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Working Paper 37
(50 pages) The Water Resources Management Research Capacity Development Programme (WRMRCDP) focuses on research capacity development and knowledge dissemination in the field of water resources management in catchment areas surrounding the Tonle Sap Lake, Cambodia. The programme is running for five years (July 2006 to June 2011), and is being implemented by the Natural Resources and Environment Unit (NRE) of the Cambodia Development Resource Institute (CDRI), with financial support from AusAID, and involvement from collaborating research partners: the University of Sydney (USyd), the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP), the Ministry of Water Resources and Meteorology (MOWRAM) and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF). This working paper is the first large publication of WRMRCDP. This literature review provides a preliminary assessment of water resources management in Cambodia and has been prepared by the water team of WRMRCDP in connection with ongoing capacity building and development activities. The paper examines the existing literature on water resources management in terms of its physical basis, governance/institutional arrangements and legal frameworks, and draws on experience at the international, regional and in-country levels. Physical Basis for Water Resources Management It is important to understand the physical basis of a catchment before looking at water governance and other issues related to water management. Within a catchment, water is found in a series of interconnected “reservoirs”. These reservoirs include surface water (overland flow, stream-flow, lake, and floodplain wetlands), groundwater, and atmospheric water sources. WRMRCDP focuses on two of these reservoirs – surface water and groundwater resources. Surface water and groundwater continually move between reservoirs, and both within and between catchments. Activities undertaken in any individual reservoir can have extensive impacts on other reservoirs within the system, and failing to recognise these impacts in advance can result in unforeseen consequences. Early recognition of the interconnected nature of catchment processes improves the likely success of water development projects, increasing the potential for such projects to become economically and environmentally sustainable. Three interconnected components of the hydrological environment are analysed within this literature review. These three components are: fluvial and groundwater processes (surface and subsurface interactions), longitudinal variations, and catchment processes (including lateral processes and floodplains). Understanding the mechanisms underlying these three components is vital to ensuring the sustainability of Cambodia’s future water management strategies. This paper also examines ways in which human activities contribute to the deterioration of river environments, primarily through their impact on river discharge. For example, placing a dam on a river causes a decrease in discharge downstream, which reduces the transport capacity of the flow. Human activity also has biophysical impacts, as the extraction and/or impoundment of water can have profound impacts on both upstream and downstream aquatic ecosystems. Most aquatic organisms have adapted to a relatively narrow range of environmental conditions (e.g. temperature, stream chemistry, the timing and duration of flooding, etc.). Extraction and impoundment of water invariably alters this delicate balance. In addition, dams act as physical barriers to migratory aquatic species and to nutrients sourced from upstream sites. Catchment processes include fundamental interconnected activities observed laterally between the constituents of in-channel flows and adjacent floodplain zones. Human activities have significantly disrupted the important exchanges between river and floodplain, effectively disconnecting the river channel from its adjacent landscape. The major consequence of such disruptions has been a reduction in ecologic diversity—both within the channel and on the floodplain. Although humans have traditionally adopted management approaches that prevent flooding this can come at a cost to ecosystem health, potentially reducing the sustainability of floodplain activities such as irrigated agriculture. Governance/Institutional Arrangements for Water Resources Management Governance has become a key consideration in the international literature on water governance and development. For example, The United Nations’ World Water Development Report (2003) states that the water crisis is mainly a crisis of governance. The 1992 Dublin-Rio Statement acknowledges that water is massive in volume but “finite” in nature. The volume of water available is limited, and increasing use, fuelled by rapidly increasing population and economic growth, thus creates scarcity in relation to demand. Water governance addresses key issues that arise when promoting the public good. Access to water resources has a big impact on the rural poor. Access to clean water promotes public well-being. For poor, rural farmers in Cambodia, irrigation serves as insurance against crop failures during dry spells and provides opportunities for farmers to grow two, or even three, rice crops a year. However, there are dilemmas with seeing water as a scarce resource on the one hand, and the need for water provision as a development goal, on the other. The tensions between these two concerns are central to this project. Tensions arise between the push to develop water infrastructure to achieve development goals, and the risk of undermining economic and environmental sustainability, social equity and ecosystem values on which rural livelihoods are based. It is the concepts of physical scarcity (i.e. scarcity of water as a physical resource in relation to demand for it) and economic scarcity (i.e. scarcity of resources for investment that allow water to be mobilised