INSTRUMENTOS DE RECOLECCIÓN DE INFORMACIÓN

Figure 2.3: A simplified summary of major integrated water resources management (IWRM) and adaptive management (AM) principles (Engle et al., 2011)

proposed by the authors is constructed from the creation of appropriate managerial mosaics of nested sub-units within river basins rather than integrating it into a hierarchical whole (cf. Ostrom, 2009).

Accordingly, the “focus [is] on pursuing immediate and customised solutions to problems that subunit societies face including the provision of scientific services to support local policy-making and the fostering of local standard-setting and agreements on monitoring, rewards and penalties” (Lankford and Hepworth, 2010). These internally functioning sub-units, holons, subsequently nest together to achieve the basin-wide performance (see Figure 2.4). Uphoff (1996) claims that holons as introduced by Koestler (1967), may be considered as whole in themselves and at the same time parts of larger wholes. Hence, certain aspects of the behavior of a holon may be confined entirely to that holon, yet systems (i.e. holons) at any level are constrained and controlled by the levels above and below, thus, can be considered as nested (Stephens and Hess, 1999).

Pahl-Wostl and Kranz (2010) encounter some empirical evidence to support the hypothesis that poly-centric systems with effective stakeholder participation are more adaptive than either centralized or fragmented governance systems (Pahl-Wostl, 2009). Moreover, to be effective in increasing governance performance, poly-centric decentralization approaches should be combined with effective vertical integration and cross-level interactions (Pahl-Wostl and Kranz, 2010). Public participation and the involvement of stakeholders proved to be important for achieving effective vertical integration and cross-level interaction (Pahl-Wostl and Kranz, 2010). According to Pahl-Wostl et al. (2012), adaptive management with a poly-centric structure “creates possibilities of responding at different spatial scales as well as dealing with heterogeneity in impacts and capacities among different places or sub-basins”. Due to the distribution of authority in a poly-centric regime, place-specific responses to heterogeneity and uncertainties are easier to achieve than in a centralized system. Pahl-Wostl et al. (2012) argue that past emphasis on legal frameworks and management plans in water governance reform was quite futile in countries with limited statehood where formal institutions are not effective. Thus, support of bottom-up informal processes to develop civil society and local governance capacity instead of intervention at the national level may be more promising (Pahl-Wostl et al., 2012).

Another group of authors also apply the theory of Social-Ecological System to improve IWRM implementation, but draw their attentions more towards the implications on how to deal with the natural system context. Falkenmark and Rockström, for instance, in their paper of 2006, highlighted the urgent need for a shift in thinking in water resources governance and management. In their view, this shift is a move from a blue runoff focus to a broadened green-blue soil moisture and runoff focus (Falkenmark and Rockström, 2004). Its fundamental implication is to shift to seeing precipitation rather than runoff as the primary water source. Moreover, it implies a shift from applying IWRM solely as a runoff-based management framework to implementing it as a rain-based water management framework. Furthermore, Falkenmark and Rockström

.

Multiple, small irrigation systems with a large coalesced area located in a sub-catchment, constituting a holon

A Sub-catchment (holon)

Small villages

A Sub-catchment (holon)

Large irrigation systems (each a holon managed separately from sub-catchment)

Larger town (holon)

Main river basin

River and tributaries

Figure 2.4: Schematic illustration of nested holons within a river basin (Lankford and Hepworth, 2010)

(2010) argue that in contrast to a conventional blue water management approach where the focus is placed at the river basin level, the application of an integrated green-blue approach also implies a different scale of focus. Representing a downward extension of the basin focus, the green-blue approach puts a “stronger emphasis on the smaller catchment in which soil moisture operates and generates a multitude of ecosystem services for humans and nature” (Falkenmark and Rockström, 2010). According to Falkenmark and Rockström (2010), actions at this meso-scale level (above the farmer’s fields but below the river basin) “creates choices for partitioning rainfall and allows consumptive use of green water to be properly brought into the water balance and to influence management interventions”. Moreover, this intermediate level allows “a more explicit analysis of conflicts of interest and trade-offs between green and blue water use, and between upstream and downstream users and uses“ (Falkenmark and Rockström, 2010).

