Third party involvement in collective water governance
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Presented at the CAPRi International Workshop on Collective Action, Property Rights, and Conflict in Natural Resources Management. June 28th to July 1st, 2010, Siem Reap, Cambodia. http://www.capri.cgiar.org/wks_0610.asp
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Third party involvement in collective water governance
- 1. Third party involvement in collective water governance Implications for equitable water governance Helle Munk Ravnborg, DIIS with Rocio Bustamante, Abdoulaye Cissé, Signe M. Cold-Ravnkilde, Vladimir Cossio, Moussa Djiré, Mikkel Funder, Ligia I. Gómez, Phuong Le, Carol Mweemba, Imasiku Nyambe, Tania Paz, Huong Pham, Roberto Rivas, Thomas Skielboe, and Nguyen T.B. Yen
- 3. drinking water supply system water source public water taps stream polythene tubes potato and vegetable crops with irrigation run-off with pesticide residues
- 4. our research locations : … 5 districts out of more than a thousand districts … in 5 countries out of more than a hundred developing countries
- 6. Water event intensity scale Description Intensity Description Engage in organized collective violence/ warfare -7 7 Merge formerly individual access rights Engage in unplanned collective violence, riots -6 6 Joint decision-making authority and/or rules development for water use and allocation Undertake collective large-scale violation of other party’s access rights -5 5 Establish joint organisational forum Stage public protests/demonstrations (peaceful) -4 4 Commit to written or verbal agreements and plans that are sanctioned by a third party Denounce to authorities and/or third party (formal or customary) -3 3 Commit to written or verbal agreements and plans that are not sanctioned by a third party Engage in sporadic/small scale violation or sabotage of other’s access rights -2 2 Engage in sporadic/occasional joint activities Engage in informal verbal dispute/expression of discontent -1 1 Express casual verbal recognition of each other’s access rights
- 7. Local-level water-related conflict and cooperation - a brief profile
- 8. ~ 6,000 water-related events associated with ~1,950 water-related situations from 1997 - 2007 Conflictive and cooperative events equally frequent more conflictive more cooperative
- 10. Single-use situations tend to be about drinking water and irrigation Uses involved in single-use situations by research location Percent of estimated number of single-use situations (1997-2007) by use a Percentages from individual districts do not add up to 100.0 due to rounding. 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 All uses 0.4 – – 2.7 – – Farming, excl. irrigation 2.7 – 4.3 – 3.2 Urban drinking 1.3 – – – 25.4 – Fishing 4.6 37.1 – 6.5 12.7 – Livestock 48.9 62.9 44.9 74.7 50.0 28.7 Rural drinking 42.1 – 50.7 16.1 12.7 58.1 Irrigation All research locations (N=1,224) a Namwala district (Zambia) (N=97) Con Cuong district (Vietnam) (N=444) Condega district (Nicaragua) (N=186) Douentza district (Mali) (N=63) Tiraque district (Bolivia) (N=434)
- 11. Multiple-use situations often involve competition between productive and domestic water use
- 12. Poor people’s access to water
- 13. The poor are less likely to control their drinking water source Distance to most important dry season drinking water source Percent households having own drinking water source
- 14. The poor are less likely to have irrigation for crops Percent households having irrigation/watering crops during rainy season Percent households having irrigation/watering crops during dry season
- 15. The poor are less likely to own cattle & to consume water for watering animals Percent households owning cattle Percent households owning less than three heads of cattle
- 16. Drinking water users lose to productive users in conflictive multiple-use events – despite priority assigned to drinking water
- 17. The poor are more likely to lose in water-related events than the non-poor Assessed poverty status of party assessed to gain Assessed poverty status of party assessed to lose
- 18. Third party involvement – part of the problem and the solution to a more equitable water governance
- 20. Third parties are called upon in 28% of water-related events and in 44% of water-related situations
- 21. Third parties – anything but institutions with a designated water governance mandate
- 22. Third parties – anything but institutions with a designated water governance mandate
- 23. From the neighbourhood to the district Where would you go – first, next and last – if your most important drinking water source dried out tomorrow? Where would you go – first, next and last – if somebody used so much water that you received less?
