Integrated Water Resources Management in Water-scarce Regions

Water Harvesting, Groundwater Desalination and Water Reuse in Namibia

Stefan Liehr, Johanna Kramm, Alexander Jokisch, Katharina Müller

• Publisher: IWA Publishing
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781780409504
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Applied Sciences
• Index: Biological Sciences

The book consolidates the transdisciplinary research of the project "CuveWaters: Integrated Water Resources Management in Central Northern Namibia (Cuvelai Basin) in the SADC-Region" funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) and undertaken from 2004 to 2015 in Namibia. In these eleven years it was possible to accomplish all three phases of an ideal-typical transdisciplinary research process, from creating a common research object down to transdisciplinary dissemination. The trans¬disciplinary research approach was designed to tackle the life-world problems of food security, sanitation and access to water in a sustainable way. It aimed at integrating science, technology and society with the common goal of establishing a multi-resource mix for water use to improve the living conditions of people in the project region. This 'multi-resource mix' comprises water from different sources made available through adapted technological solutions which are socially embedded. The technological solutions identified with the Namibian partners were rainwater and floodwater harvesting, groundwater desalination, sanitation and water reuse. Each technological solution is reflected in terms of approach, technology, social aspects, management and governance issues, economic viability and sustainability evaluation. The book shows how technological innovation must go hand in hand with social innovation regarding knowledge, practices and institutions. A comprehensive report of the design, methodologies and procedures as well as the research findings and conclusions is provided here. The aim of the book is to share with researchers, professionals and practitioners the lessons learned during the project and provide guidance for replication.

© IWA Publishing 2018. Stefan Liehr, Johanna Kramm, Alexander Jokisch, Katharina Müller. Integrated Water Resources Management in Water-scarce Regions: Water Harvesting, Groundwater Desalination and Water Reuse in Namibia DOI: 10.2166/9781780407913_001

Chapter 1

Integrated water resources management (IWRM) in water-scarce regions – from theory to implementation

T. Kluge

ISOE – Institute for Social-Ecological Research, 60486 Frankfurt/Main, Germany

1.1 INTRODUCTION

This book deals with integrated water resources management (IWRM) in a very water-scarce region. It discusses how to move from a general conception of IWRM to a more specific implementation and the steps that are necessary to sustain such projects over time.

The study in question is being run in central-northern Namibia. Namibia is known to be the driest country in Sub-Saharan Africa, but since independence in 1989 it has developed a very advanced water legislation. Water is state property, with its use being subject to state procurement and licensing practices. Use principles are embedded in the IWRM concept, and core managerial aspects are governed by the principle of decentralisation, according to which responsibilities are delegated to local authorities (such as water point committees). The complexity of the IWRM process becomes apparent even from this brief depiction. The book is therefore dedicated to presenting and discussing research results and the experience of contributing to the implementation of integrated water management approaches in the wider food-water nexus.

In many countries of the global south, IWRM models are installed primarily at governance level: river basin organisations are set up, governments and national water sectors are advised on IWRM implementation, and the focus is placed on institutional and policy reform. However, the intention of this book is to show how IWRM, far from being limited to governance and institution building, also requires corresponding technical options combined with specific social and organisational concepts for solving problems. This interlocking of technology, governance and society calls for conscious integration management, which is also true of the water-food nexus. Before addressing this point in more depth, the IWRM concept will be explained in greater detail.

1.2 CONCEPT AND HISTORY OF IWRM

The Global Water Partnership (GWP) defines IWRM as “a process which promotes the coordinated development and management of water, land and related resources in order to maximise economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems” (GWP, 2000: 22). This definition reflects an idea that is now firmly anchored in an international discourse.