This down-scaling of water management from basin to catchments and sub-catchments incorporates management actions with regard to the partitioning points of green and blue water pathways. Furthermore, policies have to be developed that are well adapted to the management of rain as the primary water source (see Table 2.5). Consequently, Falkenmark and Rockström (2010) stress that two fundamental shifts are necessary for water planners: “(1) focus on precipitation as the planning resource and (2) bottom-up application of planning, starting from the local sub-catchment, i.e., the small, often ephemeral tributaries forming social-ecological units ranging in size from hundreds of hectares to hundreds of square kilometers, and moving on to catchments”.

At this point there are clear parallels between the approach of Pahl-Wostl et al. and the one of Falkenmark and Rockström in using SES as its theoretical background. While Pahl-Wostl et al. derives implications for how to address the human system, Falkenmark and Rockström deduce implications on how to deal with natural system’s characteristics.

According to Falkenmark and Rockström (2006), both the focus of IWRM and the scale at which it is implemented have to be redefined. A new focus has to consider the full water balance of blue and green water as manageable. In places where rain-fed agriculture is of significant importance, as in developing countries, “the scale of focus should more prominently be on the smaller catchment or watershed scale, which corresponds better to the scale relevant to the farmer” (Falkenmark and Rockström, 2006). Thus, the incorporation of land use decisions as important water decisions into the concept of IWRM is essential.

Everard and Powell (2002), in a similar manner to Falkenmark and Rockström (2006), claim that river catchments should be regarded as living systems where water and land are interdependently connected. Thus, management of river catchments requires a move from a reactive to a systemic approach to the water environment. For Everard and Powell (2002) the “acknowledgment of the central importance of ecosystem functions, the protection of these functions through management action, valuing them appropriately, and taking longer-term and wider-scale perspectives in management decisions” are essential for a systemic approach. In order to move in thinking and action there are seven shifts that society needs to undertake to move from a reactive to a systemic approach to the water environment:

• From anthropocentric to ecocentric - The functioning of the ecosystem, and not merely the human use of it, needs to be central to our thinking.

• From downstream ‘fixes’ to systemic understanding of catchments. The benefits to society provided by intact ecosystems must be quantified at the catchment scale, and properly valued by development decisions.

30 2 Evolution and implementation of Integrated Water Resources Development and Management

New Conventional

Planning

Sources = rainfall forming green water in soil and blue water in rivers/aquifers

Sources = water in rivers and aquifer Planning of management options as a continuum

from rain-fed to irrigated agriculture

Planning focus on water allocations for irrigation, industry, and domestic water supply

Cross-scale focus - down-scaling from river basin to catchment and local level

River basin plans Integrated land and water resource management

(ILWRM)

IWRM

Policies

New environmental policies, including green water needs to sustain terrestrial ecosystems

Environmental impact assessment Green-blue trade-offs between up- and downstream

(e.g. Water Act, Republic of South Africa)

Water in aquatic ecosystems, environmental wa-ter flow

Forest plantation fees Demand management

Green water credits (GWC)¹ Water laws regulating blue water distribution

1The GWC concept builds on the growing evidence that improved land and water management upstream cannot only improve green water benefits there (e.g., through increased farm yields) but also release more useful and better quality blue water to downstream uses, e.g. base flow replacing storm flow, less sediment (Dent and Kauffman, 2007).

Table 2.5: Conceptual differences between the past blue water-based management of water resources and the new green-blue water-based management of land and water resources (Falkenmark and Rockström, 2010)

• From evaluating single-function benefits to accounting for multiple benefits. Benefits stemming from the water environment, including amenity, water retention, storage and groundwater exchange, chemical purification, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, better flood storage and attenuation, fish recruitment, and nature conservation need to be factored into decision-making.

• Focus on long-term rather than short-term implications.

• From management solutions applied in isolation to ’building blocks’ contributing to catchment functioning. These potential ‘building blocks’ include sustainable drainage systems, buffer zones, re-meandering of rivers, or full-scale river restoration.

• From maintenance and mitigation to restoration.

• From consultation to consensus-building” (Everard and Powell, 2002).

The ecosystem-based approach proposed by Everard and Powell (2002) calls for management actions at the local level which “also contribute to the protection or restoration of natural functions at catchment scale” (Everard and Powell, 2002).

This idea of interdependent sub-units that ought to be managed from bottom-up is similar to the proposal of Lankford and Hepworth’ holons as nested sub-systems for management.

