The birth and spread of IWRM – A case study of global policy diffusion and translation

Jeremy Allouche
Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK; j.allouche@ids.ac.uk

ABSTRACT: How did the idea of IWRM emerge at the global level? Why has IWRM become so popular and so resilient, at least in discourse and policy? What has caused IWRM policies to diffuse across time and space? The principal goal of this article is to identify a set of concepts and mechanisms to study the global diffusion and translation of IWRM through coercion, cooperation, or learning from the ground. The article will also highlight the extent to which this global diffusion was contested and translated into different meanings in terms of policy orientation. Overall, IWRM was a mindset of a particular period where the water policy paradigm was evolving in the same direction as sustainable development and other related paradigms in a post-Rio moment. There were no clear alternatives at the time but now IWRM is being questioned. This IWRM fatigue is leading to other framings and discourses around the water-food-energy nexus and the green economy.

KEYWORDS: IWRM, water, policy process, global diffusion, global translation

The flow of IWRM in SADC: The role of regional dynamics, advocacy networks and external actors

Synne Movik
Norsk Institutt for Vannforskning (NIVA), Oslo; synne.movik@niva.no

Lyla Mehta
Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, Sussex, UK; and Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway; l.mehta@ids.ac.uk

Emmanuel Manzungu
University of Zimbabwe, Department of Soil Science and Agricultural Engineering, Harare, Zimbabwe; emmanuelmanzungu@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: This article explores the entry and spread of IWRM in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. It traces how the idea of IWRM was promoted and sustained throughout the region by mapping key events, actors and networks that were involved in promoting the approach. It highlights the importance of regional networks in promoting IWRM and shows how regional dynamics, playing out at the interface between the global and local levels, influenced the adoption/adaptation and spread of IWRM. The article finds that the idea of IWRM 'hit the ground running' in SADC due to several contributing factors. These include: historical political connections between the member countries; historically rooted well-established channels and connections with bilateral and multilateral donors; the success of networks such as the Global Water Partnership and WaterNet whose mandate was to promote the concept; and the fact that two-thirds of the region’s population live in transboundary basins with IWRM providing a suitable hook for transboundary cooperation, often inspired by European models. The article further argues that IWRM thrived because of strong donor agendas that were adapted by key SADC actors to suit strategic interests. It thus provided a platform for complex politically charged negotiations to reconcile apparently divergent goals such as infrastructure vs management and regional vs national interests. The practice of IWRM in the region is very much shaped by a conflation of regional, national and donor interests and has now acquired a life of its own, despite changing donor priorities.

KEYWORDS: IWRM, regionalisation, regionalism, SADC, southern Africa

IWRM Avant la Lettre? Four key episodes in the policy articulation of IWRM in downstream Mozambique

Rossella Alba
Governance and Sustainability Lab, Trier University, Trier, Germany; alba@uni-trier.de

Alex Bolding
Water Resources Management group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands; alex.bolding@wur.nl

ABSTRACT: The first substantive piece of water legislation ever adopted in Mozambique, the Lei de Águas of 1991, was crafted before IWRM was endorsed as the newly emerging global consensus on water governance. Yet, the Lei de Águas already incorporated the river basin concept and its decentralised water management, making Mozambique a case of IWRM 'avant la lettre'. In this paper, we reconstruct the drivers behind four key policy episodes that shaped the travel of IWRM to Mozambique, viz. the Lei de Águas 1991, the SADC Water Protocol, the National Water Policy 1995, and the 2007 national reforms and regulations, drawing from the experiences of two Mozambican river basins, the Limpopo and the Pungwe. In terms of process, we observe that domestic concerns, a small Mozambican water policy elite nurtured by international donors, and the agenda of financial institutions highly shaped the articulation of IWRM. In terms of outcomes, several contradictions emerge: i.e. centralised State management seems to have become further entrenched, stakeholders have virtually no say in water matters and the most powerful and wealthy stakeholders use payments to secure water cheaply at the expense of unregistered smallholder users who depend for their livelihoods on primary water.

