Preface

Water resource management reform today emphasizes user participation. However, in developing
country contexts the water laws and institutions which have followed from this reform have
consistently ignored how people actually manage their water. Informal rural and peri-urban water
users have managed their water resources for centuries and continue to respond to new
opportunities and threats, often entirely outside the ambit of formal government regulation or
investment. The community-based water laws which guide this informal management in fact govern
water development and management by significant numbers of water users, if not the majority of
citizens and the bulk of the poor, who depend on water for multiple uses for fragile agrarian
livelihoods. These community-based arrangements tend to have many of the people-based, pro-
poor attributes desired in principle, if not always found in practice in current water management
reform agendas – they are typically robust, dynamic and livelihood-oriented, and often encompass
purposeful rule-setting and enforcement and provide incentives for collective action. At the same
time, they can also be hierarchical and serve to entrench power and gender disparities.
Ignoring community-based water laws and failing to build on their strengths, while overcoming
their weaknesses, greatly reduce the chance of new water management regimes to meet their
intended goals. In contrast, when the strengths of community-based water laws are combined
with the strengths of public sector contributions to water development and management, the new
regimes can more effectively lead to sustainable poverty alleviation, gender equity and overall
economic growth. Indeed, the challenge for policy makers is to develop a new vision in which the
indispensable role of the public sector takes existing community-based water laws into full
account.
This book contributes to this new vision. Leading authors analyse living community-based
water laws in Africa, Latin America and Asia and critically examine the interface between
community-based water laws, formal water laws and a variety of other key institutional
ingredients of ongoing water resource management reform.
Most chapters in the book were selected from papers presented at the international workshop
‘African Water Laws: Plural Legislative Frameworks for Water Management in Rural Africa’, held
in Johannesburg, South Africa, 26–28 January 2005, co-organized by the International Water
Management Institute (IWMI), the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) South
Africa, the National Resources Institute UK (NRI), and the Faculty of Law, University of Dar es
Salaam, Tanzania (www.nri.org/waterlaw/workshop). The support given to this workshop by the
Comprehensive Assessment on Water Management in Agriculture, the Water Research
Commission, South Africa, EU, DFID and CTA is gratefully acknowledged.

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The completion of this volume has been made possible, first of all, by the willing and punctual
contributions of the authors of the fifteen chapters. Kingsley Kurukulasuriya carefully and
promptly edited all chapters. The maps were designed by Simon White. Mala Ranawake, Pavithra
Amunugama, Nimal Attanayake and Sumith Fernando provided further indispensable editorial
support. The editors are grateful for these contributions.
The Editors
Series Foreword: Comprehensive Assessment of
Water Management in Agriculture

There is broad consensus on the need to improve water management and to invest in water for
food to make substantial progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The role of
water in food and livelihood security is a major issue of concern in the context of persistent
poverty and continued environmental degradation. Although there is considerable knowledge on
the issue of water management, an overarching picture on the water–food–livelihoods–environ-
ment nexus is required to reduce uncertainties about management and investment decisions that
will meet both food and environmental security objectives.
The Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture (CA) is an innovative
multi-institute process aimed at identifying existing knowledge and stimulating thought on ways to
manage water resources to continue meeting the needs of both humans and ecosystems. The CA
critically evaluates the benefits, costs and impacts of the past 50 years of water development and
challenges to water management currently facing communities. It assesses innovative solutions
and explores consequences of potential investment and management decisions. The CA is
designed as a learning process, engaging networks of stakeholders to produce knowledge
synthesis and methodologies. The main output of the CA is an assessment report that aims to
guide investment and management decisions in the near future, considering their impact over the
next 50 years in order to enhance food and environmental security to support the achievement of
the MDGs. This assessment report is backed by CA research and knowledge-sharing activities.
The primary assessment research findings are presented in a series of books that form the
scientific basis for the Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture. The
books cover a range of vital topics in the areas of water, agriculture, food security and ecosystems
– the entire spectrum of developing and managing water in agriculture, from fully irrigated to fully
rainfed lands. They are about people and society, why they decide to adopt certain practices and
not others and, in particular, how water management can help poor people. They are about
ecosystems – how agriculture affects ecosystems, the goods and services ecosystems provide for
food security and how water can be managed to meet both food and environmental security
objectives. This is the fourth book in the series.
The books and reports from the assessment process provide an invaluable resource for
managers, researchers and field implementers. These books will provide source material from
which policy statements, practical manuals and educational and training material can be
prepared.
The Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture calls for Institutional
Reform to address issues of equity, sustainability and efficiency in water resource use for

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agriculture. The assessment recognizes that effective reform has been elusive, and that reform is
needed in the reform process itself. This book focuses on the critical issue of institutional and legal
water arrangements that can strengthen poor rural women’s and men’s access to water and, thus,
contribute to poverty reduction and gender equity. The book envisions a new role for the state in
informal rural economies in developing countries in which community-based water laws also play
their full roles. The book assesses legal and institutional challenges based on in-depth empirical
analyses of community-based water laws in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
The CA is carried out by a coalition of partners that includes 11 Future Harvest agricultural
research centres supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research
(CGIAR), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and partners from
over 200 research and development institutes globally. Co-sponsors of the assessment, institutes
that are interested in the results and help frame the assessment, are the Ramsar Convention, the
Convention on Biological Diversity, FAO and the CGIAR.
Financial support from the governments of The Netherlands and Switzerland, EU, FAO and
the OPEC foundation for the Comprehensive Assessment for the preparation of this book is
appreciated.
David Molden
Series Editor
International Water Management Institute
Sri Lanka

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