Water rights in informal economies in the Limpopo and Volta basins

Most African countries underwent water legislation reform since the 1990s, through which existing plural legal systems were changed into nation-wide permit systems, in which the state acts as custodian of the nation’s water resources. Although globally heralded as the best way to manage water resources within the broader context of Integrated Water Resource Management, this project examines the problematic implications of the new laws for the majority of the rural and peri-urban poor. Since time immemorial, their water access has been largely governed by self-supply and informal arrangements that have allowed them to survive in often harsh ecological conditions. Water law reform basically dispossesses them from their current and future claims to water, unless they adopt an administrative water rights system that also historically has favored administration-proficient foreign investments. As the new laws have hardly been implemented as yet for various reasons that are further explored in this research, this research provides a timely analysis of the processes at stake and identifies alternative legal tools that recognizes informal water arrangements thereby protecting and encouraging small-scale water users to expand their water use. The generic findings from Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mozambique, and South Africa have generic validity throughout Sub-Saharan Africa

People, livelihoods and Multiple-Use Water Services (MUS)

The CPWF’s MUS team includes researchers and implementers from the domestic and productive water sub-sectors. Partners are the International Water Management Institute, the International Water and Sanitation Centre, International Development Enterprises, and 18 national and regional farmer networks, NGOs, government agencies, and universities in eight countries in five river basins: the Andes System (Bolivia and Colombia), Indus-Ganges (India and Nepal), Limpopo (South Africa and Zimbabwe), Mekong (Thailand), and Nile basins (Ethiopia). Winrock International led an economic analysis of CP-MUS cases and other case studies. CPWF MUS piloted the MUS approach in 25 study areas

A hybrid approach to decolonize formal water law in Africa

In recent decades, many countries in sub-Saharan Africa have pursued national water permit systems, derived from the colonial era and reinforced by “global best practice.” These systems have proved logistically impossible to manage and have worsened inequality in water access. A new study conducted by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and Pegasys Institute, with support from the UK government, traces the origins of these systems, and describes their implementation and consequences for rural smallholders in five countries – Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe. The authors of this report propose a hybrid water use rights system to decolonize Africa’s water law, lighten the administrative burden on the state and make legal access to water more equitable. This would strengthen smallholder irrigation, which is vital for boosting Africa’s food production and making it more resilient in the face of worsening drought

The multiple-use water services (MUS) project

The CPWF-supported project ‘Models for implementing multiple-use water supply systems for enhanced land and water productivity, rural livelihoods and gender equity’ (‘CPWF-MUS’) innovated, tested, and documented homestead-scale and communityscale models for Multiple Use water Services in 30 rural and peri-urban sites in 8 countries: the Andes (Bolivia and Colombia), Indus-Ganges (India, Nepal), Limpopo (South Africa and Zimbabwe), Mekong (Thailand) and Nile (Ethiopia). Learning alliances for scaling up and out of results were forged in each country, encompassing a total of 150 water user groups, CBOs, (I)NGOs, domestic sub-sector and productive sub-sector agencies, local government, private service providers, rural development agencies and financers, and knowledge centers. The resulting institutional change at intermediate and national level, together with awareness raising about the MUS models at global level, contributed significantly to a more supportive environment for reaching all water users with the multiple-use water services they need and, thus, using water most effectively to achieve all MDG

A Framework for Targeting Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Interventions in Pastoralist Populations in the Afar Region of Ethiopia

Globally, many populations face structural and environmental barriers to access safe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services. Among these populations are many of the 200 million pastoralists whose livelihood patterns and extreme environmental settings challenge conventional WASH programming approaches. In this paper, we studied the Afar pastoralists in Ethiopia to identify WASH interventions that can mostly alleviate public health risks, within the population's structural and environmental living constraints. Surveys were carried out with 148 individuals and observational assessments made in 12 households as part of a Pastoralist Community WASH Risk Assessment. The results show that low levels of access to infrastructure are further compounded by risky behaviours related to water containment, storage and transportation. Additional behavioural risk factors were identified related to sanitation, hygiene and animal husbandry. The Pastoralist Community WASH Risk Assessment visually interprets the seriousness of the risks against the difficulty of addressing the problem. The assessment recommends interventions on household behaviours, environmental cleanliness, water storage, treatment and hand hygiene via small-scale educational interventions. The framework provides an approach for assessing risks in other marginal populations that are poorly understood and served through conventional approaches

Collaborative effort to operationalize the gender transformative approach in the Barotse Floodplain

Agricultural interventions that aim at alleviating rural poverty have important gender implications. The paper explores a Gender Transformative Approach recognizing that fishing, post- harvest processing, and trading are all gendered activities. On the Barotse Floodplain (Zambia) women are relegated to perform tasks within less profitable nodes of the fish value chain. The assessment of ecosystem services in a select number of Aquatic Agricultural Systems (AAS) focal communities included women’s and men’s perspectives and diverse provisioning, regulating and cultural ecosystem services.Cultivate Africa’s Future Fund (CULTIAF