Behind the IWRM concept lies an evolutionary history, whose different stages have been described in a similar manner by different authors (Allan, 2003; Biswas, 2008; Kluge, 2007; UNEP, 2012). Large-scale projects represented a crucial response to the great crisis of the 1920s, with “New Deal” style programmes like that realised by the Tennessee Valley Authority or by the cultivation of the Hessen Ried in the Rhine valley in Germany south of Frankfurt. These programmes belonged to the supply side of management at that time, as they contributed in particular to an increase in the supply of water to industry, agriculture and municipal economies. This way of thinking and its technological implementation have resulted in large-scale irrigation projects such as those applied to crop and cotton farming in the Middle and Far East (Pakistan, India, Uzbekistan) and Africa (e.g. Kramm, 2015). The experience with large-scale projects (e.g. the Nile dam) was discussed at international conferences: the Rio Conference on Sustainable Development 1992, the International Conference on Water and the Environment in Dublin 1992, the Earth Summit 2002 Rio+10 Conference held in Johannesburg, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit 2015 in New York. These international discourses refined the IWRM concept.

At the Dublin 1992 conference, the cost recovery principle, stakeholder participation, environment and gender all became central issues. A key feature of the concept which was shaped during that conference was the shift from large-scale supply-oriented management to management with more of a demand-side focus and emphasis on stakeholder participation.

A further stage was reached with the Millennium Summit in New York 2000. It was here that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were formulated as clear additional objectives to the Millennium Declaration, complete with measurable indicators. The different themes of the MDGs (the environment, questions of gender, education, health and poverty reduction) are all reflected in the IWRM concept.

The IWRM discourse subsequently became a global discourse supported by international bodies such as the Global Water Partnership (GWP), the World Bank and the United Nations, to name just a few. As Beveridge and Monsees (2012) have noted, the IWRM discourse is more global and directed towards the global south, whereas the EU Water Framework Directive, although strongly related to the IWRM concept, is directed towards the global north. While the EU Water Framework Directive, as a supranational body of law, emphasises the ecological status of waters, the international IWRM discourse is broader and targets the problems of resource scarcity, climate change as well as issues of quantity and quality. As emphasised in the literature (Beveridge & Monsees, 2012; Allan, 2003; Butterworth et al., 2010), the IWRM discourse is heavily donor-driven; in this context it is striking that a good part of the international IWRM advisory activities, like the discourse itself, revolve around aspects of governance (problems of fit and interplay such as the issue of hydrological boundaries of river basin organisations versus political administrative structures). While in the early years the IWRM discourse was characterised by somewhat technological approaches such as ecological sanitation (ecosan) for wastewater treatment, recent revisitation of the past debate places more emphasis on policy advice and institutional framework building for IWRM oriented projects.

The adoption of IWRM by river basin organisations and the creation of governance structures, regulatory bodies and adapted water pricing models moved centre stage. This meant that socio-technological considerations were relevant merely to the extent that they are controllable within the framework of governance.

The IWRM approach has attracted a wide array of criticism. A primary objection is that the concept is vague and the definition unclear, making it relatively easy to continue with old policies simply by changing the wording (Allan, 2003; Biswas, 2008; Molle, 2008). Biswas (2008) in particular, and in an exemplary manner, goes on to question the universality and the general implementability of the IWRM concept. He questions the transferability of the rather rigid concept, and rejects the “one size fits all” mentality (Biswas, 2008). This raises the question as to how a single IWRM concept can work under very different conditions, and how it is possible to adapt the IWRM concept on site. Such criticism is in line with other voices in the debate which speak of a lack of contextual sensitivity and therefore a lack of resonance with local conditions (Beveridge & Monsees, 2012). A further problem is the failure to deal with the challenges of impact measurement, which in turn strengthens criticism that the claim to universality allows for completely different interpretations of the concept and ways of applying it. According to Biswas (2008), the problems begin when looking more closely at the definition of IWRM by the Global Water Partnership (GWP). How should integration as such be defined? To make this clear, Biswas introduces 41 integration issues in order to illustrate the practical complexities, and goes on to ask how integration can be possible at all in such a context. His core argument is thus the following:

“It should also be noted that water is linked to all development sectors and social issues such as poverty alleviation and regional income redistribution. It is simply unthinkable and totally impractical to integrate all these issues in the guise of integration irrespective of how integration is defined. Such integrations are more likely to increase the complexities of managing the resources instead of resolving them” (Biswas, 2008: 19).

