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Improving access to water
Sahel Water Governance Learning Group: Building capacity to address the governance and property rights challenges of improving access to water in the Sahel
I. The problem
Recent policy debates on access to water have focused on personal and domestic use, with water used for agriculture receiving less attention. Yet, water is indispensable for agriculture and food production. In the Sahel, rain-fed farming and pastoralism are the main livelihood sources. In the past few decades, efforts have been made to improve the water infrastructure in rural areas – for example through the creation of new water points and irrigation schemes. These efforts have often failed to consider governance and property rights issues - who decides what and how, and who has right over what before and after the water development project. Water governance refers to the system of rules and institutions that regulates the management and use of water resources. Property rights include land tenure, water rights, and the interface between these. As a result of this inadequate consideration for governance and property rights issues, many well-meaning interventions ended up undermining land tenure security, contributing to resource degradation and fostering conflict.
Box 1. A dispute between three villages in Burkina Faso
The dispute concerns an irrigation scheme created on lands around the village of Koumana, in the Department of Bondokuy, and largely cultivated by inhabitants of the same village; but customarily held by the village of Kosso, in the Department of Warkoye. Farmers from Koumana – including a group of farmers originating from another village, Syhn – gained access to the land they cultivate through an agreement with Kosso. The irrigation scheme was first created without much conflict in 1970. Years later, a rehabilitation project sparked tensions between the inhabitants of Koumana and Kosso over the allocation of rehabilitated plots. And, the village of Syhn sought to assert land control on the area by requesting that the scheme be named "Syhn-Koumana". After various mediation attempts (including by the Minister for Agriculture), the dam was named "Koumana-Kosso" and the irrigated area "Kosso" - thereby acknowledging the land claims of Kosso.
Source: Lavigne Delville et al, 2000. |
For instance, creating irrigation schemes tends to boost land values, and may therefore exacerbate land competition and foster conflict between land users.
And, it may raise
land tenure issues because of the land expropriation and of the subsequent reallocation of land and water rights that it usually entails.
This may create tensions both between communities (see Box 1 for an example of how an irrigation scheme in Burkina Faso contributed to a land conflict between three villages) and within communities (in the past, for instance, many irrigation projects entailed land/water rights reallocations that disadvantaged women).
In addition, in many pastoral societies access to grazing land is determined by a blend of common-property and individual rights over the wells located in it. In these contexts, water rights are crucial to manage grazing lands sustainably, and endow pastoral communities with assets that can be negotiated to access distant resources in times of crisis. In some cases, government provision of open-access water points has weakened local resource rights and traditional rangeland management systems, deprived pastoralists of a valuable asset in negotiations with incoming herders, and fostered conflict and resource degradation. On the other hand, in some pastoral areas, the creation of private water points on common lands is being used as a strategy for elites de facto to privatise common property resources.
In some cases, part of the problem lies with inadequate legal frameworks. In much of the Sahel, land and water laws have evolved with very little coordination, and often in different directions. Contradictions between sectoral laws on land, water and pastoralism, and between these and legislation on decentralisation, exacerbate tensions around property rights over land and water. Box 2 illustrates this with an example from Niger.
Box 2: Code Rural and Water Code (Niger)
The relationship between the Rural Code and the Water Code in Niger illustrates the confusion between land and water rights. The Water Code governs water resources while the Rural Code governs all resources and socio-economic activities in rural areas, including rangelands and water points.
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The Rural Code states that herders have a right to use rangelands in common and have priority rights in their home areas (“terroir d’attache”). This includes both land and water rights. Outsiders may access water and grazing resources through negotiation with the right holders. These provisions imply that the creation of modern wells must be associated with priority rights on water and grazing resources, and that open-access wells are possible only in no-man’s-land situations or on transhumance routes.
On the other hand, the principles underlying the Water Code are:
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Access to water for livestock is open to all, including outsiders such as transhumant herders.
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Construction of water points with an output equal or exceeding 40 m3 per day must be authorized by the regional administration and follow a set of rules, including the production of technical data; water facilities below that water volume are subject to a “declaration” regime.
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Public water points have to be managed by Management Committees (“Comités de Gestion”), which must be formally established by the administration.
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Management Committees are responsible for the general maintenance of the wells and the collection of users fees.
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Such principles have created a number of problems. The Water Code does not establish a functional link between access to water and access to grazing, as if these resources were independent from each other. The role of Management Committees is limited to the surveillance of the water infrastructure, excluding the use of grazing resources or control over the number of livestock using the well. Their capacity to control access to water and grazing resources is limited. When problems arise, the regional administration is the one to intervene and, if necessary, to close access to the well. The Code gives almost no recognition to the controlled access systems developed by pastoral communities, and traditional wells are not even mentioned. This undermines local resource rights and traditional pastoral resource management systems.
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Source: Thébaud et al, in Cotula, L. (ed) 2006. |
These issues were explored by a scoping study, Key findings of which were published in “Land and water rights in the Sahel: tenure challenges of improving access to water for agriculture” (Drylands Issue Paper 139) - click below to download it in English and French.
II. The programme
The Sahel Water Governance Learning Group (PROGRES from its French title Projet de Gouvernance des Ressources en Eau au Sahel) is a four-year programme (April 2005 to March 2009) to tackle these issues in four Sahelian countries: Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. PROGRES promotes better policies, laws and practices that address the governance and property rights challenges of improving access to water for farming and herding. It does so by generating knowledge, facilitating peer-learning and exchange of experience, and promoting informed policy debate among key actors at local, national and regional levels.
The first year of the programme (2005-2006) consisted of a scoping phase to map out key issues and challenges, through an analysis of relevant legislation, a literature review and two field-level case studies in Niger and Senegal. The next step is to use this body of evidence to facilitate exchange of experience and informed debate in the four countries. To do this, PROGRES uses the “learning group” approach - an innovative action-research methodology for capacity building and policy influence developed by IIED in a range of contexts (Making Decentralisation Work programme, in the Sahel; Forest Governance Learning Group programme, in Africa and Asia).
Learning groups are small, informal groups for dialogue that bring together stakeholders with varied and often opposing views on water governance, including central and local government officials, development agencies, civil society, researchers, private sector and individuals involved in designing institutional and legal frameworks at both regional and national level. The learning group works at both national and regional levels. At the national level, each group identifies the governance/property rights issue(s) most relevant to their country context on which they want to focus their work (e.g. pastoral water points, irrigation). At the regional level, representatives from national learning groups come together to discuss cross-cutting and cross-country issues and challenges.
Learning groups are different to conventional workshops because members are self-selecting and participate because they have a genuine interest in learning from each other; and because groups prioritise working with a small number of decision makers, opinion leaders, practitioners and others genuinely committed to fruitful dialogue, rather than large-scale, highly visible conferences. Also, discussions are centred not one-off events, but on regular exchange supported by research, training and/or presentations by relevant in-country experts to ensure that debates are informed and based on sound knowledge. A group “convenor” facilitates the activities of the learning group, including steering exchanges within the group, documenting discussions and providing a constant flow of information and knowledge, which is fed back into the group as well as disseminated to a wider audience.
III. Getting involved
If you are interested in this work and would like to learn more about it, or if you would like to share your experience with these issues, please contact Lorenzo Cotula (lorenzo.cotula@iied.org).
Our activities in this area are closely linked to our work on Legal empowerment for secure resource access.
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