Local participation in decentralized water governance: insights from north-central Namibia
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Local participation in decentralized water governance: insights from north-central Namibia Salma Hegga 1
&
Irene Kunamwene 2
&
Gina Ziervogel 2,3
Received: 7 September 2018 / Accepted: 17 June 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Although several semi-arid African countries are decentralizing water services and attempting to increase the participation of local actors in water resource management, how effectively this is working, and whether it is improving water access, is not yet well researched. Little attention has been paid to the capacities (in terms of knowledge and resources) that local actors need to successfully influence the operation and management of water services they are made responsible for. In a qualitative study, we asked regional and local actors in the Omusati Region of north-central Namibia for their perspectives on how water reforms, initiated in the late 1990s, have impacted on their participation in water governance. Our analysis reveals that decentralized governance of water resources can be ineffective if governments do not allocate sufficient resources to support and enable local actors to participate efficiently and effectively in the governance system. In the context of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals, achieving greater equity and efficiency in the water sector while reducing climate risk will require that local actors receive more support in return for fuller and more effective participation. We suggest that policy and practice around decentralized water governance pay more attention to building the capacities of local actors to absorb the responsibilities transferred to them. Keywords Water governance . Decentralization . Participation . Capacity building . Namibia
Introduction Policy documents and scientific discussions increasingly cite local public participation as central to effective water management. These documents and discussions focus on how local participation encourages diverse perspectives, thus strengthening contextspecific responses and ensuring an equitable spread of benefits Communicated by James D. Ford Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-020-01674-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Salma Hegga [email protected] 1
African Climate & Development Initiative, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
2
African Climate & Development Initiative, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
3
Department of Environmental & Geographical Science, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
across different social groups (Adhikari and Tarkowski 2013; Carr et al. 2012; Cosens and Chaffin 2016; Pahl-Wostl 2002). As a hybrid form of governance that enables communities to play a central role in managing water resources, the decentralized governance of water resources actively encourages local participation (Pahl-Wostl and Knieper 2014) and assumes this will yield more equitable outcomes (Brown 2011). In
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