Towards voluntary guidelines for people-centred land-water tenure. The untapped synergies between

rights-based land and water governance

Barbara van Koppen

International Water

Management Institute

Framing the land-water nexus

•What justifies the emphasis on coordination?

•What is ‘coordinated governance’?

•What are risks or missed opportunities when coordination is lacking?

•What are gains of better coordination?

This presentation:

•What can the water constituencies learn from, and offer to the land constituencies?

What is coordinated governance? People-centred

•People’s perspectives are holistic: • integrated natural resources (land, water resources,

water infrastructure, other) • integrated (‘indivisible’) human wellbeing

•Especially for vulnerable women and men in rural and peri-urban areas with diversified livelihoods who directly depend on natural resources

•People-centred: The ‘bottom-up pull’ for coordinated and demand-driven public governance support

What is coordinated governance? Issue-based; framing the issues

Continuing issues, for example

• Irrigation infrastructure services for poverty reduction and gender equality (public/public-private; with/without land reform; etc.)

New issues, for example:

•Growing competition and growing inequalities in access to water resources (e.g., land-/water ‘grabs’)

•Disproportionate claims by the ‘haves’ (Gini SA= 0.99)

• ‘Core minimum’ access to water resources for ‘small-scale’ users for basic health and wealth (public and self-supply – informal/local/indigenous)

What can water constituencies learn from the land constituencies?

Why does water remain invisible?

Land constituencies, unlike water constituencies, focus on:

1. People, including the marginalized

2. Customary rights

3. Global rights-based dialogue

1. People, including the marginalized?

Stuck in monolithic single-use ‘sectors’

•Domestic uses: ‘water for people’: rights-based priority, but very narrow; no intra-sectoral differentiation

•Productive uses: abstract aggregates; no intra-sectoral differentiation; stereotyping e.g., gender, commercial

•Competition ‘between sectors’ •mystifies the negotiation between people (multiple

water needs) investing in (multi-purpose) infrastructure for access to (multiple) water resources •depoliticizes power differences

2. Customary rights ?

Dominant statutory water law: the permit system

•vests ownership of water resources in the state

•dispossesses customary/informal water rights

•accepted in Africa; contested in Latin America; adjusted in Asia (e.g., Nepal, China)

•Africa: continuing colonial dispossession?

Continuing colonial dispossession?

•Roman law : vesting ownership in emperor, dispossessing conquered peoples

•Colonization Latin America and most of Africa: vesting ownership in European rulers

• Independence: replacing ‘European’ by ‘the president’

• IWRM-era: revitalizing permits, plus in Africa: taxation

Contemporary permit systems: a. as people’s entitlements (long-term)

•Reinforce formal dispossession of small-scale users

•Favour large-scale investors: •De facto administration-proficiency; excludes

women; corruption prone•De jure discrimination of customary land title holders

when formal land titles are a permit condition•Taxation: perverse incentives; rent-seeking; over-

allocation; ‘those who can pay are entitled to water’; corruption prone

Allow the state to regulate ‘in the public interest’, by prohibiting new water uptake or enforcing conditions:•Putting caps on volumes•Regulating waste discharge•Ensuring water re-allocation from the ‘haves’ to the

‘have-nots’ (e.g., South Africa)•Potential: negotiating benefit sharing when new

storage and infrastructure is developed, or compensation

So allow the state to move towards…. :

Contemporary permit systemsb. as state regulation (short-term)

•Core minimum: respect, protect, and fulfill small-scale users’ water resources entitlements for the progressive realization of the right to food, gender equality, other human rights (e.g. Priority General Authorizations; vesting permits in rural local governments)•People-centered prioritization during water scarce

periods•Redistributive water reform once ‘water frontiers’

have been reached; easier to prevent! •Water resources as ‘the commons’

Towards people-centred and rights-based a. water entitlements

•Target regulatory permits and enforcement first to high-impact users, also in investment treaties, with locally appropriate conditions (core minimum of water resource entitlements; waste discharge; sharing of benefits in infrastructure investments, etc.)

•Quantify volumes and jobs per drop

Towards people-centred and rights-basedb. state regulation

~ 22 ha

Source: DWA WARMS data and B. Schreiner

Registered volumes of water by number of users in the Inkomati water management area

3. Global rights-based dialogue ?! Towards voluntary guidelines for people-

centred land-water tenure •Process: joint people-centred processes to ensure

informed, voluntary and prior consent to water-land investments at local, national and international levels

•Substance: joint framing of issues for rights-based land, water, forestry, and fisheries, for example:•Accelerated land-water infrastructure services: a human

right to 100 lpcd near homesteads?• ‘Core minimum’ water resource entitlements to realize

indivisible human rights •Negotiations with high-impact users for compensation

and shared benefits, also in investment contracts

Thank you for your kind attention