic in recent years, the lack of evidence-based assessment on how effective engagement processes have proven to be in reaching intended objectives of water governance is striking. This chapter presents the key findings of an OECD study, which relies mainly on empirical data from a survey carried out across 215 stakeholders, within and outside the water sector and derived from 69 case studies collected worldwide. It suggests an analytical framework to assess the impact of stakeholder engagement in water-related decision-making and policy implementation, based on interdependent components, i.e. drivers, obstacles, mechanisms, impacts, costs and benefits.

Results highlight the need for better understanding of the pressing and emerging issues related to stakeholder engagement. These include the external and internal drivers that trigger the engagement processes, arrival of new entrants that ought to be considered, innovative tools that have emerged to manage the interface between multiple players and types of costs and benefits incurred by engagement at policy and project levels. This chapter concludes with policy guidance to decision-makers and practitioners in the form of overarching principles on how to set up the appropriate framework conditions for inclusive water governance.

Evidence presented in this chapter demonstrates that decision-makers who adopt a systemic, inclusive approach to water governance are likely to get a better return on the time and resources they invest. They will also be better equipped to handle stakeholder issues and risks more effectively.

For engagement processes to be relevant, a careful balance is required between what they try to achieve, the resources they require and whether they succeed in reaching the intended objectives. Decision-makers at all levels have a critical role to play in establishing the enabling environment for result-oriented, effective and impactful stakeholder engagement. Although engagement processes cannot be easily replicated from one context to another, the OECD proposes six principles for creating the necessary conditions for inclusive water governance.

Anton Earle defines transboundary watercourses, including rivers, lakes and aquifers (confined and unconfined), shared between two or more countries that are home to over 70 % of the world’s population and supply water for roughly 60 % of the global food production. It is no surprise that the management of these watercourses has been entrusted to national states, which have the power to make sovereign decisions over their management, use and conservation. State sovereignty is mitigated through the existence of a global institutional framework comprised of customary international water law (the norms dictating how states behave), global and regional conventions, basin-level agreements and basin management organisations. The good news is that there is a large body of joint institutions between countries with transboundary watercourses, the UN estimating that around 3 600 exist. This in part explains the relative lack of military interstate conflicts. Less good news is that despite the existence of international and basin-level agreements and basin organisations, the benefits to be expected from international cooperation around transboundary watercourses have in most cases not materialised. Acute, persistent and seemingly intractable problems persist, with ecosystem degradation not being reversed, joint investments in water infrastructure not materialising and joint management organisations failing to attract significant long-term support from the respective basin states. Despite at least two decades of concerted support by the international development community, the impacts of enhanced interstate cooperation are noticeable through their absence.

This chapter investigates why this may be so and introduces a starting point which moves beyond the state-centric approach to transboundary water management. In doing so it does not challenge the sovereign right of states to manage their watercourses; instead it shows how a range of non-state actors do in fact influence state practice through a variety of mechanisms. As these mechanisms are frequently covert, it becomes difficult to assess the integrity of the relationships between actors, in turn making public engagement and participation difficult. Needed is a governance paradigm which opens the decision-making arena to non-state actors all in support of the national governments and their respective mandates. This chapter ends with an indication of what such a governance arrangement might look like across the four success factors identified in the introduction of this book, namely, science-informed decision-making, investments in appropriate infrastructure, development of skills and talent and the water-use behaviour of stakeholders.

Richard Meissner argues that the establishment of a governance institution like a river basin organisation is not only a governmental activity. Neither does its establishment only revolve around the stipulations contained in regulatory mechanisms and policies. Establishing a river basin organisation, like a Catchment Management Agency (CMA), involves a number of actors or stakeholders from both the governmental and non-governmental spheres. There are practices involved in their establishment that go beyond regulatory mechanisms and often bring in personal experiences and the overall political landscape as well as administrative development trajectories. He and his contributing authors reflect on some of the administrative processes as a way to discern noticeable practices in the establishment of CMAs. The case study material is South Africa’s CMA establishment process to date. Some of the practices that come out strongly are human resource issues and financial accounting practices that practitioners need to consider when establishing such a river basin organisation. This chapter is based on research conducted for South Africa’s Water Research Commission between 2014 and 2016. The process of establishing the Flussgebietsgemeinschaft Elbe in Germany is also outlined to illustrate the similarities and differences in the experience of establishing a river basin organisation in a developed and developing country.

Multilevel governance is at the order of the day when considering the case of South Africa’s CMA establishment process. The establishment process is not only about pitfalls and challenges; there are also opportunities to take advantage of. One such opportunity is the knowledge of public administrative processes held by DWS officials. Such knowledge can be a defining resource between a successful and stalled establishment process. The identified practices and conclusions drawn should not be seen as a set of recommendations for policy-makers and stakeholders involved in CMA establishment processes only but also for scientists researching the process. Scientists are, after all, also stakeholders when they research CMAs and may also be involved in some of the CMAs currently being established. The research has shown a strong link between the successes or challenges of the establishment process and the way in which CMAs operate. This is an area where further research is needed as the process of establishing the other seven CMAs progresses.

In his chapter, Hakan Tropp contends that in most countries, water crises are not primarily driven by resource scarcity but by governance failures. A fundamental argument put forth is that the water sector is prone to corruption that leads to very dire consequences for sustainable, efficient and equitable water use, access and allocation. It has contributed to severe limitations in water reform implementation, where processes of decentralisation and privatisation sometimes rather have opened up for new groups to exploit the system, despite that arguments of better transparency and accountability were used to institute such changes in the first place.