2.5 Summary

Since its emergence at the beginning of the 1990s, the concept of IWRM has increasingly gained acceptance as a normative framework to guide the way how water and related land resources have to be managed. A large number of countries has now embarked on an implementation process of IWRM through the passing of IWRM conform water legislation and respective policies, creating an enabling environment. At national levels new institutional roles have been defined and specific organizations have been created to improve cross-sectoral cooperation. However, as global assessments have repeatedly confirmed, this process has taken a long time and IWRM implementation, at this stage, has largely remained without taking the subsequent step of operationalization in the practical application of participatory, stakeholder involving management instruments. Especially in developing countries, standard ‘packages’ of IWRM implementation do not take the prevailing resource constraints in these countries sufficiently into account.

The struggles towards IWRM implementation have been critically observed by a broad scientific community. While the scientific discourse, at first, focused on the complexity of the concept itself, it has subsequently addressed the problematic implications it has in practice if the concept is ‘fully’ implemented in an all-integrating, comprehensive manner. The recognition that specific contexts have to be considered led to more pragmatic and problem-oriented approaches towards IWRM implementation, known as light, expedient or adaptive IWRM. In awareness of the need for a more adaptive approach, local contexts of action are seen as fundamental to achieving effective change in water resources management. To put IWRM into context, this means moving from global, exogenous ‘solutions’ to local, endogenous plans of action (Beveridge

et al., 2012). Thus, the key for improving IWRM implementation is to address the institutional and political challenges typically encountered when implementing integrated approaches: e.g. problems of institutional interplay and spatial fit, lack of participation, equity and accountability, as well as the general mismatch with needs and conditions in specific places (Beveridge and Monsees, 2012). Therefore, a problem- and people-orientated approach is needed that avoids the pitfalls of the ‘one-size-fits-all’ attempts which often characterize mainstream implementation.

Both Pahl-Wostl et al. and Falkenmark et al. highlight the importance of social-ecological-system’s interactions in order to improve IWRM implementation from bottom-up. Both scientific communities acknowledge that a context-specific and problem-oriented approach is necessary to achieve this. Although both recognize the interconnectedness of human and natural systems Pahl-Wostl et al. put a stronger focus on improvement in the integration within the human system while Falkenmark et al. do this with regard to the natural system. Humans are the central drivers of ecosystem change but at the same time firmly dependent on the goods and services that ecosystems provide. This interdependency has to be reflected in IWRM as well. Within river basins this interdependency has to be recognized and addressed, thus, the water governance challenge of IWRM as IRBM has to take due care when linking human society and natural ecosystems.

32 2 Evolution and implementation of Integrated Water Resources Development and Management

3 Methodological conceptualization of Integrated Water Resources Management implementation

According to the implementation assessments and the broad scientific discourse, IWRM implementation is essentially a question of governance and management at the right scale. Moreover, since decentralization and the river basin approach are imperatives in IWRM implementation, it is more precise to refer to a multi-level governance¹challenge. Therefore, Mitchell (1990), among others, argues that the IWRM concept may be applied at normative, strategic and operational levels. According to Mitchell, there has been much progress, although sometimes mostly rhetorically, at the normative level by defining what ought to be done to achieve IWRM. Examples are the numerous national IWRM plans, strategies and also general laws on IWRM at the national level. The strategic level subsequently represents the principal level of governance in practice and is concerned about what can be done to actually implement IWRM, e.g. implementation in a normative sense as full IWRM or light IWRM as context-specific interpretation of IWRM. Finally, the operational level is concerned with the operationalization of the targets defined at the governance, i.e. strategic, level. According to Mitchell (1990), what actually will be done is defined at this level. The IWRM process should take place at all of these levels and it is important to be aware that the IWRM process often moves from one level to the next. Scheuchzer et al. (2012) identify two different levels of IWRM as important for implementation: Integrated Water Governance at the national, i.e. strategic level, and Integrated River Basin Management, i.e. operationalization of IWRM at the river basin level.

In the context of IWRM implementation, achievements at the strategic and operational level (cf., Grambow, 2013, also normative and operational management) - the river basin level and below - have been especially difficult. This difficulty has its origin in the significant changes in the governance system of natural resources implied by the IWRM process (Rogers and Hall, 2003; Dombrowsky, 2005). Changes in the governance system in turn require changes in management instruments as well, i.e. how water governance is implemented, because management instruments are the means to implement changes in the governance system. IWRM challenges traditional governance systems, which implies the use of different management instruments to meet the targets of IWRM governance. These challenges, in this context, refer to integration as cooperatively balanced interests among all relevant stakeholders (i) in a cross-sectoral manner (comprising different water sectors, including use and conservation of the resource), (ii) in a spatial manner (within a relevant area within a river basin across administrative boundaries), and (iii) in an institutional manner (across all relevant governmental levels) (Huppert, 2005).

