Water Management Arrangements Research Articles

Addressing Water Poverty Under Climate Crisis: Implications for Social Policy

Access to safe, clean and affordable water is a basic human right and a global goal towards which climate change poses new challenges that heavily impact the health and wellbeing of people across the globe and exacerbate or create new inequalities. These challenges are shaped by a number of geographical and social conditions that, apart from the risks of weather-driven impacts on water, include water governance and management arrangements in place, including pricing tariffs, and the interplay of social and economic inequalities. Building on examples from Australia, Scotland and England and Wales that illustrate access to water in different types of water provision systems, and regarding to aspects of access, quality and affordability, this paper explores the types of challenges related to water poverty in the context of climate crisis and reflects on the multiple dimensions of water poverty oriented social policy at the interplay of climate change associated risks.

Improving urban water management and building water supply resilience in the city of Harare, Zimbabwe – a systems view

ABSTRACT Starting from a resilience assessment of Harare's water supply, the system interactions of the city’s water management arrangements are explored through a series of causal loop diagrams. These are based on economic, physical, commercial, environmental, and social subsystems and the reinforcing and balancing loops that influence key variables of interest in each are identified. The analysis identifies a series of shortcomings including a weak provider-customer relationship, limited governance capacity, inadequate coordination and integration between key players, shortfalls in physical supply and critical infrastructure, environmental degradation, and a lack of disaster response and recovery measures. A series of strategies are proposed as intervention actions that target the areas of potential leverage identified in the causal loop analysis, including improving customer-provider relationships; increasing coordination, collaboration, and integration; developing physical and informational infrastructure and enhancing environmental protection and rehabilitation. The impacts of these strategies are highlighted as strengthening key elements of the causal loop diagrams and addressing the resilience gaps identified. The systems mapping approach reveals that key issues are large-scale, cross-sectoral, and compounding. Remediation strategies must therefore also be multi-faceted and holistic in scope.

Ghosts in the shell: The promises of water users' associations and the double life of Elinor Ostrom's design principles in rural China

Water is a matter of great concern for the PRC, especially for its agricultural sector, besieged by shortage, soil degradation, and raising production costs. Because of this, Water Users' Associations (WUA) are garnering domestic attention as a cost-effective solution for growth-compatible sustainability. These associations are inspired by Elinor Ostrom's design principles for the management of common resources. Through long-term ethnography among various stakeholders of the Yunnanese water sector, this article challenges the notion that the implementation of Ostrom-inspired WUAs in the Chinese countryside is fulfilling the associations' accompanying promises of sustainable growth. Instead, this study finds that Chinese WUAs proliferate thanks to pre-existing promises of collective prosperity. North-eastern Yunnan is rich in social arrangements for sustainable water management that predate the introduction of WUAs and make their ordinary operations possible. WUAs proponents conveniently blame the failure they see in Ostrom-inspired organisations on said arrangements while retaining faith in Ostrom's design principles. An ethnography of Ostrom-inspired associations can salvage Ostrom's intellectual project from the prescriptive readings of development planners and her critics. Yet, it also shows that alternative sustainable arrangements in human projects for the environment may become less plausible once captured by the prescriptive episteme of development planners.

Implementation Of Washing Program In Sustainable Water Management At Uin Raden Fatah Palembang

This paper aims to explain and describe the implementation of the concept of sustainable water management applied at UIN Raden Fatah Palembang, as part of the implementation of the green campus idea. UIN Raden Fatah's participation in the UI GreenMetric program has been started since 2019 and will be active in 2020. Water management is an important thing at UIN Raden Fatah Palembang because of the condition of the campus itself which is in a water reservoir and swamp area. The campus is divided into two locations, namely Campus A in the Jalan Jenderal Sudirman area and Campus B in the Jakabaring area, Palembang. Campus B is a new campus that will only start operating in 2021, therefore, water management arrangements are very important. The management of water resources is carried out with the Wash program which consists of revitalizing clean water infrastructure, metering clean water supply, water reuse program, improving surface water quality, as well as construction of drainage and canalization. In practice, higher education leaders issue policies that involve all the academic community, ranging from education staff, educators, to students. Keyword: water, green campus, sustainable, swamp

