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Towards voluntary guidelines for people-centred land-water tenure. The untapped synergies between
rights-based land and water governance
Barbara van Koppen
International Water
Management Institute
Framing the land-water nexus
•What justifies the emphasis on coordination?
•What is ‘coordinated governance’?
•What are risks or missed opportunities when coordination is lacking?
•What are gains of better coordination?
This presentation:
•What can the water constituencies learn from, and offer to the land constituencies?
What is coordinated governance? People-centred
•People’s perspectives are holistic: • integrated natural resources (land, water resources,
water infrastructure, other) • integrated (‘indivisible’) human wellbeing
•Especially for vulnerable women and men in rural and peri-urban areas with diversified livelihoods who directly depend on natural resources
•People-centred: The ‘bottom-up pull’ for coordinated and demand-driven public governance support
What is coordinated governance? Issue-based; framing the issues
Continuing issues, for example
• Irrigation infrastructure services for poverty reduction and gender equality (public/public-private; with/without land reform; etc.)
New issues, for example:
•Growing competition and growing inequalities in access to water resources (e.g., land-/water ‘grabs’)
•Disproportionate claims by the ‘haves’ (Gini SA= 0.99)
• ‘Core minimum’ access to water resources for ‘small-scale’ users for basic health and wealth (public and self-supply – informal/local/indigenous)
What can water constituencies learn from the land constituencies?
Why does water remain invisible?
Land constituencies, unlike water constituencies, focus on:
1. People, including the marginalized
2. Customary rights
3. Global rights-based dialogue
1. People, including the marginalized?
Stuck in monolithic single-use ‘sectors’
•Domestic uses: ‘water for people’: rights-based priority, but very narrow; no intra-sectoral differentiation
•Productive uses: abstract aggregates; no intra-sectoral differentiation; stereotyping e.g., gender, commercial
•Competition ‘between sectors’ •mystifies the negotiation between people (multiple
water needs) investing in (multi-purpose) infrastructure for access to (multiple) water resources •depoliticizes power differences
2. Customary rights ?
Dominant statutory water law: the permit system
•vests ownership of water resources in the state
•dispossesses customary/informal water rights
•accepted in Africa; contested in Latin America; adjusted in Asia (e.g., Nepal, China)
•Africa: continuing colonial dispossession?
Continuing colonial dispossession?
•Roman law : vesting ownership in emperor, dispossessing conquered peoples
•Colonization Latin America and most of Africa: vesting ownership in European rulers
• Independence: replacing ‘European’ by ‘the president’
• IWRM-era: revitalizing permits, plus in Africa: taxation
Contemporary permit systems: a. as people’s entitlements (long-term)
•Reinforce formal dispossession of small-scale users
•Favour large-scale investors: •De facto administration-proficiency; excludes
women; corruption prone•De jure discrimination of customary land title holders
when formal land titles are a permit condition•Taxation: perverse incentives; rent-seeking; over-
allocation; ‘those who can pay are entitled to water’; corruption prone
Allow the state to regulate ‘in the public interest’, by prohibiting new water uptake or enforcing conditions:•Putting caps on volumes•Regulating waste discharge•Ensuring water re-allocation from the ‘haves’ to the
‘have-nots’ (e.g., South Africa)•Potential: negotiating benefit sharing when new
storage and infrastructure is developed, or compensation
So allow the state to move towards…. :
Contemporary permit systemsb. as state regulation (short-term)
•Core minimum: respect, protect, and fulfill small-scale users’ water resources entitlements for the progressive realization of the right to food, gender equality, other human rights (e.g. Priority General Authorizations; vesting permits in rural local governments)•People-centered prioritization during water scarce
periods•Redistributive water reform once ‘water frontiers’
have been reached; easier to prevent! •Water resources as ‘the commons’
Towards people-centred and rights-based a. water entitlements
•Target regulatory permits and enforcement first to high-impact users, also in investment treaties, with locally appropriate conditions (core minimum of water resource entitlements; waste discharge; sharing of benefits in infrastructure investments, etc.)
•Quantify volumes and jobs per drop
Towards people-centred and rights-basedb. state regulation
~ 22 ha
Source: DWA WARMS data and B. Schreiner
Registered volumes of water by number of users in the Inkomati water management area
3. Global rights-based dialogue ?! Towards voluntary guidelines for people-
centred land-water tenure •Process: joint people-centred processes to ensure
informed, voluntary and prior consent to water-land investments at local, national and international levels
•Substance: joint framing of issues for rights-based land, water, forestry, and fisheries, for example:•Accelerated land-water infrastructure services: a human
right to 100 lpcd near homesteads?• ‘Core minimum’ water resource entitlements to realize
indivisible human rights •Negotiations with high-impact users for compensation
and shared benefits, also in investment contracts
Thank you for your kind attention