Building Capacities for Sustainable Water Governance at the Grassroots: “Organic Empowerment” and Its Policy Implications in Nicaragua

Abstract

ABSTRACTMany of the most acute water crises globally are “everyday” crises experienced in impoverished rural areas and urban slums across the global South. Confronting these crises are thousands of community-based water management regimes—many operating “below the radar” of formal state policies. Arguably, a foremost challenge to constructing sustainable water governance concerns reconciling long-standing—yet politically and legally unrecognized—locally based governance structures with state policies designed and promoted from above. Bridging the scholarships on common property regimes and decentralized natural resource management, this article examines how policymakers and rural water committees confront the challenge of securing water access for domestic use. Specifically, this article documents the development of what is termed an “organic empowerment” of water committees in Nicaragua, arguing that this grassroots form of empowerment has contributed to the democratization of top-down policymaking. Ultimately, it reveals the complex, multiscalar tensions inherent in efforts to create new and recognize preexisting institutions for water governance.