Water Governance
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| The Image about water governance taken from the internet |
In general, water crisis is a term
that refers to the scarcity and quality of available water resources relative
to human demand. However,
in Pakistan’s context, this definition seems incomplete; water crisis
incorporates a missing but very critical dimension that deals with failure in
water governance in either developing capacity to handle too much flood water
over a shorter span of time, causing deaths and destruction as is happening at
present, or facing up to a perpetual threat of survival because there is too
little water over an extended period of time. Of course, water quality remains a serious
concern and essential component in either case. Frankly, had an effective water
governance system been put in place decades back, there would have been no
water crisis at all in Pakistan. No wonder people say that water crisis is merely
a symbol while the root cause is the rot in water governance.
Water Governance: UNDP defines water governance as “The range of political, social, economic
and administrative systems that are in place to develop and manage water
resources and the delivery of water services, at different levels of society”. In
a simpler way, as per the literature suggests, “Water governance is the set of systems that control
decision-making with regard to water resource development and management.” Hence, water governance is the way decisions
are made such as how, by whom, and under what conditions decisions are made for
sustainable water development and management.
In any
country, good governance is critical for sustainable development. Similarly,
good water governance is a pivotal factor in providing sustainable water
development and management. Since the water crisis is essentially an outcome of
the water governance crisis, addressing ineffective water governance becomes a
prerequisite for facing the challenge of prevailing water crisis in Pakistan.
What is
ineffective water governance? United
Nations’ Development Program (UNDP) has outlined the following traits of
ineffective water governance:
- “The
lack of water institutions, fragmented institutional structures
(sector-by-sector approach), unclear property rights, and overlapping
and/or conflicting decision-making structures.
- Up-stream
and down-stream conflicts regarding riparian rights and access to water.
- Strong
tendencies to divert public resources for personal gain, unpredictability
in the use of laws and, a number of regulations and licensing practices,
which impede markets and voluntary action and encourage corruption and
other forms of rent–seeking behaviour”.
Water governance is essentially the
authority of formal and informal water institutions for developing, allocating
and regulating water resources among all stakeholders.
According to Dr. Ross Hagan, an
expert on water issues, we need to look at the water development and management
system as a saving account in a water bank. Water governance is then an
institutional framework, both formal and informal, as a control structure for
the water coming in (supply) and water going out (demand) to manage water uses
by different sectors and stakeholders as and when required. This integrated
process can be visualized as a pipe going into a barrel (deposit), a pipe going
out of a barrel (withdrawal) and valves on both pipes. The barrel is the
available supply (saving account in a water bank) and the valves are the
institutional controls that determine the way decisions are made.
Like good governance at the national
level, good governance for water includes conditions such as participation,
accountability, inclusiveness, transparency and responsiveness in exercising
authority for developing, allocating and regulating water resources among
sectors of water use and water users. If such authority does not reflect such
conditions described for good water governance, the result is obviously
ineffective water governance that thrives on monopoly and discretionary powers
allowed for a few selected people. Of course, the degree of ineffective water
governance will depend upon the degree of absence of the desired stated
conditions that result into degree of corruption as described by Stockholm
International Water Institute in the following equation:
Corruption = (Monopoly + Discretion) – (Accountability + Integrity +
Transparency)
Among other functions, as reported
by the UNDP, water governance focuses on the following main aspects:
• “The
formulation and adoption of sustainable legislation, policies and institutions;
• The way
legislation, institutions and policies are being established, enforced and
implemented;
• Clarification
of the roles and responsibilities of all involved stakeholders - local and
national government, private sector, civil society - regarding ownership, administration
and management of water resources”.
In view of our past and present
record regarding the lack of prerequisite conditions for good governance, it
seems that poor water governance has been the root-cause for our water crisis.
If this is not corrected then how can we explain the following ground realities
that are staring into our eyes while a very serious water crisis hovers over
our heads?
- How
is it that Egypt and USA can develop water resources equivalent to 3 to 5
times of their respective annual yields from the Nile River and Colorado
River, while the Indus River System, having an annual yield many times
higher than either of these rivers, has surface water storage development
of barely 10 -15 percent?
- After
the Indus Water Treaty of 1960 and Water Apportionment Accord of 1991, why
is there still so much conflict between the upper and lower riparian
states and provinces?
