Is normative integrated water resources management implementable? Charting a practical course with lessons from Southern Africa

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Abstract

At the seventh Waternet/WARFSA/GWP-SA Symposium, Lewis Jonker described the “perceived failure of implementing IWRM in South Africa.” This paper starts from Jonker’s observation – which can certainly be defended – and argues that attempts to implement full Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) are doomed to failure and disappointment. The paper therefore offers a more practical ‘expedient’ solution. The paper is based on research done in Tanzania (Ruaha Basin) and South Africa (Olifants Basin) that is further informed by a growing literature critical of the IWRM paradigm as currently understood and practiced. As a guide to actual policies and their implementation in developing countries, IWRM has led to mis-guided priorities and paralysis of development programmes. An alternative approach is one in which basin managers identify priority problem areas, and focus specifically on finding solutions to these problems within an integrated framework, rather than starting with a broad set of principles and trying to implement these. The paper proposes that a shift away from IWRM as a normative concept is now overdue, and argues for realism and action by focusing attention on and prioritizing the critical needs of poor people in Africa. People cannot wait forever.

Introduction

With all respect to the Global Water Partnership, Waternet, the World Bank, and most of the water management ‘establishment,’ it is time to abandon Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) as a guide for implementation. IWRM has become a mantra or religious text, a set of unquestioned assumptions and assertions about how water resources should be developed and managed. It was useful for awhile, because of the incredible damage caused by single-minded single-sector water development in the past—Un-integrated Water Resources Management (UWRM) if you will: building dams and irrigation schemes with no reference to downstream social and ecological impacts for example. But not only has IWRM outlived its usefulness as a guide to action, clinging to its principles and debating them in forums like the present one may now be retarding progress toward achieving poverty reduction goals, especially in under-developed sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). As a guide to research and scientific understanding, IWRM represents a systems theory approach and therefore remains valid. But we will not be throwing the entire baby out with the bath water if we throw out IWRM as the biblical guide to investment and action.

Clearly, this is a provocative position. In the following sections I provide arguments and some data to support the premise that a more practical paradigm is needed as a guide to action. The next section briefly and selectively reviews some of the IWRM literature, both pro and con. The third section proposes an action-oriented realistic agenda to break what seems to be a bottleneck caused by over-emphasis on the ‘integrated’ side of water resources management. The paper concludes with a plea for self-critical openness in seeking a way forward.

Section snippets

The IWRM mountain of literature

Some may think that the concept of IWRM is new and modern. This is not entirely the case, as the historical overview by Molle (2006) demonstrates. He shows that taking the river basin as a development or management unit can be traced to ancient times, in both Asia and Europe. Upstream-downstream interconnectedness for example has been recognized as significant for centuries. Molle traces the development of modern ideas of river basin development and management to the early nineteenth century,

Towards practical water development and management

The hydrological, ecological, social, economic, and political interdependencies within river basins, and the complexities of these dependencies, are well established if not always well-understood (Molle et al., 2007). As water resources are developed, these interdependencies become ever more salient and fraught with potential conflict; whereas at earlier stages of river basin development, apparent “win-win” solutions are possible, these become increasingly unlikely at later stages, requiring

Conclusion

This paper has argued for discarding IWRM as a religious text or blueprint of objectives to be achieved simultaneously and harmoniously. But it has not advocated abandoning IWRM. IWRM continues to be shorthand for a valid model emphasizing the systematic interconnectedness within river basins. However, water managers need to understand more clearly both that there are additional but no less critical connections beyond the basin, and that the connections are not only hydrological and ecological

Acknowledgements

I thank the participants at the Waternet/WARFSA Symposium in November 2007, including Professor Pieter van der Zaag, for their positive comments on the paper. I am also grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions.

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