Biswas links this point to a question:

“This raises one fundamental question, that is, what makes the water profession believe that they can superimpose their views on the other professions who were not even consulted and of which they have only limited knowledge and expertise? Equally, why should professionals from other professions accept the view of some people from the water profession? A cynic might even be excused for claiming that the water profession prefers to remain in water tight compartments but preach integration with other sectors without any consultations or discussions with the professionals of appropriate discipline sectors and institutions” (Biswas, 2008: 9).

In sum, he criticises the concept as a vague and indeterminate object linked to a heterogeneous field of practices and research. In this book it is argued that it is precisely these aspects of IWRM that pave the way for a new perspective on IWRM. In transdisciplinarity research, an object characterised with such indeterminacy and which is thus open to being given specific meanings depending on the perspective of the parties involved is referred to as a “boundary object.” Despite the individual specific meanings attributed to it by different observers, a boundary object is distinguished by the fact that it retains a common meaning. Boundary objects are constructed from a general field of diverse issues investigated by the overlapping efforts of individual research fields and disciplines. To fulfil their bridging function, boundary objects must be weakly structured (Bergmann et al., 2012: 65). Nicolini et al. (2012: 616) make a similar point when they remark that boundary objects “act as translation and transformation devices across various thought worlds. They make cross disciplinary work possible.” This is precisely the case with the IWRM discourse: it draws on very different disciplines and sectors, each with its own interests and positions.

On the other hand, many critics, as noted above, interpret this as vagueness, a “nirvana concept” (Molle, 2008). Biswas’s critical analysis of failed integration seems at first to be confirmed. But Molle (2008) also sees the IWRM discourse as a boundary object which has the power to inspire understanding, communication and a common perspective. “Yet, they also offer opportunities for contestation and may serve as boundary objects by providing a common ground for discussion. IWRM has served to disseminate socially and environmentally sensitive concepts and perhaps inspired a new generation of water professionals” (Molle, 2008: 150).

An interim result of this discussion is possibly the openness with which the concept of a boundary object was received on the few occasions it appears in the literature on IWRM. In order for the CuveWaters IWRM project in Namibia to make productive use of the concept, both attitudes – Biswas’ critical look at IWRM as well as the understanding of IWRM as a boundary object – were necessary. Since they leave open how integration should be implemented, further methods were applied in this regard: a conceptual model for transdisciplinary research in which the transformation into an epistemic object provides the bridge needed between research practice and application field (Jahn et al., 2012). This will be spelled out in more detail in the following section.

1.3 IWRM: FROM BOUNDARY OBJECT TO EPISTEMIC OBJECT AND AN APPROACH BASED ON CASE STUDIES

IWRM is still the dominant paradigm in international development cooperation for solving the worldwide water crisis. In addition, there are research programmes on IWRM which are aimed at supporting existing IWRM approaches in different target countries. An example of this kind of support stems from the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), which took up the IWRM debate by issuing a call for ideas on how IWRM approaches could be implemen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Authors
• Preface
• Greeting remarks
• Chapter 1: Integrated water resources management (IWRM) in water-scarce regions – from theory to implementation
• Chapter 2: Conditions and challenges of Namibia’s water resources management
• Chapter 3: Sanitation and water reuse
• Chapter 4: Rain- and floodwater harvesting
• Chapter 5: Small-scale solar-powered groundwater desalination
• Chapter 6: Knowledge exchange between research and practice
• Chapter 7: Challenges of transdisciplinary research and lessons learnt
• Acknowledgements
• Epilogue
• Index