Managing water through change and uncertainty: comparing lessons from the adaptive co-management literature to recent policy developments in England

Water management is set to become increasingly variable and unpredictable, in particular because of climate change. This paper investigates the extent to which water policy in England provides an enabling environment for ‘adaptive co-management’, which its proponents claim can achieve the dual objective of ecosystem protection and livelihood sustainability under conditions of change and uncertainty. Five policy categories are derived from a literature review, and are used to conduct a directed content analysis of seven key water policy documents. The findings reveal that although, in part, English water policy serves as an enabling environment for adaptive co-management, there is a level of discrepancy between substantive aspects of the five policy categories and water policy in England. Addressing these discrepancies will be important if English water policy is to allow for the emergence of processes, like adaptive co-management, that are capable of coping with the challenges that lie ahead

A Hidden Crisis? Findings from research into borehole failure in Ethiopia, Malawi and Uganda.

Poor functionality of rural water points continues to be a problem which plagues the sector. In this webinar we discuss some of the main results from the second phase of the UPGRO Hidden Crisis Project which has been examining the issue in Ethiopia, Uganda and Malawi. After a brief overview of the project we report the results of 18 months of detailed fieldwork undertaking a forensic analysis of 150 failing waterpoints across the 3 countries sharing lessons from what we found of the physical factors contributing to poor performance and lessons about community management

Evidence, ideology, and the policy of community management in Africa

This study examines the performance of the policy of community management for rural groundwater supply in Africa. Across the continent, policies that promote community management have dominated the rural water supply sector for decades. As a result, hundreds of thousands of village-level committees have been formed to manage community boreholes equipped with handpumps. With a significant proportion of these handpumps non-functional at any one time, increasing effort is targeted toward understanding the interacting social and physical determinants of this 'hidden crisis'. We conducted a survey of community management arrangements across six hundred sites in rural Ethiopia, Malawi, and Uganda, examining the extent to which management capacity is related to borehole functionality whilst accounting for a range of contextual variables. The capacity of water management arrangements (WMAs) was assessed according to four dimensions: finance system; affordable maintenance and repair; decision making, rules, and leadership; and external support. The survey reveals that 73.3% of WMAs have medium or high capacity. However, we found no strong relationship between the capacity of the WMA and the functionality of the borehole. Of the four management dimensions, affordable maintenance and repair was the best predictor of borehole functionality. However, the capacity of this dimension was seen to be the lowest overall, with 61.9% of sites weak or non-existent. Our results provide very limited support for the policy of community management, and we suggest that evidence alone has not accounted for its persistence over decades. After a short historical analysis, we conclude that explanation for the endurance of this model can be found in the nexus between evidence, ideology, and policy. We argue that it is this same nexus that will likely ensure the popularity of community management for some time to come, despite new ideas and evidence to the contrary

To what extent does community management ensure good functionality of groundwater supplies in rural Africa?

Within rural Africa, communal boreholes fitted with handpumps (HPBs) are likely to remain the main source of improved water supplies for decades to come. Understanding how the performance of these supplies can be improved will be central to achieving improved water security. The functionality of community HPBs relies on a range of elements which include not only groundwater resource availability, correct siting and construction of the borehole and handpump mechanism, but also equitable and enabling management arrangements. Since the 1980s – the first UN ‘Water Decade’ – Community Based Management (CBM) has been the policy prescription par excellence for operationalising participatory development in the rural water supply sector. The cornerstone of the CBM model is the creation of a local water point committee or similar community organisation, which is charged with the operation and maintenance of the borehole. Despite its popularity and endurance, there is a relative lack of evidence on how the management capacity of communities relates to the functionality of their boreholes, and a growing recognition among development practitioners and academics that CBM of rural water supply has struggled to deliver on many of its promises. Here we present the findings from a survey of six hundred communities across rural Ethiopia, Uganda and Malawi to examine the extent to which community water management capacity is related to borehole functionality. The capacity of water management arrangements (WMA) was assessed according to four dimensions: finance system; affordable maintenance and repair; decision making, rules, and leadership; and external support. HPB performance was assessed using on a nuanced definition of borehole functionality, which captures different tiers of functionality from a simple binary ‘yes/no’ working, to capturing the level of functionality performance and reliability. The findings reveal that whilst over two thirds of WMA are of medium to high capacity in communities, there is no strong relationship between the WMA capacity and the functionality of the borehole. Of the four management dimensions, affordable maintenance and repair was the best predictor of borehole functionality. However, the capacity of this dimension was seen to be lowest overall, with nearly two thirds of sites having weak or non-existent capacity in this respect. These findings provide evidence to support the growing claim that, in many instances, CBM by itself does not ensure improved functionality performance

Power-Sharing in the English Lowlands? Exploring Farmer Cooperation and Participation in Water Governance

