The Challenge of Local Water Governance

7,000 water-related conflictive and cooperative events have occurred in only five districts of developing countries between 1996 and 2007. DIIS researchers present findings from the Competing for Water research programme and discuss implications for local water governance at SADC region Rural Water Sector Programme Completion Workshop. A documentary video illustrates some of the dilemmas and challenges involved.

In 2007, an international group of researchers set out to map the events of water-related conflict and cooperation that had taken place over a 10-year period in five districts in Africa, Asia and Latin America. One of the objectives of doing so was to better assess the extent and the intensity of water-related conflict and cooperation and thereby provide a clearer picture of the challenge of local water governance.

Based on a combination of qualitative fieldwork and archival research, the Competing for Water programme team estimates that approximately 7,000 water-related conflictive and cooperative events have taken place between 1996 and 2007 in the five districts, ranging from almost 900 events in the small Condega district in Nicaragua to around 1,700 events in the much larger and intensively irrigated Tiraque district in the Bolivian highlands. Only a fraction of these events have come to the knowledge of outside authorities.

In some cases this is because people themselves find ways to share water to the satisfaction of all. But, as our research shows, all too often, it is the poor – people who are deprived of sufficient food, housing and health, who have limited access to productive resources and who lack effective access to local as well as outside authorities – who lose out in these conflictive as well as cooperative events. Therefore, there is a need for proactive engagement of outside authorities to ensure that also the less powerful get sufficient water for not only for drinking but also productive purposes.

Combined with the fact that in most developing countries only limited resources are set aside to deal with water-related issues at e.g. the district level, this constitutes the dilemmas and challenges involved in local water governance. Some of these dilemmas and challenges are presented in a short documentary video, produced for the Competing for Water programme.

On January 26-28, 2010, Helle Munk Ravnborg and Mikkel Funder, the coordinators of the Competing for Water research programme, participated in the Completion Workshop of the Regional Water Sector Programme in the SADC region, South Africa, to present some of the Competing for Water research findings and discuss the implications for efforts to support local water governance with researchers, policy makers and practitioners of the region.