Local Spatial Plans in Supporting Sustainable Water Resources Management: Case Study from Warsaw Agglomeration—Kampinos National Park Vicinity

The crisis resulting from progressive climate change is reflected in increasingly violent problems with periodic excesses and shortages of water. Integrated water management has thus become a necessity and it depends, inter alia, on the effectiveness of the adopted strategies, policies and individual investments. In many countries, including Poland, the implementation of this postulate is slow. The importance of local spatial plans, which are a tool that directly translates adopted policies into spatial development, is underestimated. The article presents studies of the provisions of planning documents with particular emphasis on the local spatial plans regulations in terms of considering the issue of water management. Some municipalities in the Warsaw agglomeration were selected for the detailed research, as the areas characterized by various water conditions. Local spatial plans adopted for this territory were compared to model planning acts from other regions of Europe. The conclusions include recommendations for local spatial plans and a method for assessing planning documents regarding the scope of the sustainable water management arrangements. The study results indicate that the principles of integrated water management have not been fully incorporated into the existing plans in Poland and that national and regional policies are poorly translated into real management planning.

Urban water security under a changing climate: Is Nepal's water policy on the right track?

AbstractNepal's urban regions are facing increasing levels of water insecurity under a changing climate. The country has a long history of water policy development while climate‐related policies are also emerging at different levels of the new federal republic. It is unclear whether public policy is on the right track to ensure urban water security in the face of growing demand and increasingly variable supply. In this paper, we assess how Nepal's water policy is shaping urban adaptation. We focus on how policies have defined institutional arrangements for water supply and management, allocation of water rights, and the conservation of water source catchments. Policy attention to these issues is crucial for the adaptation of water systems to climate change. Drawing on the review of policy texts and the status of policy implementation in two towns (Dharan and Dhulikhel), we conclude that current policy frameworks and strategies neglect opportunities to facilitate urban water adaptation to climate change. The neglect is seen in escalating conflicts among institutions, an unclear framework for water rights, and inadequate incentives for catchment conservation. We highlight the need for a more coherent and risk sensitive approach to water policy, underpinned by deliberative, research‐informed, and learning‐based strategies.

Irrigation water management to increase planting index in Boyolali Regency, Indonesia

Climate change will have a negative impact on water resources, agriculture, forestry, health and the vulnerability of public infrastructure and the extinction of various species. Water sources as the main means of agriculture, especially rice fields are the main thing in irrigation. Water sources for irrigation of paddy fields in Boyolali include weirs, trenches, springs that are collected in the form of ponds and a small part is a reservoir. Within 2 years after operation, the use of ponds of water for irrigation was able to accelerate yield increases. With various models of water sources, the cropping patterns include paddy-paddy-paddy, paddy-paddy-palawija (crop planted as 2nd crop in dry season), paddy-palawija-palawija and paddy-palawija-fallow. Water management arrangements in each area that use irrigation channels have an Association of Farmers Using Water who is tasked with making a schedule for the distribution of irrigation between blocks, especially if there is water scarcity such as during the dry season. Types of activities that are usually coordinated by farmer groups are pest control, channel maintenance, and irrigation arrangements. For channel maintenance, usually coordinating with the officers of association of water user farmer and development coordinators in their respective villages.