Involving stakeholders in water governance is becoming an increasingly important topic in England. In this thesis I consider this ambition from the farming perspective, by investigating the potential for farmers to cooperate and participate in water governance. This dynamic is viewed through the conceptual lens of adaptive comanagement, an approach which its proponents claim can achieve the dual focus of ecosystem protection and livelihood sustainability under conditions of change and uncertainty. The relevance of adaptive comanagement is highlighted by the increasing complexity and uncertainty surrounding water governance in England, amongst other things because of the effects of climate change and a growing population. The research adopts an integrated methodological approach that revolves around a “politicised” version of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) Framework. Initially, three separate analyses investigate the context surrounding farming and water governance. The results of the contextual phase are incorporated into a more focused analysis, involving five farmer irrigator groups in the lowlands of eastern England. Here the intention is to explore the broader issues the research raises by investigating the potential for these groups to comanage water resources. Nine factors of success are identified, from which deeper, more abstract causal mechanisms are inferred. The relevance of the findings are discussed in relation to farming and water governance in England going forwards. Several key outcomes emerge from this research, including: 1) a theoretical and practical demonstration of the applicability of the politicised IAD Framework to studies of adaptive comanagement, 2) an understanding of the ways in which power, policy, and levels of trust influence the ability of lowland farmers to cooperate and participate in water governance, 3) specific strategies that can be used to develop comanagement arrangements between farmer groups and water managers

Worldviews and the everyday politics of community water management

This article highlights one important reason why attempts to achieve sustainable development through community management often fail – the neglect of worldviews. It addresses a gap in existing research on institutional bricolage by focussing on the core role that beliefs and rationales play in resource governance. Our research into rural water supply in Malawi and Uganda was conducted through a variety of ethnographic methods including year-long community diaries. Drawing on this, we demonstrate how worldviews shape local water management arrangements and their outcomes. We unpick three dimensions of the work that worldviews do In (1) making sense of socio-natural events and processes, (2) maintaining unequal social orders, and (3) serving as resources for institutional arrangements. The article concludes with a reflection on how our approach meaningfully furthers critical water studies, and on the challenges faced by development initiatives in operationalising such insights

Corrigendum to “Flesh and bones:Working with the grain to improve community management of water” [World Dev. 138 (2020) 105286] (World Development (2021) 138, (S0305750X20304137), (10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105286))

The authors regret that the second and third authors have mistakenly been linked with the institutional affiliation listed under ‘a’ when they should only be linked to the institutional affiliations listed under ‘b’ and ‘c’ respectively. Frances Cleaver's email address should be [email protected]. In the final paragraph of Section 1, it should read ‘In Section 3 we discuss our research design, which we argue’ and also ‘methodological’ rather than ‘methodologic’. In Section 2.1, the first line of paragraph three should read ‘In response, as early as 2006 Baumann proposed’ and in the final paragraph of Section 2.1 it should read ‘More recent iterations of an alternative approach include Grindle's (2004, 2007) concept of ‘good enough governance’’. The authors would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused

An evidence-based approach towards targeted patient education to improve bowel preparation for colonoscopy

Goals and Background: Quality of bowel preparation is an important factor influencing adenoma detection. Patient education is believed to improve the quality of bowel preparation but might be resource-intensive. We aimed to (a) identify risk factors for failed bowel preparations and (b) develop and test the efficacy of a screening tool that allows to prospectively identify and target patients at increased risk. Study: Part 1: 76 consecutive outpatients with poor bowel preparation were compared with 76 age-matched and gender-matched outpatients with good preparation from the same procedure lists. Sociodemographic and clinical data were obtained from centralized databases. Univariate analysis and multivariate logistic regression was used to identify risk factors for poor bowel preparation. Part 2: on the basis of results of part 1, a screening tool for prospectively identifying patients at high risk was developed, and targeted education tested. Results: We identified the use of opioids or other constipating agents and low socioeconomic status as risk factors for poor bowel preparation [odds ratio (OR)=2.88; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.22-6.80 and OR=2.43; 95% CI: 1.25-4.72]. Diabetes, hypothyroidism, age, and gender were found to have no effect on quality. When education was provided only to patients at increased risk, the targeted approach did not negatively affect the proportion of poor preparation (OR=6.12%; 95% CI: 4.79%-7.78% vs. OR=5.73%; 95% CI: 4.61%-7.10%). Conclusions: Poor bowel preparation is associated with specific risk factors. Identifying and specifically targeting education at patients with these risk factors appears to facilitate more efficient use of education resources in endoscopy

Influence of simethicone added to the rinse water during colonoscopies on polyp detection rates: results of an unintended cohort study

Simethicone is a common antifoaming agent that is added to endoscopic rinse solutions, but data regarding its effect on polyp detection rates is lacking. In this study, we report the effect of discontinuation of this practice on polyp detection rates.Procedure data of 4,254 consecutive colonoscopies were used. Patients underwent standard bowel preparation with polyethyleneglycol (Glycoprep®). Colonoscopies were performed utilising Olympus EVIS EXERA III, CV-190 equipment, while quality data (withdraw times, polyp detection rates, quality of bowel preparation) was assessed utilising an endoscopy reporting system (Provation®). Following an educational event that highlighted that simethicone may form deposits in the channels of endoscopes, the practice to add simethicone (InfacolR, Nice Pak) to the auxiliary channel water pump was abandoned, but endoscopists were not notified about this change. After 5 days and performing 75 colonoscopies, the change of practice was identified and addition of simethicone recommenced.The discontinuation of simethicone use reduced the polyp detection rate from 55% (95% CI 53-56) to 45% (95% CI 34-56, 1-sided, p = 0.028); the polyp detection rate returned to the pre-intervention levels of 55% (95% CI 52-58) upon resumption of normal practice.The addition of simethicone to the auxiliary water pump during colonoscopy results in a 10% increase in polyp detection rates