- 24. 23,7 11,2 22,5 27,6 38,3 15,2 Other 2,2 – – 7,2 – – Rural domestic water committee 2,7 14,4 – – – – Irrigation farmers 3,5 19,1 – – – – Individual pastoralists/livestock keepers 4,3 16,7 – 3,9 – – Civil society organization 4,8 0,9 – 8,6 10,7 – District government authority 5,8 14,4 – 3,9 10,7 – Groups of pastoralists/livestock keepers 8,8 7,9 – – – 44,5 Irrigation committee 9,3 30,2 7,1 0,6 – 14,7 Individual farmers 11,4 26,0 42,3 – – – Farmers’ group or committee 10,7 39,5 7,1 2,8 7,5 – Rural domestic water consumers 26,7 0,9 45,6 42,5 – 37,7 Rural community committee 27,4 28,4 39,0 20,2 43,5 11,0 Community leader, headman or chief All districts (N=1,164) Namwala district (Zambia) (N=215) Con Cuong district (Vietnam) (N=182) Condega district (Nicaragua) (N=362) Doue ntza district (Mali) (N=214) Tiraque district (Bolivia) (N=191) Community leadership as gate keepers for accessing external third parties Who called upon third party in water-related events Percent situations per research location
- 25. Making third party involvement accessible to the poor The challenge of pro-poor local water governance:
Editor's Notes
- Water governance refers to the way that such decisions are made, i.e. the political, economic, legal and administrative processes and institutions – formal as well as informal – through which decisions are made and authority is exercised on the development, allocation and conditions of use of water resources at all levels of society (Rogers and Hall, 2003; Cleaver and Franks, 2005; Merrey et al ., 2007). Hence, in addition to the formally designated water governance set-up in a country or a sub-national region or river basin, water governance entails processes and institutions that are not formally regarded as water-related. As the above example from Condega district, Nicaragua, illustrates, leaving decisions about the allocation and the conditions of use to be dealt with by rural communities and their diverse segments of inhabitants and water users provides no guarantee that priority is assigned to domestic water use and other uses such as irrigation and watering of animals, despite this being the intention of underlying national water policies, local cultural, religious or social norms, and international agreements. Moreover, the example serves to illustrate the role that third parties hold the potential to play in situations where different parties compete for access to the same water.
- In February 2009, people in Daraylí, a small rural community of about 65 households in the eastern part of Condega district, Nicaragua, experienced eight days without water in their public water taps. Farmers in the upstream community Venecia, had installed polythene tubes into the spring that feeds the water system in order to irrigate their vegetable crops, thereby significantly reduced the amount of water running into tanks for the public water supply. The irrigated fields were visible from Daraylí, so a few members of the Daraylí water committee decided to climb the mountain to ask the vegetable farmers to reduce their use of water and thus allow the water tanks in Daraylí to fill up again, however, with no success. Hence they decided to call upon the district authorities to ask for help in mediating between them and the vegetable farmers of Venecia. With reference to Condega district by-law which prohibits irrigation in the dry season during day hours, the district environmental officer first instructed the vegetable farmers to remove their polythene tubes from the spring to allow the water tanks of Daraylí to fill up again and second succeeded in forming a written agreement between the parties to alternate using the spring water, so that the vegetable farmers would irrigate their crops on even days, allowing the water tanks to fill up on odd days.