Flesh and bones: Working with the grain to improve community management of water

• Working with the grain can make community management more effective but represents a methodological, empirical, and implementation challenge. • These challenges are centred through a study of community-managed water in rural Ethiopia, Malawi, and Uganda. • Working with the grain re-renders water management as a non-technical process of navigating and negotiating social relations. • There is a need to shift the focus away from development projects to the ongoing work of local governments. • This includes prioritising applied social science education among government staff and flexible working between local departments. Despite cogent critiques and limited successes, community-based management (CBM) remains central to policies for natural resource management and service delivery. Various approaches have been suggested to strengthen CBM by ‘working with the grain’ of existing social arrangements and relationships. For advocates, such approaches ensure that management arrangements are rooted in local realities and are therefore more likely to be effective. Implementing this approach is, however, methodologically, empirically, and operationally challenging. In this paper, we centre these challenges through a study of community-managed water in rural Ethiopia, Malawi, and Uganda. We examine water management arrangements by undertaking an in-depth social survey of 150 communities in the three countries. We also undertake yearlong studies in 12 communities in Malawi and Uganda involving 30 diary keepers. This focus on the local is complemented by country-level political economy analyses and district-level sustainability assessments. Our multi-country extensive-intensive research design uncovers the flesh and bones of CBM, and provides explanations for our findings. In Ethiopia, water management arrangements are more likely to be fleshed out – fully formed committees often working in conjunction with other institutions. In Malawi and Uganda, water management arrangements tend to be skeleton crews of key individuals. The position we adopt is located between advocacy and critique. We recognise the potential of working with the grain. We also recognise the considerable challenges of operationalising this approach without reducing it to another standardised checklist or toolbox. In an attempt to reconcile this tension, we identify practical entry points and sketch out requirements for a more socially informed, reflexive, and effective approach to working with the grain. Whether this can be operationalised within the logics of mainstream development, and whether it can ‘save’ the CBM model, remain open questions.

Collaborative Action and Social Organization in Remote Rural Regions: Autonomous Irrigation Arrangements in the Pamirs of Tajikistan

This paper proposes a bottom–up “nexus medium” perspective to examine and understand social organization and how socio-ecological challenges in remote rural regions are dealt with in communities that receive only limited external support. While “nexus mediums” constitute substances, matter, or objects that combine manifold vital meanings and can be seen as socially constructed and materialized arenas of social interaction, autonomous resource management is seen as a means of local social organization. Taking water as the nexus medium of choice allows us to generate locally informed insights about the role of this scarce resource for the everyday life and social organization of communities inhabiting arid rural areas. This reasoning will be exemplified by three local case studies conducted during empirical research in the Pamirs of Tajikistan utilizing a mix of qualitative methods. The findings reveal how many fundamental everyday-life-related aspects and activities of the studied communities are related to water, and how these communities are organized around common water use and management arrangements that are based on joint decision-making, shared benefits and responsibilities, and collaborative action. The “nexus medium” concept appears to be an appropriate approach for research that seeks to understand from a local perspective how communal living is organized and how socio-ecological challenges are addressed.

An analysis of hand pump boreholes functionality in Malawi

A survey on the functionality of boreholes equipped with hand pumps was undertaken in five districts in Malawi in 2016. The survey aimed at developing a robust evidence-base of the performance of hand pump boreholes by applying a tiered assessment of functionality: (1) working at the time of survey (2) producing the design yield of the borehole; (3) working for >11 months per year and (4) delivering water quality requirements from the World Health Organisation (WHO). This information would guide sustainable future investments in water and sanitation projects. A stratified two-stage random sampling strategy was adopted. The results from the survey indicate that 74% of hand pump boreholes (HPBs) were working at the time of survey; 66% of HPBs passed the design yield of 10 L per minute; 55% met the design yield and also experienced less than one month downtime within a year. Only 43% of HPBs met all the functionality requirements including WHOguidelines for drinking water quality. The survey also assessed the village-level Water Management Arrangements at each water point. Results indicate that the majority of the Water Management Arrangements (86%) are functional or highly functional. The initial exploration of the data shows no simple relationship between the physical functionality and Water Management Arrangements.

