Water decision making
Decentralisation and participation in water decision making
Decentralisation and participation play important roles in water reform. Through decentralisation the government delegates some of its decision making powers and management responsibilities to lower levels of government, the private sector or community and civil society organisations. Many countries are currently moving away from conventional forms of water governance, which usually have been dominated by a top-down approach, towards bottom-up approaches, which combine the experience, knowledge and understanding of various local groups and people.
Decentralisation reform is justified by the principle of subsidiarity (management at the lowest appropriate level). Many national and state governments have delegated responsibilities for water and other environmental services to existing lower tiers of central government or to local governments. Not all delegation has been within government. Some water reforms delegate management responsibilities, and day-to-day duties of water right allocation and administration, to bodies that contain direct stakeholder participation.
The catchment is increasingly accepted as an appropriate scale for water resources management. Remaining challenges for decentralisation include: mobilising financial resources and setting in place required human and institutional capacities; and ensuring transparency and participatory approaches when decentralising water responsibilities to local communities or new catchment-based organisations (to prevent powerful local groups from claiming the entire water resource and marginalizing society’s poor people, women and other politically weak groups even further).
Participation facilitates more informed decision making, more effective implementation and enhanced conflict resolution. It also guarantees that the voices of relatively powerless groups are heard. Participation offers people opportunities to claim their rights as well as meeting their responsibilities, in short to improve their livelihood opportunities.