Thus, the general subject of this chapter is the methodological conceptualization of IWRM implementation problems in practice. Based on this conceptualization of implementation gaps, the requirements for specific instruments to achieve further implementation are assessed in order to develop a solution statement. For a better understanding of the discussion in this chapter it is useful to define several terms with regard to governance analysis. A useful definition of the term governance, as it is used in this dissertation, is provided by Hufty (2011):

“Governance refers to a category of social facts, namely the processes of interaction and decision-making among the actors involved in a collective problem that lead to the creation, reinforcement, or reproduction of social norms and institutions”.

Hence, governance is about how each society develops its own ways of making decisions and resolving or avoiding conflicts.

Elements of governance such as decision-making processes, social norms, and institutions allow members of a society to live together and cooperate, even without an omni-present state (Hufty, 2011). Thus, contrary to the concept of political systems and the traditional idea of politics, governance does neither presuppose vertical authority nor regulatory power.

Interpreting governance in this way, it refers equally to formal and informal, vertical and horizontal processes, without predefined preference. According to Hufty (2011) using this governance perspective permits the inclusion of a large variety of social processes. This interpretation is especially useful in the context of IWRM implementation in developing countries where governments and formal rules are often weak in performance.

Consequently, water governance can be understood as a set of systems that controls decision-making with regard to water resources development and management. Water governance, thus, is more about the way how, i.e. by whom, and under what circumstances decisions are made than about the decisions themselves (Moench et al., 2003). According to the OECD (2011b), water governance “covers the manner in which roles and responsibilities (design, regulation and implementation) are exercised in the management of water and broadly encompasses the formal and informal institutions by which authority is exercised”. Governance understood as composed of a combination of formal and informal institutions is referred to as distributed governance (cf., Kooiman, 1993).

1 The OECD defines multi-level governance as the explicit or implicit sharing of policy-making authority, responsibility, development and implementation at different administrative and territorial levels, i.e.: i) across different ministries and/or public agencies at central government level (upper horizontally); ii) between different layers of government at local, regional, provincial/state, national and supranational levels (vertically); and iii) across different actors at the sub-national level (lower horizontally) (OECD, 2011b).

In the context of this dissertation, the term institution is defined as sets of rights, rules, and decision-making procedures that define social practices, assign roles to the actors in these practices, and guide interactions among the occupants of individual roles (Young, 1999, 2002b). More broadly said, an institution may be represented in any structure or mechanism of social order and cooperation governing the behavior of a set of individuals within a given community.

Moreover, institutions are constructed with a social purpose (produced by collective human choice, though not directly by individual intention), transcend individuals and intentions by mediating the rules that govern cooperative living behavior.

Typical examples for institutions in this sense are structures of property rights², electoral systems, and practices relating to resources use and conservation. Institutions form, thus, a fundamental part of environmental management (Young, 1999). Additionally, institutions are the central subject of New Institutional Economics, a branch of economic theory that attempts to extend economics by focusing on the social and legal norms and rules, hence, institutions that underlie economic activity. Comparative institutional (economical) analysis is applied to make recommendations about efficient internalization of externalities and institutional design. Among other, important elements of this analysis are property rights, transaction costs, modes of governance, social norms, ideological values, and enforcement mechanisms.

In contrast to institutions, organizations are construed as material entities with budgets, offices, employees and usually legal personality. Thus, according to Young (2002b), organizations may represent actors that typically emerge as stakeholders whose activities are guided by the rules of the game defined by institutions in which they participate.

Examples of organizations are the World Bank, the Global Water Partnership or even local municipalities and water user organizations. Furthermore, Young stresses that “institutions can and do vary widely in terms of a range of dimensions, including functional scope, spatial domain, degree of formalization, stage of development, and interactions with other institutions”. An environmental or resource regime (not to be confused with an authoritarian government or dictatorship)

Examples of organizations are the World Bank, the Global Water Partnership or even local municipalities and water user organizations. Furthermore, Young stresses that “institutions can and do vary widely in terms of a range of dimensions, including functional scope, spatial domain, degree of formalization, stage of development, and interactions with other institutions”. An environmental or resource regime (not to be confused with an authoritarian government or dictatorship)