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66. Water Rights in Informal Economies

Full Title:

Water rights in informal rural economies in the Limpopo and Volta Basins.

Project Summary:

In the 1990s, South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Ghana were the first sub-Saharan African countries to promulgate new water laws that strengthen permit systems and stipulate innovative institution building. However, early implementation experiences and broader political developments throughout sub-Saharan Africa are driving, first, a shift from the regulatory role of government, as emphasized in the 1990s, to its developmental role, as increasingly promoted in Africa by the (inter-)national water and rural development community. Second, early implementation has shown that current permit systems are less suitable in informal rural economies where the majority of citizens use water in a self-help mode, governed by indigenous or local water rights regimes, to sustain fragile agriculture-based livelihoods. An untapped opportunity for addressing both concerns and for more effectively protecting poor rural people’s current water uses and expanding new uses for poverty alleviation and gender equity lies in indigenous and local water law. Government departments in Mozambique and South Africa (Limpopo basin) and Ghana (Volta basin) expressed their interest to IWMI and UNESCO-IHE in hosting academic stock-taking and comparison and policy dialogue along those lines in the two basins, focus of this project. Together, South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Ghana and Burkina Faso represent vital aspects of water law and institutional reform as promulgated or being drafted in the Limpopo and Volta basins and indeed elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa. This ensures generic policy relevance of findings and recommendations.

This interdisciplinary project fosters innovative dialogue among different knowledge, policy and implementation communities that used to work in parallel. In particular, it translates knowledge on indigenous water rights, which is available but has largely remained academic, into operational insights on how to build upon its strengths while overcoming weaknesses. The often ignored linkages between water and land rights are examined in-depth. Lessons from more advanced debates in Latin America and South Asia are drawn upon.

The project starts by jointly developing a generic conceptual framework (‘learning wheel’) that synthesizes existing knowledge on the interface between indigenous and local law and formal law and identifies critical knowledge gaps. The three national research and policy teams refine this into country- and basin-specific frameworks. This guides the selection of further reviews and empirical case studies from three angles: first, synthesizing strengths and weaknesses of indigenous and local water and land rights; second, identifying policy, legal and investment options for inclusive allocation of project rights to newly available water resources under local participatory infrastructure development and, third, identifying legal and institutional options for national statutory water rights that align well with government’s developmental roles, protect poor people’s current water uses and stimulate expansion of their water uses, even in closing basins where a distributive water reform is needed to re-allocate water from the ‘haves’ to the ‘have-nots’. Findings are disseminated in the Limpopo and Volta basins, sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere through the networks of project partners IWMI, IHE-Unesco, WaterNet, Water Research Commission of South Africa, PLAAS, and Challenge Program on Water and Food and other African and global stakeholders.

Project Proposal:

Technical Submission (XLS 156Kb)
Annex A: CVs
Annex B: Bibliography (PDF 77Kb)
Annex C: Objective Tree (PDF 49Kb)
Annex D: Gantt Chart (XLS 25Kb)
Annex E: Project Team (PDF 100Kb)
Annex F: Stakeholders and Beneficiaries (PDF 83Kb)
Annex G: Environmental Impact (PDF 48Kb)