Complement or competition in water governance? Analysing two collaborative water management arrangements in one river basin

Abstract This study aims at advancing collaborative governance theory by investigating the interaction between two different collaborative arrangements within the same forested area of high ecological and social value in the Vindel River basin. Semi-structured interviews, policy documents and observations of board meetings were analysed based on analytical typologies of collaborative arrangements to answer the following questions: which factors can explain why a new collaborative arrangement was established within an area where one already existed? In what way do the two arrangements compete with or complement each other? And, to what extent do they address the effects of forestry on water? The analysis shows that a new collaborative arrangement was formed because the existing arrangement did not materialise certain stakeholders' expectations. Moreover, the two collaborative arrangements do not compete but rather complement each other. The newly established organisational/action collaborative arrangement presented those stakeholders most interested in on-the-ground action with the appropriate venue while freeing them from the organisational/policy arrangement that did not match their aims. However, both arrangements experienced power misbalances as certain stakeholders were perceived as having more influence on their agenda. Collaboration at this local-regional level was found to focus on limited problems with concrete and feasible solutions, such as fish migration, rather than on the complex problems with solutions marked by ecological uncertainty and power asymmetries, e.g. diffuse pollution from forestry.

Evidence, ideology, and the policy of community management in Africa

This study examines the performance of the policy of community management for rural groundwater supply in Africa. Across the continent, policies that promote community management have dominated the rural water supply sector for decades. As a result, hundreds of thousands of village-level committees have been formed to manage community boreholes equipped with handpumps. With a significant proportion of these handpumps non-functional at any one time, increasing effort is targeted toward understanding the interacting social and physical determinants of this ‘hidden crisis’. We conducted a survey of community management arrangements across six hundred sites in rural Ethiopia, Malawi, and Uganda, examining the extent to which management capacity is related to borehole functionality whilst accounting for a range of contextual variables. The capacity of water management arrangements (WMAs) was assessed according to four dimensions: finance system; affordable maintenance and repair; decision making, rules, and leadership; and external support. The survey reveals that 73.3% of WMAs have medium or high capacity. However, we found no strong relationship between the capacity of the WMA and the functionality of the borehole. Of the four management dimensions, affordable maintenance and repair was the best predictor of borehole functionality. However, the capacity of this dimension was seen to be the lowest overall, with 61.9% of sites weak or non-existent. Our results provide very limited support for the policy of community management, and we suggest that evidence alone has not accounted for its persistence over decades. After a short historical analysis, we conclude that explanation for the endurance of this model can be found in the nexus between evidence, ideology, and policy. We argue that it is this same nexus that will likely ensure the popularity of community management for some time to come, despite new ideas and evidence to the contrary.

Implications of Nontraditional Housing Arrangements for Urban Water Management in the United States Intermountain West

Homeowners living in single-family detached housing have dominated the literature exploring drivers of residential water use. Meanwhile, rentals, multiunit buildings, and residences governed by private associations are an increasingly important component of the American residential landscape. We used data from a large sample of households in northern Utah cities to explore the effects of these nontraditional housing arrangements on water use decision-making, attitudes and behaviors, and their implications for urban water management. After accounting for the sociodemographic characteristics of respondent households, we found that residents of nontraditional housing arrangements are much less likely to have authority over key water use decisions, and differ significantly from residents of traditional housing in regards to water use perceptions and concerns, self-reported water behaviors, and support for various local water policy options. Traditional approaches to urban residential water management should be adapted to renters, residents in multiunit buildings, and members of community associations.

Successful small-scale irrigation or environmental destruction? The political ecology of competing claims on water in the Uluguru Mountains,Tanzania

Abstract In the Uluguru Mountains of Tanzania, an expansion in informal hosepipe irrigation by small-scale farmers has enabled the development of horticulture, and resulted in improvements in farmers' livelihoods. This has largely taken place independently of external support, and can be seen as an example of the 'private' irrigation that is increasingly viewed as important for sub-Saharan Africa. However, these activities are seen by representatives of government and some donors as the cause of environmental degradation and water shortages downstream, especially in the nearby city of Morogoro. As a result, there have been attempts to evict the farmers from the mountain. Negative narratives persist and the farmers on the mountainside are portrayed as a problem to be 'solved.' This article explores these tensions, contributing to debates about the formalization of water management arrangements and the place of the state in regulating and adjudicating rights to access water. We argue that a focus on legality and formalization serves to obscure the political nature of competing claims on resources that the case illustrates. Keywords: irrigation; Tanzania; ethnography; political ecology; water

