The promise and perils of water reforms: perspectives from Northern Ghana

"The Ghanaian government, while aiming at the privatisation of the country’s drinking water resources, initiated a wide reaching reform of the water sector in 1996. The country’s water resources are now officially under the control of the Water Resources Commission (WRC), which propagates integrated water resource management (IWRM), and has the task of managing the country’s water resources efficiently, sustainably and equitably. Taking an irrigation scheme in Northern Ghana as an example, this article shows formal and informal constraints on the implementation of the water reform at the local level. Given the local political climate of legal pluralism and weak governance, the question arises as to how the WRC, with slender resources, is to implement resource management locally. As the WRC has also failed to influence important water sector decisions on the national level, there is the danger that powerful local and national interest groups use the reforms to legitimize their vested interest, thereby excluding others and ignoring environmental concerns." (author's abstract)"Im Jahr 1996 hat die ghanaische Regierung im Zuge von Privatisierungsvorhaben im Trinkwasserbereich eine weitgehende Wassersektorreform eingeleitet. Die Wasserressourcen des Landes unterstehen nun offiziell der Kontrolle der Water Resources Commission (WRC), die ein integriertes Wasserressourcenmanagement (IWRM) propagiert und für eine effiziente, nachhaltige und gerechte Wassernutzung sorgen soll. Am Beispiel eines Bewässerungsgebietes in Nordghana wird gezeigt, welche Schwierigkeiten bei der lokalen Umsetzung der Wasserreform zu erwarten sind. Angesichts der lokalen politischen Verhältnisse, die durch Rechtspluralismus und schwache Regierungsstrukturen gekennzeichnet sind, stellt sich die Frage, wie die mit nur geringen Ressourcen ausgestattete WRC ihre Reformpläne lokal umsetzen kann. Da die neue Behörde auch auf nationaler Ebene nicht in der Lage ist, wichtige Entscheidungen im Wassersektor zu beeinflussen, besteht die Gefahr, dass die Reform von sowohl lokalen als auch nationalen einflussreichen Interessengruppen dazu genutzt wird, die Durchsetzung von Partikularinteressen zu legitimieren und zugleich andere von der Nutzung der Wasserressourcen auszuschließen sowie ökologische Belange zu vernachlässigen." (Autorenreferat

Social Safety Nets for Food and Nutritional Security in India

This paper brings together existing literature on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNRGEA) and the Public Distribution System (PDS) in India, offering a narrative review of the evidence on impacts on food security, health and nutrition of beneficiaries. Both programs operate on a large scale and have the capacity to impact the factors leading to undernutrition. It is evident that despite the deficiencies in implementation, both the MGNREGA and the PDS are inclusive and reach the poor and the marginalized who are likely to also experience greater undernutrition and poor health. Data challenges have however prevented researchers from conducting studies that assess the ultimate impact of these two large-scale programs on health and nutrition. The evidence that exists suggests largely positive impacts indicating a clear potential to make these programs more nutrition sensitive not just by incorporating elements that would explicitly address nutritional concerns but also by directing specific attention to innovations that strengthen critical complementarities and synergies that exist between the two programs