Pro-Poor Water Governance

Water governance refers to the political, economic, social and administrative that are in place to develop and manage water resources and the delivery of water services at different levels of society (GWP definition).

By Begum Shamsun Nahar, Session Facilitator – Mr. Alan Hall, Session Chair- Ms Lailun Nahar Ekram, From Gender and Water Alliance- Begum Shamsun Nahar

Date: 22-23 September 2002

At the beginning of the discussion everybody share the ideas of “What do we mean by governance?” It was summarized in this way-

Governance is about the manner is which political power is balanced and concerns the administrative system and the “rules of the game” that affects us all.
Effective governance for the poor requires systems of policy and decision-making that benefit, or at least do not harm, the livelihoods of vulnerable people living on the edge.
Water governance refers to the political, economic, social and administrative that are in place to develop and manage water resources and the delivery of water services at different levels of society (GWP definition).

Effective Governance is critical to attracting finance and better governance leads to better economic and social development and poverty reduction.

In general, discussion was continued but it seems difficult to reach all as participants were talking from different points of views, so the working group was divided into three sub-groups, for first day only, as follows-

A-Policy, Legislation and Decentralization

B- Institutions, Regulation and External Governance

C- Transparency, Accountability and Capacity building

Gender issue was not initially raised then Begum raised it while she mentioned that in policy it must be clearly written what are women and men’s specific requirements and what should be their role in this sector. In case of participation and consultation process women (also men) from all categories of household must be consulted. Then it was recognized that there are key crosscutting issues such as financial resources (particularly allocation of government budgets) and specific groups to target such as women, marginal groups, etc. But gender issue should be a cross cutting issue at the same time special attention is also needed to focus Gender issue.

The following issues was considered as priority-

Sector policy is needed but there must be inter-sectoral coordination and if not one policy may contradict another and work against the poor. It is important to get process to ensure poor voices heard and addressed
Right to use water should be explicitly pro-poor and identify target groups- who are the poor, and how to allocate costs.
Policy is necessary but not sufficient, must be action oriented
Central government need to share resources with lower levels of government, especially local government and also with public sector
Needs lots of capacity building for local government, decision making will then be at a level closer to the stakeholders
Institutional reform is needed at all levels and need to understand better the roles of institutions and existing functions and change to make them effective to help poor.
Capacity of poor themselves must be built so they can understand implications of process, consultations etc.- so they ask the right questions
Public access to information is needed