The Implications of State Intervention for Self‐Governed Irrigation Schemes: Insights From Tigray, Ethiopia

AbstractThe development of smallholder irrigation is a policy priority in Ethiopia, yet little consideration has been given to the role state interventions play in enabling or constraining effective self‐governance in farmer‐managed schemes. To address this gap in evidence, research was conducted in Tigray, northern Ethiopia, in two irrigation sites. Focus group discussions and semi‐structured interviews with key informants were the primary means of collecting data on local institutional arrangements, government interventions and management challenges. An opinion poll provided additional insights. Our case studies indicate that effective self‐governance cannot easily be crafted by external actors. The introduction of modern irrigation technologies and formalized management arrangements has fostered dependency on external support and increased state influence in key decision‐making processes, whilst traditional water user associations remain largely autonomous but have little access to financial resources. State interventions have also been poorly tailored to local context with negative consequences for performance, although there have been some successes where traditional arrangements for water management have been integrated into new institutions. The incorporation of farmer perspectives into performance assessments could facilitate more responsive interventions, and remains an important area of irrigation research and practice. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Opportunities and challenges for water‐dependent protected area management arising from water management reform in the Murray–Darling Basin: a case study from the Macquarie Marshes in Australia

Abstract In dryland environments, freshwater ecosystems often suffer extensive degradation through habitat modification and water regime changes. The Macquarie Marshes are located in the Murray–Darling Basin in south‐eastern Australia. They are an example of an ecosystem that has experienced significant degradation in recent decades owing to upstream water diversions. Recent reforms of water management in the Murray–Darling Basin have attempted to balance environmental needs against consumptive uses of water. This paper examines the role a protected area has played in conserving the Macquarie Marshes freshwater ecosystem and discusses how Murray–Darling Basin water reform, together with social expectations of public land managers, have had impacts on the management of the Macquarie Marshes Nature Reserve. Protected areas may limit adverse impacts on habitat associated with local‐scale agricultural production but struggle without formal water management arrangements to protect water‐dependent ecosystems from threats operating at a catchment scale. Protected area managers balance demands from stakeholders to address local issues, such as fire management and geomorphic changes, against contributing to the achievement of environmental goals in a water planning system that operates at the catchment scale. European settlement and water resource development has marginalized local Aboriginal people from any role in land and water management activities. The water reforms have given them more opportunities for involvement in decision‐making processes, but opportunities for increased access to water for cultural and spiritual purposes remain limited. Protected areas offer a means of providing greater access for Aboriginal people to their ancestral lands. The strategies and processes developed to maintain and enhance the Macquarie Marshes exemplify the evolution in understanding of freshwater ecosystem protection in Australia, and are relevant globally to water resource management in complex social‐ecological systems. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Establishing Environmental Water Requirements for the Murray–Darling Basin, Australia's Largest Developed River System

There is a global need for management of river flows to be informed by science to protect and restore biodiversity and ecological function while maintaining water supply for human needs. However, a lack of data at large scales presents a substantial challenge to developing a scientifically robust approach to flow management that can be applied at a basin and valley scale. In most large systems, only a small number of aquatic ecosystems have been well enough studied to reliably describe their environmental water requirements. The umbrella environmental asset (UEA) approach uses environmental water requirements developed for information-rich areas to represent the water requirements of a broader river reach or valley. We illustrate this approach in the Murray–Darling Basin (MDB) in eastern Australia, which was recently subject to a substantial revision of water management arrangements. The MDB is more than 1 million km2 with 18 main river valleys and many thousands of aquatic ecosystems. Detailed eco-hydrologic assessments of environmental water requirements that focused on the overbank, bankfull and fresh components of the flow regime were undertaken at a total of 24 UEA sites across the MDB. Flow needs (e.g. flow magnitude, duration, frequency and timing) were established for each UEA to meet the needs of key ecosystem components (e.g. vegetation, birds and fish). Those flow needs were then combined with other analyses to determine sustainable diversion limits across the basin. The UEA approach to identifying environmental water requirements is a robust, science-based and fit-for-purpose approach to determining water requirements for large river basins in the absence of complete ecological knowledge. © 2015 The Authors. River Research and Applications published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Federal Rivers – Managing Water in Multi-Layered Political Systems by Dustin Garrick, George R. M. Anderson, Daniel Connell and Jamie Pittock. 2014, hardback, 384 pages, Edwin Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, UK. ISBN: 978-1-78195-504-8