- In 2007, the Competing for Water programme set out to systematically assess the extent, intensity and nature of water-related conflict and cooperation in five districts in Africa, Asia and Latin America. [1] Through interviews and archival studies, the programme has identified and registered almost 1,100 water-related events. These events range from conflictive – and in a few cases violent – events over access to water through popular protest staged against certain users and uses of water to cooperative events where potentially competing water users engage in joined efforts to establish water management rules or to develop new water resources. Following a brief review of the nature, intensity and nature of the events identified in the five districts, this paper analyses the involvement of third parties in water-related conflict and cooperation and discusses its role and impact with particular focus upon poor people’s access to water. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of the findings for on-going water governance reform in developing countries. This paper is based on field work undertaken in five districts – Tiraque district in Bolivia, Douentza district in Mali, Condega district in Nicaragua, Con Cuong district in Vietnam and Namwala district in Zambia – which apart from being located in three different continents, were selected through a maximum variation sampling strategy (Patton, 2002) to represent a high level of mutual heterogeneity in terms of rainfall pattern, population density, and the importance of irrigation, livestock keeping and fishing, hydro-power and other water infrastructure development, and formal water allocation mechanisms
- Water-related conflict and cooperation takes place in response to situations of actual or potential competition, i.e. situations in which two or more parties seek access to the same water resource. At times such conflict or cooperation is latent, while at other times, it is expressed as water events. Such water events consist of actions which challenge other parties’ access to or specific use of water, or which confirm or enlarge own or other parties’ access to or use of water. We defined a water event as “ an action (or a set of actions) that seeks to secure one or more parties’ access to or use of water by (i) challenging other parties’ access or use; (ii) confirming own or other parties’ access or use; or (iii) collaborating with other parties to secure access or use.” Water-related events take place at different scales, ranging from events that take place between two neighbours or between husband and wife to events that take place between groups of water users within a community or between an industry or a large-scale farming enterprise on one side and water consumers in a number of downstream communities on the other side. We distinguish between ‘public’ and ‘private’ water-related events. By ‘public’ water-related events we understand events which either (i) involve two or more parties of which at least one party represents or is comprised of individuals from more than five households, or (ii) involve at least three different types of parties, e.g. fishers, an industry and domestic water consumers. ‘Private’ water-related events, on the other hand, are those that take place e.g. between two neighbours who agree to develop or share a water resource or between a husband and wife who disagree whether to use water available to them for watering livestock or for growing vegetables. We chose to only include ‘public’ water-related events in the inventories developed for the five districts. While some water-related events are reported to or involve institutions from outside the location where they take place, others take place without being known outside their location. In order to ensure the identification of both those events that are reported outside their location and those that are not, comprehensive inventories of water-related conflictive and cooperative events having occurred between 1997 and 2007 were developed for a sample of 10 communities drawn as a stratified, random sample considering geographical location and population share (Ravnborg et al ., forthcoming ). The total number of water-related events having occurred in each of the research locations during the study period is thus estimated on the basis of extrapolation of the inventories developed for 10-community sample ( ibid. ). Using a registration format and a corresponding data base, information collected from multiple sources, was recorded about each event with research to its location, type of water source and infrastructure involved, the types of parties and uses involved, the issue, the involvement of third parties, number of people directly involved and affected, actions taken as part of the event, and its assessed outcome and intensity.
- Through field work in the sample communities, we identified a total of 693 events that had occurred between 1997 and 2007. Through extrapolation this corresponds to an estimated total of 6,003 water-related conflictive and cooperative events having occurred between 1997 and 2007 in the five research locations. Rather than dichotomous and mutually exclusive phenomena, conflict and cooperation about water are interwoven in flows of action where conflictive and cooperative events sometimes succeed one another, sometimes mutually overlap. Mainly cooperative, water-related situations where parties cooperate to overcome potentially competing claims to water evolve over time and may involve sudden drawbacks where disagreements on specific conditions of access emerge. Likewise, mainly conflictive situations where parties confront each other about access to and management of a water resource may get resolved, whether to equal benefit of all or to the exclusive benefit of some of the involved parties. Overall, cooperative and conflictive situations appear to be equally frequent. Of the 1,949 water-related situations that had given rise to conflictive and cooperative events between 1997 and 2007 in the five districts, 38 percent had been mainly conflictive, 45 percent mainly cooperative and the remaining 17 percent had been equally conflictive and cooperative. However, while situations that were mainly or partly conflictive dominate in Namwala and Tiraque districts, accounting for 83 percent and 63 percent, respectively, situations that were mainly or partly cooperative are more frequent in Douentza, Condega and Con Cuong districts, accounting for 78 percent, 61 percent and 56 percent, respectively. Competition for water does lead to acts of violence, but only in a minority of cases. In 122 of the 6,003 events (2 percent) that had occurred in the five districts, persons had been physically threatened as part of the event. In another 52 events (1 percent), persons had been physically violated, while in five events, a person was killed as part of a water-related event. Despite the fact that the majority of the water-related situations having taken place in Douentza district were characterized as mainly cooperative, a considerable part of these violent acts took place in Douentza district. [1] Less than one percent of all water-related events (38 events) (Figure 2) were characterized as planned or unplanned collective violence (-7 and -6 according to the water event intensity scale, respectively – see Table 1). As shown in Figure 2, the majority of the water-related events involve commitments to joined water management directly among the potentially competing parties (+3 according to the water event intensity scale), verbal disputes (-1), sporadic and small-scale violation of access rights, e.g. water thefts (-2), and denouncement of other parties’ water use to third parties (local as well as external) (-3). [1] Fourty-three of the 122 events that involved persons being threatened took place in Douentza district, 41 of the events took place in Namwala district and 38 took place in Condega district. Thirty-six of the 52 events that involved persons being physically violated took place in Namwala district and 16 took place in Douentza district. The five events that involved a person being killed took place in Condega district.