- We
hear about many stories, documented or informal, of illegal canal outlets,
of seasonal tempering of outlets (dhikka
tradition), and of more than
designed flow at the head of the secondary canals while many canals remain
dry toward the lower ends. Where is the sustainable legislation and
enforcement to counter such acts?
- Where
is the effective water regulation regime to address unpredicted flows of
canals and unreliable and inequitable water distribution in the country?
- When the irrigation system in this country was designed to dispose of river water on the command area based on principle of equitable irrigation water distribution, why did we allow water allowances per 1000 acres to swell to such a degree as to create water-logging salinity problems?
The above examples and many other
similar issues illustrate how our water governance has turned out to be absent.
We are neither developing nor managing our water resources on a sustainable
basis. As a consequence, our water crisis is going from bad to worse every
passing day.
In Pakistan, our groundwater
reservoir is at least 3-4 times larger than all the three surface water storage
facilities that we have. This is a
typical but most unfortunate example of not having even token groundwater
governance in a country where its contribution is exceeding the surface water
share at the field level. Similarly, for surface water development, over the
last many decades, we took hard positions on building a dam or not instead of
moving on to discuss alternatives like building
off-stream dams by individual provinces as per water shares agreed under the Water
Apportionment Accord of 1991. In other
words, as of today, we lack badly needed governance in surface and as well as ground
water development and management.
In order to have sustainable
management of surface water resources, since the mid-nineties, a comprehensive
irrigation reforms program is being implemented to ensure or create all
prerequisite conditions for good water governance. This program is intended to
do the following:
·
Create autonomous Provincial
Irrigation and Drainage Authorities or PIDAs to manage irrigation water jointly
with users;
·
Formal entities of water users are
being developed at the secondary canal level as Farmers’ Organizations (FOs),
at the main / branch canal level as the Area Water Board (AWBs) and at
provincial level as the PIDA Boards. At the canal and provincial level,
farmers’ representatives and irrigation officials will jointly operate and
maintain their respective systems and at the secondary canal level the Farmers’
Organizations will mainly be responsible for irrigation water management.
Thus, the reform program has
potential to turn a dysfunctional system into a very functional and vibrant
system for water distribution as per rules of allocation and regulation jointly
worked out by irrigation departments and representative of farmers. If these reforms
are not properly and effectively implemented through the exercise of strong
political will, these same reforms have the potential to create such a mess
that even all counteracting efforts through water supply side management and
water demand side management will be hard put to address the pending severity of
water crisis.
So far, the implementation of
reforms in the irrigated sector has been too slow and too casually handled so
that there is every possibility that it can easily be derailed or reversed. If
this happens, it will kill all efforts invested over the last 15 years to bring
in prerequisites of good water governance such as participation,
accountability, inclusiveness, transparency and responsiveness in exercising
authority for developing, allocating and regulating water resources among the
irrigation water users. As a matter of fact, every effort should be made to
expand the scope of such reforms to encompass other water sub-sectors instead
of sabotaging and slowing down this process altogether. For the sake of our
devastated country and the next generations, we need to stop hydro-political
gimmickry and get serious to make these reforms a success to ensure good water
governance to manage the prevailing water crisis effectively.
Of course, there are many problems
to be overcome before all canals will have water boards and all secondary
canals start being managed by elected members of Farmers’ Organizations. On one
hand, we need to ensure that this reform process is not scuttled by vested interest
groups that include many influential farmers or irrigation officials who
benefit from rent-seeking practices. Let us not allow these reforms to drag on
for decades as there is a serious danger that they can either be kept
ineffective or reversed. Certain powerful sections are already declaring that
they will do so once financial constraints in the country are overcome.
On the other hand, farmers’
participation must be strengthened by providing them with an institutional
home-base to find transparent and fair ways for them to get elected. The
current system is simply flawed and tailored to bring in cronies of the old
masters. We should let elected members from the local government system form
these entities to manage their water resources. Moreover, at present, the
technical support at the secondary canals comes from the old irrigation
officials who are absolutely against such reforms. To build further
accountability even for the technical basis and to provide such assistance to
elected bodies of farmers at the secondary canal level, on-farm water
management officials from the agriculture department should be assigned to make
the new arrangements functional and sustainable.
In short, if we wish to manage the
water crisis effectively, securing good water governance is a critical factor.
If we allow the continuation of dysfunctional water governance, even having
dozens of dams will not blunt the severity of the looming water crisis. This is why people believe that the water
crisis is essentially a crisis of water governance.
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