As this book clearly illustrates, the regulation of rivers within federations presents a set of unique challenges. Federalism, with government power shared between the national government and provincial (sub-national) governments, potentially adds a layer of complexity to water resource management. Where rivers flow through more than one province, tensions can develop between the national and provincial governments, and also between two or more provincial governments, as to the way in which those waters are regulated. This edited collection is the product of a workshop hosted at the University of Oxford in 2012, bringing together experts on water policy and reform from the Americas, Asia, Africa, Europe and Australia. The chapters in this collection provide a series of case studies examining water resource management in ten countries, which provides breadth to this collection. Each chapter then provides great depth and detail of the water policy and political system of the country that it examines. The book is divided into 21 chapters. The 17 case studies, which include basin-specific studies and country-wide studies, are bookended by two introductory chapters and two concluding chapters. These opening and concluding chapters identify some of the themes that flow through the case studies. In doing so, these chapters demonstrate that some of the challenges faced in regulating rivers in countries with a federal system of government are common across a number of countries. However, each federation, with its own constitutional framework, will also have its own unique challenges. In Chapter 1 the editors (D. Garrick, G. Anderson, D. Connell and J. Pittock) provide an overview of water governance challenges in federal systems and identify two themes that permeate the case studies: first, ‘the increasing need for integrated water resource management and water security in federal rivers’; second, ‘the capacity of federal water management arrangements to respond …

Institutional development for stakeholder participation in local water management—An analysis of two Swedish catchments

The EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) promotes a change of European water governance towards increased stakeholder participation and water management according to river basins. To implement the WFD, new institutional arrangements are needed. In Sweden, water councils have been established on the local level to meet the requirements of the WFD of a broad stakeholder involvement in water management. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the knowledge on institutional arrangements for meeting the WFD requirements on stakeholder participation in local water management. A case study of two adjacent catchments in southern Sweden is presented to analyze how institutional legacy affect organizational arrangements and stakeholder participation. Based on literature studies and semi-structure interviews, the case study is analyzed with special emphasis on the scope, the organization and the activities in practical water management in catchments. The result shows different institutional arrangements for water management, despite similarities of the catchments’ characteristics and the regulatory framework on national and regional level.The study identifies four important factors regarding institutional arrangements for water councils and local stakeholder participation in water management. Firstly, an organization involving key stakeholders that are committed to the scope and goals of the water council and willing to provide resources for the implementation of the planned activities. Secondly, institutional arrangements that include a willingness for flexibility and awareness of the need to include the most relevant stakeholders. Thirdly, a clear leadership to drive the process to realize the specific goals and assess the outcome. Fourthly, voluntary involvement of farmers to take part in the implementation of the measures and contribute with knowledge and experiences regarding local conditions.

Adaptive Capacity: Tensions across Scales

ABSTRACTClimate variability and climate change impacts on hydrological conditions prescribe the need to better understand favourable conditions for developing and mobilising adaptive capacity. This paper presents new cases to the body of evidence on adaptive capacity in the context of institutional arrangements for water management. It aims to contribute insights into the challenges of developing approaches across governance scales for dealing with climate variability and climate change impacts. The different case studies explored in this article represent an exploration of the challenges across temporal and spatial scales in relation to the adaptive capacity of water governance to hydro‐climatic stresses. The studies use a suite of governance related indicators to explore adaptive capacity in relation to past extreme hydrological events. Analysis is based on qualitative open ended interviews and questionnaires. Results indicate that tensions persist in developing proactive capacity and mobilising reactive capacity at different scales of governance to different scales of change. Findings support the increasing recognition in the literature for top down and bottom up approaches to be better balanced in efforts to improve resilience to climate variability and change. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment