This document discusses institutions related to access to water, particularly for poor people. It examines how institutions at different levels interact to facilitate or inhibit water access. Key questions addressed include who controls water resources, the incentives for providing poor access, how institutions adapt to hydrology, and how droughts and floods are managed. The document provides examples of different types of water institutions like state, collective, and market-based and how they vary in scale and complexity. It emphasizes the need to understand existing water rights and power structures to reform institutions to better support water access for the poor.

1. WP 4 -- Institutional Analysis
Institutions for pro-poor water access and
use

2. Questions to WP4
1. Who controls blue water?
2. How do institutions at multiple levels interact to
facilitate or inhibit access to water?
3. What are the incentives for providing poor people
with access to water? / How can water institutions
help alleviate poverty?
4. How are institutions modified to cope with
hydrology?
5. What institutions manage droughts or flood
hazards?
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3. Questions to WP4
1. Who controls blue water?
2. How do institutions at multiple levels interact to
facilitate or inhibit access to water?
3. What are the incentives for providing poor people
with access to water? / How can water institutions
help alleviate poverty?
4. How are institutions modified to cope with
hydrology?
5. What institutions manage droughts or flood
hazards?
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4. Property Rights
low high Type of
Institution
region high
Large canal systems
Watershed
Management
Small reservoir
Drainage
Collective Coordination
Spatial Salinity Control
Marketing
Terracing
Tube
Treadle well
Drip
plot kit pump low
Short Temporal Long
Scale term term

5. Coordination institutions
• Can be provided by:
• State (a public tubewell that supplies many farms),
• Collective action (farmer group)
• Markets (farmer selling water).
• Which is most appropriate depends on:
• Scale
• Technical sophistication of technology and farmers
• Cultural factors (social capital, market orientation)
• Capacity of state, market institutions, etc.
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6. Types of Coordinating
State
Institutions
Collective Market

7. Types of Coordinating Institutions by Spatial and
Temporal Scale
Spatial—large-
scale, complex
State
Market
Collective Small-scale, low

8. For group-based approaches
• Look beyond formal rules and membership roles
• Is the group acting collectively
• Who is included and excluded from active
membership and decision-making.
• Women/men
• Land owners/ tenants
• Farmers/ other water users (fishers, livestock
keepers, home gardens, domestic users, other
enterprises).
• Formal and informal barriers to participation
• Different motivations and returns
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9. For group-based approaches
• Active participation of men and women can be more
effective by drawing on skills, resources of both
• But costs of mixed organizations also greater, especially
where high gender segregation
• Consider when identifying which groups to work with,
particularly if that organization will gain stronger control
over technology or water
• More than setting up the organizations-- need to become
internalized and ‘institutionalized’
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10. Water Rights
• “the claims, entitlements and related obligations
among people regarding the use and disposition
of a scarce resource”
• Rights accompanied by duties:
• Duties of rights-holders
• Duties of others to respect those rights
• Rights vs. access
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11. Why Do Water Rights Matter?
• Water is essential for life and livelihoods
• Water rights are key assets
• Determine distribution of benefits
• Rights clarify
• Who can use, manage water
• What responsibilities they have
• Increasing interaction between uses within basins
• Need better “rules of the game” to coordinate water use
• Secure rights can provide incentives for investment, conservation
• Projects often change property rights
• Recognized rights provide “seat at the table” for negotiations over
changes in water use
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12. Need to Go Beyond Simplistic Assumptions
“There are no water rights here”
or
“The State owns all water”
Careful analysis reveals multiple types and holders of
water rights
Important implications for water management—equity,
efficiency, environment
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13. Property Rights
• All rights don’t derive from the state
(government)—also from project regulations, local
custom, religious law, etc.
• Rights are only as strong as the institution that
stands behind them
• Customary rights may be stronger than those
determined by the state
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14. Basin
International
State
Religious
Local/ customary

15. Some Critical Questions
• How are rights recognized?
• Who holds rights?
• For how long?
• To do what?
• From what source?
• What about return flows and groundwater?
• Transferable?
• Environmental allocations?
“sticks in the bundle of rights”
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16. Multiple Uses Multiple Users
• Field crop irrigation • By occupational
• Household gardens • By gender
• Livestock • By generation within the
• Fishing household
• Harvesting lotus, reeds • By location
• Industry/enterprises • Look for marginalized groups
• Domestic use
• Recreation
• Religion
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18. Water Rights Reform
• Acknowledge existing rights, esp. of
marginalized groups
• Participatory inventories
• Avoid “cadastre disasters”
• Gradual and selective licensing
• Two-way education and communications
• Interactive planning and modeling
• Legal literacy
• Strategically strengthen agencies and users
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19. Water rights reforms
• Laws and policies are important, but not the sole
determinant of water rights
• Reforms should be based on solid understanding
of existing rights
• Rapid reforms can be counter-productive, unlikely
to be fully implemented as planned
• Negotiation with stakeholders, looking for ways to
compensate, leads to more legitimacy
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20. Beyond panaceas
• Not social engineering—institutions are organic,
path dependent
• Need range of technical and institutional options
• Understanding to be able to tailor them to their
physical and institutional context
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21. Questions to WP4
1. Who controls blue water? Urban-based power
structures
2. How do institutions at multiple levels interact to
facilitate or inhibit access to water? At higher
levels more government and lower level more
CA institutions; (irrigation) water-related
organizations seldom have a mandate for
poverty alleviation; once water becomes
scarce, power structures tend to exclude
weaker users, unless they have strong property
rights
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22. Questions to WP4
3. What are the incentives for providing poor
people with access to water?/What water
institutions can help alleviate poverty? National
food security (irrigation), job creation, rural
development (to avoid migration), health
concerns
4. How are institutions modified to cope with
hydrology? – Institutions following hydrologic
boundaries, but often powerless, need to
ensure that they are empowered
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23. Questions to WP4
5. What institutions manage droughts or flood
hazards?—Farmers tend to lose out first when
droughts occur (national laws) or
implementation; again strong property rights
needed for farmers to have a share in water-
scarce situations
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24. Institutional Research for WP4
a) What is the link between water access, poverty
and wellbeing?-- Is lack of access to water a
contributor to poverty?
b) Look at existing power structures (administrative,
political) and how they are linked to basins and
water institutions
c) Identify institutions that fit the current power
structures while helping the water-poor: Ex: pay
farmers to use less water more water for
domestic/industry—examine feasibility
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25. Institutional Research for WP4
d) Create a voice for the poor (India media,
panchayat, Supreme Court; Andes, similar);
e) Possibility to transfer obligatory stakeholder
consultation processes of developed countries
f) Alternatively, identify the possibility to generate
alliances (Sabatier/Schlager); f.ex. Alliance with
environmental organizations to protect
biodiversity
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26. Institutional Research for WP4
g) How can water institutions help alleviate
poverty?—Recognition of traditional water
rights (Andes) to obtain compensation when
water is transferred out
h) When there is drought—identify mechanisms
that support sharing of information, water, and
compensation
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27. Institutional Research for WP4
High impact interventions can be on institutions
High impact interventions require conducive
institutions and infrastructure f.ex. Volumetric
pricing at village level has lead to water savings in
parts of China, but would not work in most of India,
Adoptability can only be assured once institutional
issues are taken into account
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