Download - Institutional Analysis
WP 4 -- Institutional Analysis
Institutions for pro-poor water access and
use
INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Questions to WP4
1. Who controls blue water?
2. How do institutions at multiple levels interact to
facilitate or inhibit access to water?
3. What are the incentives for providing poor people
with access to water? / How can water institutions
help alleviate poverty?
4. How are institutions modified to cope with
hydrology?
5. What institutions manage droughts or flood
hazards?
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INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Questions to WP4
1. Who controls blue water?
2. How do institutions at multiple levels interact to
facilitate or inhibit access to water?
3. What are the incentives for providing poor people
with access to water? / How can water institutions
help alleviate poverty?
4. How are institutions modified to cope with
hydrology?
5. What institutions manage droughts or flood
hazards?
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ScaleTemporal
Drip
kit
Collective
MarketingCoordination
Property Rights
low high
high
Type of
Institution
low
region
Spatial
plot
Tube
well
Terracing
Treadle
pump
Short
term
Long
term
Large canal systems
Watershed
Management
Small reservoirDrainage
Salinity Control
INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Coordination institutions
• Can be provided by:
• State (a public tubewell that supplies many farms),
• Collective action (farmer group)
• Markets (farmer selling water).
• Which is most appropriate depends on:
• Scale
• Technical sophistication of technology and farmers
• Cultural factors (social capital, market orientation)
• Capacity of state, market institutions, etc.
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Types of Coordinating
Institutions
MarketCollective
State
Market
Collective
State
Types of Coordinating Institutions by Spatial and
Temporal Scale
Spatial—large-
scale, complex
Small-scale, low
INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
For group-based approaches
• Look beyond formal rules and membership roles • Is the group acting collectively
• Who is included and excluded from active membership and decision-making.
• Women/men
• Land owners/ tenants
• Farmers/ other water users (fishers, livestock keepers, home gardens, domestic users, other enterprises).
• Formal and informal barriers to participation
• Different motivations and returns
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INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
For group-based approaches
• Active participation of men and women can be more effective by drawing on skills, resources of both
• But costs of mixed organizations also greater, especially where high gender segregation
• Consider when identifying which groups to work with, particularly if that organization will gain stronger control over technology or water
• More than setting up the organizations-- need to become internalized and ‘institutionalized’
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INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Water Rights
• “the claims, entitlements and related obligations
among people regarding the use and disposition
of a scarce resource”
• Rights accompanied by duties:
• Duties of rights-holders
• Duties of others to respect those rights
• Rights vs. access
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INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Why Do Water Rights Matter?
• Water is essential for life and livelihoods• Water rights are key assets
• Determine distribution of benefits
• Rights clarify • Who can use, manage water
• What responsibilities they have
• Increasing interaction between uses within basins• Need better “rules of the game” to coordinate water use
• Secure rights can provide incentives for investment, conservation
• Projects often change property rights
• Recognized rights provide “seat at the table” for negotiations over changes in water use
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INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Need to Go Beyond Simplistic Assumptions
“There are no water rights here”
or
“The State owns all water”
Careful analysis reveals multiple types and holders of
water rights
Important implications for water management—equity,
efficiency, environment
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INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Property Rights
• All rights don’t derive from the state
(government)—also from project regulations, local
custom, religious law, etc.
• Rights are only as strong as the institution that
stands behind them
• Customary rights may be stronger than those
determined by the state
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International
Religious
State
Basin
Local/ customary
INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Some Critical Questions
• How are rights recognized?
• Who holds rights?
• For how long?
• To do what?
• From what source? • What about return flows and groundwater?
• Transferable?
• Environmental allocations?
� “sticks in the bundle of rights”
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INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Multiple Uses Multiple Users
• Field crop irrigation
• Household gardens
• Livestock
• Fishing
• Harvesting lotus, reeds
• Industry/enterprises
• Domestic use
• Recreation
• Religion
• By occupational
• By gender
• By generation within the
household
• By location
• Look for marginalized groups
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INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Water Rights Reform
• Acknowledge existing rights, esp. of
marginalized groups
• Participatory inventories
• Avoid “cadastre disasters”
• Gradual and selective licensing
• Two-way education and communications
• Interactive planning and modeling
• Legal literacy
• Strategically strengthen agencies and users
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INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Water rights reforms
• Laws and policies are important, but not the sole
determinant of water rights
• Reforms should be based on solid understanding
of existing rights
• Rapid reforms can be counter-productive, unlikely
to be fully implemented as planned
• Negotiation with stakeholders, looking for ways to
compensate, leads to more legitimacy
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INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Beyond panaceas
• Not social engineering—institutions are organic,
path dependent
• Need range of technical and institutional options
• Understanding to be able to tailor them to their
physical and institutional context
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INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Questions to WP4
1. Who controls blue water? Urban-based power
structures
2. How do institutions at multiple levels interact to
facilitate or inhibit access to water? At higher
levels more government and lower level more
CA institutions; (irrigation) water-related
organizations seldom have a mandate for
poverty alleviation; once water becomes
scarce, power structures tend to exclude
weaker users, unless they have strong property
rights
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INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Questions to WP4
3. What are the incentives for providing poor
people with access to water?/What water
institutions can help alleviate poverty? National
food security (irrigation), job creation, rural
development (to avoid migration), health
concerns
4. How are institutions modified to cope with
hydrology? – Institutions following hydrologic
boundaries, but often powerless, need to
ensure that they are empowered
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INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Questions to WP4
5. What institutions manage droughts or flood
hazards?—Farmers tend to lose out first when
droughts occur (national laws) or
implementation; again strong property rights
needed for farmers to have a share in water-
scarce situations
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INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Institutional Research for WP4
a) What is the link between water access, poverty
and wellbeing?-- Is lack of access to water a
contributor to poverty?
b) Look at existing power structures (administrative,
political) and how they are linked to basins and
water institutions
c) Identify institutions that fit the current power
structures while helping the water-poor: Ex: pay
farmers to use less water� more water for
domestic/industry—examine feasibility
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INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Institutional Research for WP4
d) Create a voice for the poor (India� media,
panchayat, Supreme Court; Andes, similar);
e) Possibility to transfer obligatory stakeholder
consultation processes of developed countries
f) Alternatively, identify the possibility to generate
alliances (Sabatier/Schlager); f.ex. Alliance with
environmental organizations to protect
biodiversity
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INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Institutional Research for WP4
g) How can water institutions help alleviate
poverty?—Recognition of traditional water
rights (Andes) to obtain compensation when
water is transferred out
h) When there is drought—identify mechanisms
that support sharing of information, water, and
compensation
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INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Institutional Research for WP4
�High impact interventions can be on institutions
�High impact interventions require conducive
institutions and infrastructure� f.ex. Volumetric
pricing at village level has lead to water savings in
parts of China, but would not work in most of India,
�Adoptability can only be assured once institutional
issues are taken into account
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