По-русски  

Home / ToolBox / A1.2 Policies with relation to water resources

A1.2 Policies with relation to water resources

Characteristics

Governments, at both the national and local level, develop policies, plans and programmes of action which directly or indirectly affect water resources management. These include policies and plans for land use (particularly at the local level), environmental protection and conservation, economic development (in such areas as energy, agricultural, industrial developments), and trade. In most countries, water is dealt with by many ministries, for example, agriculture, transport and navigation, power, industry and environment, but there may be little co-ordination between them, and their focus is likely to be more on development type issues, as suggested above, than on water resource management.

It is therefore important to recognise the direct impact of non-water policies on water use and management. Tools for co-ordinating policies and ensuring that water implications are taken into account (and that other sectoral interests are recognised in water policies) include the establishment of institutional structures (see B1), such as:

• Inter-ministerial co-ordinating bodies (e.g. the Office of the President);
• Apex bodies for water resources;
• Catchment co-ordination bodies;
• Local co-ordinating teams.

To succeed, cross-sectoral mechanisms for co-ordination need to be driven by strong political champions, committed senior bureaucrats and internal financial and administrative support. The mechanisms should be set up at the level at which the policy is formulated.

Cross-sectoral understanding and commitment is difficult to achieve, but many tools can be used to support the process, including assessment of water resources and needs (C1), and planning processes where recognition of other sectoral needs and priorities are made explicit (C2). The legal framework itself can set out procedures for working with other economic and social activities.

Lessons learned

Developing processes to introduce an integrated approach with non-water sectors can be complicated and costly, exacerbated by politics and widely differing vested interests. Although generalisations are difficult, experience suggests the following should be considered:

• The participation of different stakeholders often clarifies the issues, but an overall agreement among all parties may be difficult to achieve. Government then has a role as a policy maker, but with full knowledge of stakeholders’ positions and the implications for water management;
• Tools such as GIS and shared vision modelling (C5.2) can provide an effective interface between regional land use change (e.g. deforestation of tropical forests, urban expansion into rural areas), watershed management, and development proposals and support;
• Effective cross-sectoral relations are particularly hard to achieve where strong vertical lines of command between local, provincial and state, and national government restrict lateral interchange and cause bureaucratic rigidities. Innovative participatory and awareness raising tools can be of use here;
• Some problems are simply intractable – where there are clear winners and losers it severely limits the scope for painless co-ordination, giving rise to a need for conflict resolution (C5);
• Where decisions are based on good cost and benefit data, trade-off decisions are more transparent.

CAWater-Info / Knowledge Base /