1. Towards voluntary guidelines for
people-centred land-water tenure.
The untapped synergies between
rights-based land and water governance
Barbara van Koppen
International Water
Management Institute

2. Framing the land-water nexus
•What justifies the emphasis on coordination?
•What is ‘coordinated governance’?
•What are risks or missed opportunities when
coordination is lacking?
•What are gains of better coordination?
This presentation:
•What can the water constituencies learn from,
and offer to the land constituencies?

3. What is coordinated governance?
People-centred
•People’s perspectives are holistic:
•integrated natural resources (land, water resources,
water infrastructure, other)
•integrated (‘indivisible’) human wellbeing
•Especially for vulnerable women and men in rural and
peri-urban areas with diversified livelihoods who
directly depend on natural resources
•People-centred: The ‘bottom-up pull’ for coordinated
and demand-driven public governance support

4. What is coordinated governance?
Issue-based; framing the issues
Continuing issues, for example
•Irrigation infrastructure services for poverty reduction
and gender equality (public/public-private;
with/without land reform; etc.)
New issues, for example:
•Growing competition and growing inequalities in
access to water resources (e.g., land-/water ‘grabs’)
•Disproportionate claims by the ‘haves’ (Gini SA= 0.99)
•‘Core minimum’ access to water resources for ‘small-
scale’ users for basic health and wealth (public and
self-supply – informal/local/indigenous)

5. What can water constituencies learn from the
land constituencies?
Why does water remain invisible?
Land constituencies, unlike water constituencies, focus
on:
1. People, including the marginalized
2. Customary rights
3. Global rights-based dialogue

6. 1. People, including the marginalized?
Stuck in monolithic single-use ‘sectors’
•Domestic uses: ‘water for people’: rights-based priority,
but very narrow; no intra-sectoral differentiation
•Productive uses: abstract aggregates; no intra-sectoral
differentiation; stereotyping e.g., gender, commercial
•Competition ‘between sectors’
•mystifies the negotiation between people (multiple
water needs) investing in (multi-purpose) infrastructure
for access to (multiple) water resources
•depoliticizes power differences

7. 2. Customary rights ?
Dominant statutory water law: the permit system
•vests ownership of water resources in the state
•dispossesses customary/informal water rights
•accepted in Africa; contested in Latin America;
adjusted in Asia (e.g., Nepal, China)
•Africa: continuing colonial dispossession?

8. Continuing colonial dispossession?
•Roman law : vesting ownership in emperor,
dispossessing conquered peoples
•Colonization Latin America and most of Africa:
vesting ownership in European rulers
•Independence: replacing ‘European’ by ‘the president’
•IWRM-era: revitalizing permits, plus in Africa: taxation

9. Contemporary permit systems:
a. as people’s entitlements (long-term)
•Reinforce formal dispossession of small-scale users
•Favour large-scale investors:
•De facto administration-proficiency; excludes
women; corruption prone
•De jure discrimination of customary land title holders
when formal land titles are a permit condition
•Taxation: perverse incentives; rent-seeking; over-
allocation; ‘those who can pay are entitled to water’;
corruption prone

10. Allow the state to regulate ‘in the public interest’, by
prohibiting new water uptake or enforcing conditions:
•Putting caps on volumes
•Regulating waste discharge
•Ensuring water re-allocation from the ‘haves’ to the
‘have-nots’ (e.g., South Africa)
•Potential: negotiating benefit sharing when new
storage and infrastructure is developed, or
compensation
So allow the state to move towards…. :
Contemporary permit systems
b. as state regulation (short-term)

11. •Core minimum: respect, protect, and fulfill small-scale
users’ water resources entitlements for the
progressive realization of the right to food, gender
equality, other human rights (e.g. Priority General
Authorizations; vesting permits in rural local
governments)
•People-centered prioritization during water scarce
periods
•Redistributive water reform once ‘water frontiers’
have been reached; easier to prevent!
•Water resources as ‘the commons’
Towards people-centred and rights-based
a. water entitlements

12. •Target regulatory permits and enforcement first to
high-impact users, also in investment treaties, with
locally appropriate conditions (core minimum of
water resource entitlements; waste discharge;
sharing of benefits in infrastructure investments,
etc.)
•Quantify volumes and jobs per drop
Towards people-centred and rights-based
b. state regulation

13. ~ 22 ha
Source: DWA WARMS data and B. Schreiner
Registered volumes of water by number of users
in the Inkomati water management area

14. 3. Global rights-based dialogue ?!
Towards voluntary guidelines for people-
centred land-water tenure
•Process: joint people-centred processes to ensure
informed, voluntary and prior consent to water-land
investments at local, national and international levels
•Substance: joint framing of issues for rights-based land,
water, forestry, and fisheries, for example:
•Accelerated land-water infrastructure services: a human
right to 100 lpcd near homesteads?
•‘Core minimum’ water resource entitlements to realize
indivisible human rights
•Negotiations with high-impact users for compensation
and shared benefits, also in investment contracts

15. Thank you for your kind attention