 How
societies choose to govern their water resources and
services has profound impacts on people's livelihood
opportunities and sustainable development of water resources.
Access to water is, for many people, a matter of daily
survival or of breaking the vicious circle of poverty.
Improving water governance will thus provide one cornerstone
to alleviate poverty.
Four inter-related and poverty-centred dimensions point to the importance of addressing governance issues:
The social dimension points to equitable use of water resources . Apart from being unevenly distributed in time and space, water is also unevenly distributed among various socio-economic strata of society in both rural and urban settlements. How water resources and related services are allocated and distributed have direct impacts on people's health as well as their livelihood opportunities.
The economic dimension draws attention
to the efficient use of water resources and
the role of water in overall economic growth.
Aggressive poverty reduction and economic growth depend
highly on water and other natural resources. Studies
better governance can exert a powerful and positive
effect on per capita incomes in many countries.
The political empowerment dimension
points at granting water stakeholders and citizens at
large equal democratic opportunities to influence
and monitor political processes and outcomes. At
both the national and international levels, marginalised
citizens, such as indigenous people, women, slum dwellers,
etc., are rarely recognised as legitimate stakeholders
in water-related decision making, and typically lack
voices, institutions and capacities for promoting their
water interests.
The environmental sustainability dimension
shows that improved governance allows for enhanced
sustainable use of water resources and ecosystem
integrity. The sufficient flow of water of
appropriate quality is critical to maintaining ecosystem
functions and services. Unfortunately, water quality
appears to have declined worldwide in most regions with
intensive agriculture and large urban and industrial
areas. Poor people's livelihood opportunities in particular
depend directly upon sustained access to natural resources,
including water - especially since they tend to live
in marginalised areas that are prone to pollution, droughts
and floods. |