- Overall, 63 percent of water-related situations within which events took place between 1997 and 2007 in the five districts, involved people who wanted to use a water resource for the same purpose, e.g. as drinking water or for irrigation, while the remaining 37 percent of water-related situations involved people who wanted to use a water resource for different purposes, often between on the one hand, people who wanted to use water for drinking or other domestic purposes and, on the other hand, people who wanted to use water for productive purposes such as watering of livestock, irrigation or mining. However, significant differences were found between the districts. In Douentza and Namwala districts, multiple-use situations were more frequent than single-use situations, constituting 67 percent and 77 percent, respectively, of all situations within which event had occurred during the study period, whereas in Tiraque and in Con Cuong districts, single-use situations accounted for 92 percent and 83 percent, respectively. In between, in Condega district 56 percent of all situations were single-use situations, while the remaining 44 percent were multiple-use situations. Several features contribute to explain these similarities and differences. Both Tiraque and Con Cuong districts are characterized by the existence of widespread collective irrigation infrastructure, mainly canals being fed by surface water led by gravity from upstream lakes, dams, springs and streams (see also Table 6). Thus, although primarily intended for irrigation, a number of other uses take place along the canals without necessarily giving rise to conflictive or cooperative events. By contrast, in Douentza and Namwala districts, most situations concern ground water or natural ponds, i.e. point-specific water sources which due to the limited availability of surface water sources such as streams and rivers have to serve a number of different purposes and therefore tend to concentrate water users with diverging water use interests around these points. As an indication of the concentration of water users around a limited number of point-specific water sources, more than a quarter of all households in Douentza and Namwala districts indicated [1] to have to walk more than 20 minutes to fetch drinking water whereas this was the case for only two, four and eight percent of all households in Tiraque, Condega and Con Cuong districts, respectively. Condega district does not have collective infrastructure established for irrigation, but like Tiraque and Con Cuong districts, it has available surface water, although in many places not of sufficient quality to make it suitable as drinking water. [1] This information stems from a household questionnaire survey administered to a random sample of 400 households in each of the five districts as part of the Competing for Water research programme.
- In Tiraque and Con Cuong districts, the majority of the single-use situations (58 percent and 51 percent, respectively) were related to irrigation (Table 7) dealing with issues such as the timing of irrigation water, the sharing of irrigation water in times of scarcity, maintenance of irrigation infrastructure, etc. [1] In Condega district, the majority of the single-use situations (75 percent) were related to drinking water, primarily constituted by efforts of rural inhabitants to obtain external support for constructing or improving drinking water supply infrastructure. Such situations were also prominent in Con Cuong district, where situations about rural drinking water constituted 45 percent of all single-use situations. These single-use situations relating to rural drinking water tend to be cooperative and tend to be less complex in terms of number of events per situation than other situations. [2] In Douentza district, half of the single-use events were related to rural drinking water, while a quarter of the single-use events were related to fishing dealing with issues of competing claims of access to water and water management rules. Finally, in Namwala district, the single-use events concerned water for livestock and rural drinking water, and also here they were primarily dealing with competing claims of access to water and water management rules. [1] Frequency of situations according to issues is not shown in table. [2] On average, single-use cooperative situations contain 1.97 events compared to averages of 3.13, 3.59 and 3.93 for multiple-use conflictive, multiple-use cooperative and single-use conflictive situations (significant at 0.05 level, Scheffe’s test).
