Water For All: The Water Policy of the Asian Development Bank - The Policy

Table of Contents

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I. The Context

II. The Need For a Comprehensive Water Policy

III. The Policy

A. An Overview

B. National Policies and Reforms

C. Water Resource Management

D. Improving Water Services

E. Conserving Water

F. Promoting Regional Cooperation

G. Fostering Participation

H. Improving Governance

IV. The Policy and ADB's Poverty Reduction Strategy

V. Getting the Policy to Work

Water For All: The Water Policy of the Asian Development Bank : III. The Policy

G. Fostering Participation

52. Concept. Given water’s unique life-sustaining characteristics, participation is a key ingredient in its conservation and management. Over time, ADB has recognized that communities are at the heart of effective water management. They are the de facto resource managers and protectors of the environment. Consumer associations in urban areas and water users’ groups or irrigation cooperatives in rural areas are being increasingly involved in management both in ADB-assisted projects and others. Community-based water quality monitoring is yet another dimension where communities are addressing social equity concerns. ADB will promote participation in the management of water resources at all levels and collaborate in fashioning partnerships between governments, private agencies, NGOs, and communities. It will encourage and respect local and national ownership of pragmatic solutions to consultation, participation, and partnerships. Getting the poor to participate, and mainstreaming them into community thought and action, will be a key area of ADB work. Box 4 shows how participation can make a difference.

Box 4: Participation: Making a Difference

Participation is the centerpiece of any water service endeavor. The most successful experiences in water use are based on involving the people who consume the water. Excluding them from participation has tended to make solutions to sustainability elusive.

In Nepal, ADB financed rural water supply projects in the 1980s where gravity-fed village water supply schemes were built by the Department of Water Supply and Sewerage and handed over to communities for operation and maintenance. Many of the schemes were not taken over by communities. They had not been consulted about their requirements, not involved in subproject design, and excluded from sharing in the costs of implementation. Subsequent projects developed community awareness and promoted active community participation in rural water supply and hygiene sanitation schemes. Water users’ associations were established and communities decided how much water they needed, what they were willing to pay for, and how they would manage the facilities.

In irrigation and rural development projects, water users’ associations have typically improved equity in water distribution, resolved water disputes, collected water charges, and maintained tertiary networks. In some cases they have also successfully taken over ownership of small-scale irrigation schemes. Nepal, Pakistan, and Philippines have particularly good examples of developing participatory approaches to operation and maintenance through farmer-managed irrigation schemes. A 1995 ADB postevaluation report found that poverty levels in such schemes were considerably lower in project areas in Nepal than elsewhere.

In Pakistan, an evaluation (September 1998) of the ADB-financed Second On-Farm Water Management Project showed that participatory on-farm drainage was extremely effective but was not sustained by complementary maintenance of the main drainage systems.

The efficacy of cooperative approaches was demonstrated yet again in Indonesia under the ADB-financed Irrigated Command Area Development Project (postevaluated in May 1998) where water users’ associations were significantly strengthened, and contributed to equitable water allocation and improved system maintenance.

53. Strategy. Participation is necessary to ensure that conflicting interests are harmonized and that inequities are removed. Communities and individuals that are underserved – including the urban poor and the socially excluded, such as ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples –need to be mainstreamed, ADB will promote the recentering of such communities and individuals. Given the essential nature of private sector participation, without which there will be little infusion of capital and expertise, and of much needed technology, ADB will seek to draw private enterprise into participating in a higher quality of water service provision. Simultaneously, ADB recognizes that women are important water users, clients, and beneficiaries, as well as managers of water for family nutrition, hygiene, health, and community activities. Equally, women are development agents, professionals, and decision-makers in water sector activities. ADB will strengthen women’s ability to participate more effectively through discrete programs targeted at educating women, empowering them, and enabling their involvement in community-based decision making. Water projects supported by ADB will incorporate carefully designed components that promote the participation of civil society in identifying needs and issues, designing solutions, and establishing mechanisms for monitoring and dispute resolution. Tools, including guidelines for the design and implementation of successful participatory processes in water sector activities, will be developed.

54. Gender. To ensure that water sector activities are gender-responsive at policy and institutional levels, ADB will promote the integration of gender concerns in policies, plans, programs, and projects. Not enough progress has been made in this area in the region and more gender-specific data is required in the water sector. Although gender issues and solutions in water supply, sanitation, and hygiene are comparatively well researched and implemented, good practices in connection with water and land rights, and in resource management and conservation, have not been widely adopted.²⁰ The key elements in a gender approach to planning, implementing, and evaluating water sector activities are (i) including a gender analysis at the design stage, (ii) incorporating explicit gender equity provisions in the objectives and scope of the activity, and (iii) disaggregating data in monitoring and management information systems along gender lines. These elements will be incorporated in ADB’s water sector operations.

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Examples of legal regimes are the Helsinki Rules on the Uses of the Waters of International Rivers, formulated by the International Law Association and the International Law Commission in 1966; Chapter 18 of Agenda 21 (footnote 10), which includes provisions for transboundary water resources management; and the Convention on the Law of the Non-navigational Uses of International Watercourses, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1997 for ratification by 2000.
ADB. 1998. The Bank's Policy on Gender and Development. Manila.

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F. Promoting Regional Cooperation

H. Improving Governance

Catalog

G. Fostering Participation

Box 4: Participation: Making a Difference