Managing water resources & Environmental Change

So far, we’ve tackled many ways in which environmental change will impact water and development in Africa, however we’ve neglected the stakeholders in charge of the management of these water resources. In this post I will be discussing the relationship between environmental change and water resource management and debate different approaches to water management.

An adaptation to climate change in Africa study concluded that climate change is likely to be responsible for the displacement of agriculture and water resources thus affecting economic investments and stakeholders. The paper also outlines that the most critical need in Africa is organization to ensure the promotion of ‘sound adaptive strategies in the context of sustainable development objectives’ and that oftentimes community and civic groups lack the appropriate funding, technology, and personnel to achieve the same goals as centralized or private management. However, is this always the case? Different papers on the privatization of water resource management suggest the opposite, outlining that issues of safe water access are in actuality amplified by privatization, despite the assumption that privatization handles demand better than community and government based approaches. On the contrary, another study has concluded that re-municipalized services have shown improvement both in efficiency and cost.

On paper this debate has a simple conclusion which is that harnessing the qualities and strengths of all 3 solutions – private sector investment, community-based approach and government management to water resource management and reaching a consensus, but this is unrealistic in certain case studies. A study conducted in Kenya questions whether the community management approach is even the community’s choice or the most feasible. The findings show that water users least prefer community management, and that certain risks and responsibilities ineffectively fall on the community, such as maintenance work which requires capital investment for replacing parts and employing a mechanic and easy access to spare parts. Furthermore, when thinking about this from an environmental perspective, maintenance work on water resources is highly likely in a climate change future due to the increased floods and tropical storms damaging water pipes or contaminating water supplies, increased rates of water borne disease. It is logical to assume that in this scenario, hazards affecting the water source or pipelines will also affect the local community by possibly destroying housing and causing food insecurity (destroying crops), therefore expecting the community to have the disposable income for regular investments in water resource maintenance becomes unsustainable.

Similarly, to the failure of handpumps during dry seasons, users will opt for an alternative water source such as surface water or public wells and springs, which bear no financial cost, but that are not appropriately treated water supplies and that may cause health concerns as highlighted in my post on sanitation. Moreover, in the previously mentioned study, even in the wet season 64% of users reportedly use untreated water supplies due to lack of cost and sometimes differences in distance in comparison to the treated water pumps.

One particular case study evaluates the community water governance in Uchira, Tanzania and questions the now normalized assumptions regarding the capacity of communities to manage water services while also ensuring equity and sustainability, particularly in the case of equality of access. The study concludes by suggesting that a regulatory stance should be taken by the state and external agencies to ensure the water services can be community managed while also being equitable in terms of remedying water access inequalities. Additionally, other studies have also analyzed this recently popularized narrative of community management. It highlights the need for a distinguishing ‘community participation’ and ‘community management’, suggesting the first is sustainable while the latter is not. This also highlights the argument that a mixture of the approaches must be applied to ensure sustainability and equal water access, rather than dumping all responsibilities on community management with no alternative support and expecting self-sufficiency.