- Approximately 60 percent of the 728 multiple-use situations within which water-related events had taken place between 1997 and 2007 were situations of potential competition between domestic and productive uses of water, the latter primarily related to primary production (farming, including irrigation, watering of livestock and fishing). In Tiraque district, all among the very few multiple-use situations related to irrigation and rural drinking water and were primarily concerned with competing claims of access to water, deviation of water and water management rules. In Douentza district, nine out of ten water-related situations involved potential competition between domestic and productive uses, primarily relating to water for livestock and being concerned primarily with how to divide scarce water resources between the two uses while in Condega district, eight out of ten multiple-use situations involved potential competition between reproductive uses on the one hand, and productive uses, on the other hand, with respect to issues of competing claims of access to water, deviation of water, and water management rules. In Con Cuong district, approximately half of the multiple-use situations involved events between parties wanting to use water for domestic purposes on the one hand, and for productive purposes on the other. However, in Con Cuong the productive uses comprised mining and industrial use in addition to irrigation and watering of animals. These situations involved issues of water quality and water regulation. Finally, in Namwala district, a bit more than a third of the multiple-use situations involved potential competition between domestic and productive uses, while another third related to potential competing among productive uses, notably between watering of livestock and watering of crops. In Namwala district, the main issues were water management rules, damaged water supply infrastructure and water scarcity.
- The poorest households are less likely to have their own drinking water source than the non-poor and the less poor households. This means that they depend on shared community water sources for which access has to be agreed with other community members or on negotiating access to private water sources belonging to their better-off neighbours. Moreover, they are likely to have to walk longer distances to fetch drinking water than the non-poor and the less poor households.
- Although to a significantly lesser extent, the poorest households also use water for productive purposes, such as watering crops and – if they have cattle – to water cattle. In Tiraque and Con Cuong districts, where canal irrigation is widespread, a considerable part of the poorest households have access to water for irrigating their crops during the dry season, namely 70 percent of the poorest households in Tiraque district and 44 percent of the poorest households in Con Cuong district (Figure Z).
- In all research locations, the poorest households were characterized by not owning or only owning a limited amount of livestock. As shown in Figures XX and XY, the poorest households are significantly less likely to own cattle than the non-poor and less poor households, and with the exception of Douentza district, those among the poorest households who do own cattle are more likely than the non-poor and less poor households to own three heads of cattle or less. Also for productive purposes, the poorest households are less likely to have own and independent water sources. The poorest households are significantly less likely to own land that has a natural spring on it than the non-poor households, or in Douentza district to own land that borders a river or stream.
- Many countries, including some among the countries of our research locations have water policies that contemplate an equitable distribution of water and that assign first priority to drinking water use over other uses such as irrigation, watering of animals and industrial use. Our inventories of water-related events indicate that reality comes short of meeting these intentions, as it is often people who use water for drinking and other domestic purposes who have to give in when faced with competing demands to the same water e.g. from livestock keepers or farmers who use water for irrigation (Figure 5). Overall, in only 10 percent (69 events) of the estimated 710 multiple-use, conflictive events which involved rural domestic consumers (drinking and other domestic uses), rural domestic consumers were assessed to ‘win’ while they were assessed to lose in 42 percent (298 events) of these multiple-use, conflictive events. By comparison, livestock keepers were assessed to ‘win’ in 26 percent (81 events) of the 315 multiple-use, conflictive events which also involved use of water for domestic purposes and farmers using water for irrigation were assessed to ‘win’ in 33 percent (105 events) of the 315 multiple-use conflictive events which involved use of water both for irrigation and for domestic purposes.
- In three of the five research locations – Condega, Con Cuong and Namwala – an assessment was made of winners and losers of the identified water-related events in terms of their poverty level. It indicates that while no significant differences exist with respect to who gains from the water-related events, there is a tendency that the poor households are more likely to lose from water-related events than the non-poor households.