Guidelines for community-led multiple use water services: evidence from rural South Africa

The African Water Facility, together with the Water Research Commission, South Africa, as its implementing agent, supported the demonstration project Operationalizing community-led Multiple Use water Services (MUS) in South Africa. As knowledge broker and research partner in this project, the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) analyzed processes and impacts at the local level, where the nongovernmental organization Tsogang Water and Sanitation demonstrated community-led MUS in six diverse rural communities in two of the poorest districts of South Africa, Sekhukhune and Vhembe districts - Ga Mokgotho, Ga Moela and Phiring in the Sekhukhune District Municipality, and Tshakhuma, Khalavha and Ha Gumbu in Vhembe District Municipality. In conventional water infrastructure projects, external state or non-state agencies plan, diagnose, design and prioritize solutions, mobilize funding, and implement the procurement of materials, recruitment of workers and construction. However, this MUS project facilitated decision-making by communities, and provided technical and institutional advice and capacity development. Based on IWMI’s evidence, tools and manuals, the project team organized learning alliances and policy dialogues from municipal to national level on the replication of community-led MUS by water services authorities; government departments of water, agriculture, and others; employment generation programs; climate and disaster management; and corporate social responsibility initiatives. This working paper synthesizes the lessons learned about the six steps of the community-led MUS process in all six communities. The step-wise process appeared to be welcome and effective across the board. The duration of the process and the costs of facilitation, technical and institutional capacity development, and engineering advice and quality control were comparable to conventional approaches. However, the respective responsibilities of the government and communities, also in longer-term co-management arrangements, depended on the type of infrastructure. Some communities were supported to improve their communal self supply systems. In other communities, the process enabled an extension of the reticulation of borehole systems owned, operated and maintained by municipalities. Almost all households used water supplies at homesteads for multiple purposes, underscoring synergies in cross-sectoral collaboration between the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and irrigation sectors

Process and benefits of community-led multiple use water services: comparing two communities in South Africa

The African Water Facility, together with the Water Research Commission, South Africa, as its implementing agent, supported the demonstration project Operationalizing community-led Multiple Use water Services (MUS) in South Africa. As knowledge broker and research partner in this project, the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) analyzed processes and impacts at the local level, where the nongovernmental organization Tsogang Water and Sanitation demonstrated community-led MUS in six diverse rural communities in two of the poorest districts of South Africa, Sekhukhune and Vhembe districts - Ga Mokgotho, Ga Moela and Phiring in the Sekhukhune District Municipality, and Tshakhuma, Khalavha and Ha Gumbu in Vhembe District Municipality. In conventional water infrastructure projects, external state and non-state agencies plan, diagnose, design and prioritize solutions, mobilize funding, and implement the procurement of materials, recruitment of workers and construction. However, this MUS project facilitated decision-making by communities, and provided technical and institutional advice and capacity development. Based on IWMI’s evidence, tools and manuals, the project team organized learning alliances and policy dialogues from municipal to national level on the replication of community-led MUS by water services authorities; government departments of water, agriculture, and others; employment generation programs; climate and disaster management; and corporate social responsibility initiatives. This working paper reports on the local findings of Ga Mokgotho and Ga Moela villages, which had completed construction works. The paper presents an in-depth analysis from the preproject situation to each of the steps of the participatory process, and highlights the resulting benefits of more water, more reliable and sustainable supplies, and multiple benefits, including a 60% and 76% increase in the value of irrigated produce in Ga Mokgotho and Ga Moela, respectively. Women were the sole irrigation manager in 68% and 60% of the households in Ga Mokgotho and Ga Moela, respectively. The user satisfaction survey highlighted communities’ unanimous preference of the participatory process, capacity development and ownership compared to conventional approaches

A gender performance indicator for irrigation: concepts, tools and applications

Although gender issues are today a priority on the agendas of irrigation policy makers, interventionists, farm leaders and researchers, there is still a considerable gap between positive intentions and concrete action. An important but hitherto ignored reason for this is the lack of adequate generic concepts and tools that are policy-relevant and can accommodate the vast variation in irrigation contexts worldwide. The Gender Performance Indicator for Irrigation (GPII) aims to fill this gap. In any particular scheme, this tool diagnoses the gendered organization of farming and gender-based inclusion or exclusion in irrigation institutions. It informs irrigation agencies what they themselves can do for effective change-if necessary. The tool also identifies gender issues beyond a strict mandate of irrigation water provision. The Indicator was applied and tested in nine case studies in Africa and Asia. The research report presents the underlying concepts, methodological guidelines and selected applications of the GPII