This chapter outlines that lack of water-related integrity incurs huge cost for societies, in lives lost, stalling growth, wasted talent and degraded resources. For example, corruption fuels unfair distributions of costs and benefits between different user groups or completely excludes certain groups of a particular water use. It can also be a strong driver to falling groundwater tables and diminishing ecosystem services due to unaccounted water withdrawals of lakes and rivers. It increases transaction costs and implies very high investment risks for both public and private investors. In sum, increased sustainability, equity and efficiency of water resources and services allocation; access; and use will in many places be very hard to come by — or attained at a much higher cost — without improving integrity.

Water integrity is defined as the adherence of water stakeholders and institutions to governance principles of transparency, accountability and participation, based on core values of honesty, equity and professionalism. In a more practical sense, integrity can refer to how well governance regimes or systems adhere to the rule of law, predictability in decision-making procedures and outcomes and if decisions hold up for public scrutiny and to what extent they can withstand different types of vested interests and corrupt practices. Corruption in water is used as a particular case to highlight issues of water integrity. Integrity is strongly manifested in water decision-making, and the level of integrity plays a critical role in deciding the outcomes of decision-making, that is, who gets what water, when and how.

Based on country examples, this chapter identifies corruption hot spots in the water sector such as the initial phases of procurement processes, kickbacks in awarding contracts or delivering water services (irrigation and drinking water supply) and political capture of administrative processes. It also identifies and synthesises country-based examples of transparency and accountability measures to improve integrity. They argue that it is much overdue to start to speak about the politically sensitive and unspoken drivers and consequences of corruption in the water sector and above all to make a systematic and coherent effort to improve water integrity. This chapter points towards a need to strongly include integrity- and corruption-related issues in the analysis of and policy responses to water crises. Not only is there a need for changed behaviours among public and private water decision-makers and users but also high time for setting in place a strong research agenda to assess impacts of corruption in water and to contextualise policy responses and interventions to improve water integrity.

Claudious Chikozho submits that 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 socioeconomic 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 specific developing countries. This chapter uses case studies to explore the utility of developmental statism and free-market economics as two major paradigms that have emerged in the face of enduring questions regarding how best to govern water supply systems in developing countries. Increasing pressure on available natural resources may have rendered obsolete some of the water supply systems and governance regimes that have served human societies very well for many decades. It is clear that national water supply governance paradigms tend to change in tandem with emerging national development theoretical frameworks and priorities. Each nation feels compelled to adopt a particular framework to fulfil its unique needs. While many developing countries have adopted water policy prescriptions from the international arena, national and local socioeconomic and political realities ultimately determine what works and what does not work on the ground. Thus, the choice between free-market approaches and developmental state-oriented approaches is never simple. Indeed, the majority of countries rely on a mix of market economics and developmental statism to make their water governance regimes more realistic and workable on the ground.

The authors conclude by stating that it is always important to remember that in water governance, context matters. National water supply governance paradigms tend to change in tandem with emerging national development theoretical frameworks and priorities. Each nation feels compelled to adopt a particular framework to fulfil its needs. In practice, more and more water utilities and planning agencies have been shifting their focus towards exploration of water supply system efficiency improvement possibilities, implementation of options for WDM within the confines of IWRM, equitable reallocation of water among competing users and uses to reduce consumption and meet future water demand. 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. Thus, the choice between free-market approaches and developmental state-oriented approaches is never simple. Experiences across the globe indicate that careful analysis of local socio-economic and political conditions is crucial before deploying specific water supply governance frameworks. Application of the principles of sustainability and equity will help bridge the gap between diverse and competing interests and unleash the potential for more innovation in water supply governance.

In her chapter, Barbara van Koppen explores rights-based freshwater governance. 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 of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) in 2002, which states that water is needed to realise a range of indivisible human rights to nonstarvation, food, health, work and an adequate standard of living, and also procedural rights to participation and information in water interventions. On that basis, this 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 50-100 l per capita per day. Turning to the state’s mandates and authority in allocating water resources, this chapter identifies three forms of unfair treatment of small-scale 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.

The authors discuss how international human rights instruments in general and the CESCR General Comment No. 15 on the human right to water in particular provide a robust normative system that is well able to address end goals of human well-being across the key mandates of the water sector, namely, infrastructure development and water resource allocation. While the recognition of a justiciable and enforceable right to water for drinking, personal and other domestic uses and sanitation has been an important milestone in closing the disconnection between the state as duty-bearer for human rights and the state as investor in water infrastructure and regulator, the authors argue that this has only been a very partial interpretation of the underpinning General Comment No. 15 of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The same Comment also indicates priorities in other freshwater governance domains to realise the substantive rights to livelihoods, food, health and an adequate standard of living. This has concrete implications for the state’s infrastructure-based water services. Poor people’s productive water needs should be fully recognised and met in a non-discriminatory manner. The definition of a core minimum should not be assumed to be for domestic uses only but should include water for small-scale productive uses at and around homesteads as well. This priority for multiple basic uses is already a widespread practice, but often still seen as “illegal” by sectoral professionals who design single-use infrastructure. An inclusive people-driven planning process for infrastructure services will spontaneously identify such multiple priorities.