The role of local government in Integrated Water Resources Management : potential and practice in Southern Africa

Water resources are directly linked to various mandates of local government, ranging from water supply and sanitation to landuse planning and local economic development. These functions are either affected by the way water resources are managed, or have an impact on downstream water uses. This makes local governments a key player in IWRM. The local government plays its role in IWRM in two ways. In “full” IWRM local governments get effectively represented in IWRM institutions such as catchment management agencies. In “light” IWRM the local government only applies IWRM principles within its mandates. This paper provides a conceptual introduction to light and full IWRM based on a global literature review. An assessment of the current practices vis-à-vis both approaches in Southern Africa is then presented. The paper concludes that in Southern Africa there is currently a limited involvement of local government in IWRM. On one hand, IWRM institutions such as catchment agencies and river basin commissions do not seem to open up sufficiently to this local government level. On their part local governments are often too preoccupied with reaching water and sanitation targets that IWRM issues fall off their agenda. [authors abstract]

This document is part of the project ‘LoGo Water : towards effective involvement of local government in Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) in river basins of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region’.

824