KEYWORDS: IWRM, policy articulation, elite, stakeholder participation, Mozambique

The politics of water payments and stakeholder participation in the Limpopo River Basin, Mozambique

Rossella Alba
Governance and Sustainability Lab, Trier University, Trier, Germany; alba@uni-trier.de

Alex Bolding
Water Resources Management group, Wageningen University, The Netherlands; alex.bolding@wur.nl

Raphaëlle Ducrot
CIRAD, Département Environnement et Sociétés, UMR G-EAU, Montpellier, France; and IWEGA, Faculdade de Agronomia e Engenharia Florestal, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Maputo, Mozambique; raphaele.ducrot@cirad.fr

ABSTRACT: Drawing from the experience of the Limpopo River Basin in Mozambique, the paper analyses the articulation of a water rights framework in the context of decentralised river basin governance and IWRM-inspired reforms. The nexus between financial autonomy, service provision, stakeholder participation and the resultant allocation of water within the river basin is explored by scrutinising the newly instituted system of water permits and payments. Three cases are examined: (1) parastatal agencies managing large perimeters of irrigated land; (2) large-scale commercial companies irrigating land; and (3) so-called focal points representing groups of smallholder irrigators. The three presented cases show that structural challenges, local geographies and power relations shape the final outcome of water reforms in relation to decentralised river basin management, stakeholdersʼ participation and accountability. Rather than improving accountability to users and securing the financial basis for sustainable infrastructure operation and maintenance, the permit system in place reinforces existing inequalities.

KEYWORDS: IWRM, policy articulation, elite, water permits, stakeholder participation, Mozambique

The 'trickle down' of IWRM: A case study of local-level realities in the Inkomati Water Management Area, South Africa

Kristi Denby
Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway; kristidenby@gmail.com

Synne Movik
Norsk institutt for vannforskning (NIVA), Oslo; synne.movik@niva.no

Lyla Mehta
Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, Sussex, UK; and Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway; l.mehta@ids.ac.uk

Barbara van Koppen
International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Southern Africa Regional Programme, South Africa; b.vankoppen@cgiar.org

ABSTRACT: The historical legacy in South Africa of apartheid and the resulting discriminatory policies and power imbalances are critical to understanding how water is managed and allocated, and how people participate in designated water governance structures. The progressive post-apartheid National Water Act (NWA) is the principal legal instrument related to water governance which has broadly embraced the principles of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). This translation of IWRM into the South African context and, in particular, the integration of institutions related to land and water have faced many challenges due to the political nature of water and land reforms, and the tendency of governmental departments to work in silos. The paper explores the dynamics surrounding the implementation of IWRM in the Inkomati Water Management Area, and the degree of integration between the parallel land and water reform processes. It also looks at what these reforms mean to black farmers’ access to water for their sugar cane crops at the regional (basin) and local levels. The empirical material highlights the discrepancies between a progressive IWRM-influenced policy on paper and the actual realities on the ground. The paper argues that the decentralisation and integration aspects of IWRM in South Africa have somewhat failed to take off in the country and what 'integrated' actually entails is unclear. Furthermore, efforts to implement the NWA and IWRM in South Africa have been fraught with challenges in practice, because the progressive policy did not fully recognise the complex historical context, and the underlying inequalities in knowledge, power and resource access.

KEYWORDS: Land and water reform, IWRM, equity, water access, Inkomati, South Africa

Emergence, interpretations and translations of IWRM in South Africa

Synne Movik
Norsk Institutt for Vannforskning (NIVA), Oslo; synne.movik@niva.no

Lyla Mehta
Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, Sussex, UK; and Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway; l.mehta@ids.ac.uk

Barbara van Koppen
International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Southern Africa Regional Programme, South Africa; b.vankoppen@cgiar.org