- In San Isidro – a large community in the dry part of Condega district – where water from the spring located at the land of the founding family is distributed by gravity to the approximately 20 public taps, the use of water for watering animals and crops by a few better-off community members impedes sufficient access to water for domestic purposes for others. Many households in the community are landless or close to landless and depend on income from temporal migration or from day-labouring for the better-off neighbours. Also in terms on personal security, these better-off neighbours are important to the poorer households, particularly to the women, as they are almost the only men around during the periods where demands for seasonal labour are high in neighbouring Costa Rica or elsewhere in Nicaragua. Thus the women prefer to not complain about the abuse of water by their better-off neighbours because as they explain, these persons are “uncomfortable” persons In one case, where a family had contacted a water technician working with an internationally funded water supply project that had renovated the drinking water supply scheme in San Isidro to complain about the illegal appropriation of one of the public water taps of their better-off neighbour, this led to threats of physical intimidation and violence from the neighbour towards several of the members of the family that had complained.
- Third parties are called upon in 28 percent of the individual events, corresponding to being called upon to in all or some of the events belong to 44 percent of the water-related situations having occurred between 1997 and 2007. The graph shows that in sevent percent of the water-related events only community level institutions were called upon, primarily in Con Cuong and in Namwala, while in 21 percent of the events (also) community-external institutions were called upon.
- As shown in the figure, third parties are most likely to be called upon in Condega district, Nicaragua. Apart from the proximity of the district headquarters to most rural communities – Condega is a small district and many communities are served by a daily bus route to Condega town – Condega’s district administration has had an explicit policy of public attention and has, particularly since the hurricane Mitch in 1998, been favoured by a number of donor-funded interventions related to water supply and watershed management implemented through ministries, water supply agencies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), sometimes in coordination with the district authorities. These features help to explain the relatively high third-party involvement in water-related situations in Condega district. At the other extreme, in Tiraque district in Bolivia and Con Cuong district in Vietnam, third parties were called upon in less than 13 and 12 percent of all water-related events, respectively.
- It is important to note that the institutions called upon as third parties tend to be the institutions with broader mandates such as the community committee or the district administration, or private NGOs, typically in their capacity of executing donor-funded water-related projects, e.g. in Douentza and Condega districts, whereas institutions which have a specific water-related mandate are much less called upon. Only in Condega district, the water supply agency (ENACAL) had been called upon to any significant degree due to executing a donor-funded rural drinking water project during the study period. This is the case, even in Condega where efforts to establish sub-catchment committees have been on-going during the past decade.
- In the household questionnaire we asked where the respondents would go – first, next and last – if a) their most important water source dried out, and b) whom they would contact if somebody in the community would start using so much water that they themselves would receive less. As illustrated in Figure X, there is a sequencing in the type of third party called upon if a water-related problem should occur, starting with the closest and then moving gradually – if need be – further away from the community. Combined with the previous the previous slides, it appears important that broad mandate institutions (community council, district authories, police, etc.), where people would have a reason to go anyway, have the capacity to attend to water-related issues. Moreover it is important to take stock of the fact that many of the poor households don’t have the same facility for contacting external institutions and cannot rely on community level institutions to represent their interest externally. Therefore some degree of proactive engagement from district-level and other external institutions to ease the contact to the poor part of the population.
- As the better-off households in a community tend to control community level institutions such as the headman, the community committee and the water committee directly or indirectly, such institutions are often not sufficient to address issues of unequal access to water. Moreover, the better-off households in a community are often the ones who control the contact to external institutions, i.e. institutions which may be called upon as a third party when a water-related conflict arises.
- Thus, it appears important that broad mandate institutions (community council, district authories, police, etc.), where people would have a reason to go anyway, have the capacity to attend to water-related issues. Moreover it is important to take stock of the fact that many of the poor households don’t have the same facility for contacting external institutions and cannot rely on community level institutions to represent their interest externally. Therefore some degree of proactive engagement from district-level and other external institutions to ease the contact to the poor part of the population.