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dam-l NGO Position paper world water forum/LS
Dear friends:
Please find to follow and attached the final version of the NGO
Vision cum executive summary " Towards People Oriented River
Basin Management' for the World Water Forum. This document
benefitted from comments from IRN, Econet and other groups.
The full version of the BothEnds paper is available in French and Spanish
on the internet www.bothends.org/agenda/watercont.html
- BothEnds
People Oriented River Basin Management:
An NGO Vision
Executive Summary
Serious degradation of river ecosystems directly undermines the
livelihoods of a majority of rural households and can spell
disaster for urban areas. The World Water Vision process has
now created a Vision and Framework for Action that could
guide water policy for decades to come.
NGOs working on river and water issues and with communities
affected by large scale river development schemes have serious
concerns about the Vision process, its products and the
priorities detailed in the official documents, and have therefore
come up with an alternative Vision.
The NGO Vision is based on the premise that access to and
control over natural resources offers the best guarantee for the
well-being and survival of a vast majority of people. Women and
men with sufficient access to natural resources to meet their
basic needs generally do not consider themselves poor.
Currently, large groups of people, such as the landless,
smallholders, urban poor and indigenous people , suffer
disproportionately from the large scale distortion and
degradation of river basins. The NGO Vision urges decision
makers to give absolute priority to maintaining people's
'sustainable livelihoods' and the preservation of the integrity of
all water-dependent ecosystems.
The NGO Vision calls for the incorporation of gender
considerations in all aspects of water management. Due to
different gender roles, women and men are affected differently
by the same policies. Irrespective of their social status, women
tend to be excluded from decision making in water management,
thereby denying their role as major water users and managers.
The NGO Vision stresses the need to address women's
involvement explicitly, recognising that their social and economic
activities are of a significantly different character than men's.
"Towards people oriented river basin management" questions
the prevailing assumptions and principles that determine river
basin management today, and reveals how they are the direct
causes for todayís unsustainable use of river basin ecosystems,
in the South as well as the North.
The NGO Vision questions three predominant assumptions,
which drive today's river basin management as well as the
Vision and Framework for Action documents:
The notion that 'development' is to be achieved solely
through economic growth. Natural resources, such as river
ecosystems, are considered as mere commodities. The fact
that the majority of rural people in developing countries and
transition countries -especially women- are not in a position
to satisfy their basic needs through the market place, is
consistently denied. These people directly depend on
common property resources within the river basin: grazing
lands, fisheries, forests and water bodies.
It should be stressed that markets principles cannot be
applied indiscriminately to all challenges of river basin
management.
The principle of 'eminent domain', by which the state has a
right to override local objections and expropriate private or
communal property in the name of the 'national interest'. In
daily practice, when exercising this right there is a strong bias
towards centralised and capital intensive structures which
transfer water to urban areas and export-oriented industries.
In fact, local decisions are frequently overruled to satisfy the
demands of a small political and economic elite. The
implementation of these decisions tends to cause extreme
damage to a country's natural resources, which affects rural
and urban marginalised groups disproportionately.
Opportunity for effective participation by local stakeholders
and women is lacking. Although the need for participation is
recognised by the authors of the official Vision and
Framework for Action, there is still a huge void of political
commitment to give all stakeholders an equal chance to
participate in planning, implementation, monitoring and
evaluation. Far too often, planners and decision makers
abuse the term 'participation' to legitimise blueprint
institutional arrangement and infrastructure developments.
The NGO Vision presents a range of actions to counteract the
negative impacts of today's water management and to create the
basis for water management trends that truly supports peopleís
livelihoods. These actions provide an answer to what should be
considered one of the key questions of the entire Vision process
and the ensuing Framework for Action: 'How can we enable
people to obtain adequate and equitable supplies of water and
energy far into the future, reduce the destructiveness of floods
(and droughts), and protect the watersheds from
degradation?'
The NGO Vision highlights the following key actions:
A new goal for river basin management
The primary goal of river basin management should be to
enable rivers and watersheds to perform their many vital
ecological functions and to benefit people who depend on
them for the maintenance of their livelihoods. This calls for
governments, donors and multilateral organisations to
seriously analyse the social and environmental impacts of
unchecked, politically motivated, large scale economic
activities on river basins.
Full participation in decision making
Participation can no longer be limited to the current shallow
levels, which do not allow for effective participation of
women and politically or economically marginalised groups in
society. In order to achieve genuine stakeholder participation
governments, donors and multilateral organisations should be
prepared to even out the balance of power, disempowering
dominant groups and bringing the marginalised fully into the
process.
Existing knowledge of local and indigenous people and
women should be considered at the outset of the decision
making process. Small scale management approaches -often
based on locally developed technologies- should be seriously
considered as viable alternatives for large scale infrastructure
projects and technology driven management approaches.
To guide the decision-making process, a set of alternative
indicators of 'development' should be developed and
implemented in collaboration with all stakeholders.
Land and water rights
Legal establishment of user and property rights of local
communities, indigenous peoples and the landless is a
precondition to genuine participatory decision making
processes and should be established as a pre-requisite of any
intervention in river basin ecosystems.
Whereaspolitical recognition and security of customary right
systems is vital, the empowerment of women and the
promotion of gender equality, requires progressive legal
reforms that allows women to improve their overall position.
Institutions and capacity building
Efforts to protect the interests of local people and their
environment should always start with a great investment of
time and commitment to foster unity and a common direction
within the community, to strengthen or build local institutions
and to secure legal standing and political commitment
towards their recognition.
It is crucial to pay more attention to the degree of gender-
sensitivity of existing and newly created institutions, and the
adequate representation of women therein.
Governments, donor agencies and NGOs need to support
the building of open, accountable and representative
institutions
Ecosystem approach
It is urgent to create the appropriate framework for
integrated ecosystem management. In relation to freshwater
ecosystems, this implies a focus on river basins. This
framework has to allow for the recognition and conservation
of the multiple functions of watersheds, and thus for
integrated land and water management.
The planning process should consider the point of origin
located in the upper most reaches of the river basin as a
starting point, and follow the watershed downwards along the
minor and the major tributaries, and continue along the main
stream till the lower reaches of the estuary.
Technology and planning
It is essential to offer official support for local and indigenous
knowledge, to start more systematic inventories and analysis
of existing water management practices and to gain insight
into the wealth of traditional and innovative land and water
resources management approaches.
Existingbottom-up initiatives should be taken seriously and
compared to the blue-print approaches of the -often top-
down- plans and policies of River Basin Authorities.
Rehabilitation/ restoration
The restoration of degraded watersheds and the
implementation of strict controls on destructive actions -
logging, industrial pollution, canalisation, large scale damming,
etc.- and a halt to government and multilateral support for
these activities, should become a major element of future
management plans and policies.
Mechanismsof flexible funding, research and other forms of
encouragement need to be directed at traditional and modern
agricultural and land restoration techniques, giving first
priority to strengthening of the position of marginalised
groups.
Gender as a means and an end
To ensure equitable planning processes, there needs to be a
clear understanding of women's roles on the household,
village, watersheds and river basin levels. Better
understanding of gender roles will give better information
about water uses, and will enhance the effectiveness of
institutions for water management. Only by knowing country
and region specific gender issues will it be possible to design
decision making and management processes which truly
accommodate women.
A set of indicators, which reflect the degree in which the well
being and socio-economic position of women are affected
should be developed and used as key indicators to actual
decision making.
end
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Lori Pottinger, Director, Southern Africa Program,
and Editor, World Rivers Review
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, California 94703, USA
Tel. (510) 848 1155 Fax (510) 848 1008
http://www.irn.org
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