Kristi Denby
Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway; kristidenby@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: South Africa is often regarded to be at the forefront of water reform, based on Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) ideas. This paper explores how the idea of IWRM emerged in South Africa, its key debates and interpretations and how it has been translated. It maps out the history, main events, key people, and implementation efforts through a combination of reviews of available documents and in-depth semi-structured interviews with key actors. While South Africa sought to draw on experiences from abroad when drawing up its new legislation towards the end of the 1990s, the seeds of IWRM were already present since the 1970s. What emerges is a picture of multiple efforts to get IWRM to 'work' in the South African context, but these efforts failed to take sufficient account of the South African history of deep structural inequalities, the legacy of the hydraulic mission, and the slowness of water reallocation to redress past injustices. The emphasis on institutional structures being aligned with hydrological boundaries has formed a major part of how IWRM has been interpreted and conceptualised, and it has turned out to become a protracted power struggle reflecting the tensions between centralised and decentralised management.

KEYWORDS: IWRM, interpretations, institutions, historical legacies, South Africa

The complex politics of water and power in Zimbabwe: IWRM in the Catchment Councils of Manyame, Mazowe and Sanyati (1993-2001)

Bill Derman
Norwegian University of the Life Sciences, Department of International Environment and Development Studies, Aas, Norway; bill.derman@nmbu.no

Emmanuel Manzungu
University of Zimbabwe, Department of Soil Science and Agricultural Engineering, Harare, Zimbabwe; emmanuelmanzungu@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: In the mid-nineties Zimbabwe formed participatory institutions known as catchment and sub-catchment councils based on river basins to govern and manage its waters. These councils were initially funded by a range of donors anticipating that they could become self-funding over time through the sale of water. In this article, we explore the origins of three of the councils and the political context in which they functioned. The internal politics were shaped by the commercial farming elites who sought to control the councils with a 'defensive strategy' to keep control over water. However, external national political processes limited the possibilities for continued elite control while simultaneously limiting water reform. Despite significant efforts to alter the waterscape, fast track land reform which began in 2000 led to the undermining of the first phases of IWRM and water reform and to the privileging of land over water. The economic foundations for funding the new participatory institutions were lost through the withdrawal of donors, the loss of large-scale farmers able to pay for water and the economic and political crises that characterised the period from 2000 to 2010.

KEYWORDS: IWRM, power, water reform, catchment councils, Zimbabwe

Surges and ebbs: National politics and international influence in the formulation and implementation of IWRM in Zimbabwe

Emmanuel Manzungu
University of Zimbabwe, Department of Soil Science and Agricultural Engineering, Harare, Zimbabwe; emmanuelmanzungu@gmail.com

Bill Derman
Norwegian University of the Life Sciences, Department of International Environment and Development Studies, Aas, Norway; bill.derman@nmbu.no

ABSTRACT: In the 1990s, the Government of Zimbabwe undertook water reforms to redress racially defined inequitable access to agricultural water. This paper analyses how a water reform process, seemingly informed by a clear political economy objective, was hijacked by efforts directed at implementing Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). It uses the notion of policy articulation to analyse why and how IWRM 'travelled' to and in Zimbabwe and with what outcomes. The paper shows that attempts at introducing and implementing IWRM in Zimbabwe have had a chequered history. The efforts of Zimbabwe in pioneering implementation of IWRM in southern Africa, have subsequently waned, and prospects for resurrecting IWRM in its original form are low. Introduced in the 1990s when Western donors jumped on the bandwagon of the liberal economic agenda inspired by the IMF/World Bank, it declined between 2000 and 2009 due to a combination of poor economic performance, national-level politics and international isolation. In 2011 IWRM was reintroduced as the country re-engaged with the international community. The re-emergence of IWRM, however, seems to be largely rhetorical as the focus is now on fixing a crisis-ridden water sector, with a new political dispensation adding another layer of complexity. The paper concludes that the development of IWRM in Zimbabwe mirrors broader national-level socio-political processes and their complex relationship with the international community.

KEYWORDS: Water reform, IWRM, policy (dis)articulation, Zimbabwe

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