to meet human needs) that are most relevant in this context. How is water governance defined? The Global Water Partnership defines water governance broadly as “the range of political, social, economic and administrative systems that are in place to regulate the development and management of water resources and provision of water services at different levels of society”. Increasingly we see universalistic governance concepts applied to water. For example, the ADB flags governance as “promoting sound development management” and defines it as “the manner in which power is exercised in the management of a country’s social and economic resources for development”. It identifies accountability, participation, predictability and transparency as key elements in good governance. For the purposes of this study, water governance is referred to as the societal arrangements around water, including structures and processes of authority, collective action, accountability, transparency and participation that both facilitate and constrain improved management. Good governance is often understood to comprise the rule of law, effective state institutions, transparency and accountability in the management of public affairs, respect for human rights, and the participation of all citizens in the decisions that affect their lives. Governance implies management and regulation of the public good that goes beyond the centralised, monolithic nation-state. The ways in which water is perceived has significant implications for the ways in which it is governed and managed. Changing perceptions in recent years have shifted the dominant paradigm in water governance away from water as a public good toward water as a scarce commodity, but the shift is not complete or linear. Water is perceived both as a public good and as an economic good. As a public good, water is not just a good we consume but is also vital to life. No one can or should be excluded from using water: everyone can use it and no one can have a monopoly over its use. Perceiving water as a public good and the subsequent logic of it being free to all does create a few problems. The state is often unable to respond to the needs of citizens due to an excess of bureaucracy and rules and regulations. Management of water by public institutions is prone to failure as employees primarily pay attention to rent-seeking opportunities, often at the expense of effective service delivery. Seeing water as a public good can also lead to wasteful use as it is free and wastage incurs no cost. Supplying water at no cost in Cambodia could make some water projects unviable in the long term, especially without an assured governmental budget. Perceiving water as an economic good raises the question of whether water should be free, or whether the use and management of water resources should be subject to pricing mechanisms and other market forces. Past failure to recognise the economic value of water has led to wasteful and environmentally damaging uses of the resource. The notion of water as an economic good holds that private markets can respond to the needs of the people faster than the state. This approach may lead to the establishment of cost recovery schemes for construction, maintenance, and operation of infrastructure, so that irrigation and drinking water projects are sustainable and achieve a level of ownership and management by the user group/community. However, this idea of water as an economic good has also been criticised as socially unacceptable, with market-based water allocation putting the poor, in particular, in a disadvantaged position. Between the two extremes, there is a growing movement, the hybrid perspective, which sees water as both a public good and an economic good. The hybrid perspective, attempting to achieve both pro-poor accountability and sustainability of water management, tries to ensure that everyone has the right to water, especially drinking water, and argues that there should be more private investment in water development to meet the need for water in growing economies. However, the hybrid perspective faces some challenging questions around issues such as price setting and the state’s responsibility to ensure minimum water rights and maximum allowable water use to ensure fairness and sustainability. For many years, the dominant paradigm of water management was large-scale water projects. This paradigm held until the 1990s when alternative development approaches began shifting to smaller scales. Critiques of large-scale projects were centred around issues such as lack of responsiveness to local needs and disproportionate social and environmental impacts. Unlike large-scale schemes, a small-scale approach is usually more decentralised, and better enables people to communicate their needs to local officials and service providers. Principles of subsidiarity encourage decision making at the lowest appropriate level, with full public consultation and involvement of users in the planning and implementation of water projects. People are more likely to accept public policy if they are involved in the planning of policy, as this involvement gives them a sense of ownership. Small-scale schemes are seen to have a greater likelihood of success in this regard. Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) takes a basin-wide approach to water management, and is increasingly seen as an important tool for sustainable exploitation of water resources for development. IWRM seeks to address problems of sectoral and geographical fragmentation of water resource management in its river basin or catchment context. IWRM focuses on issues such as the impact of upstream development on downstream water use in terms of the quantity and quality of water, and of preventing conflict between upstream and downstream users. Integration of catchment management with other development and conservation sectors is essential. Both poverty alleviation policies and catchment management policies need to be taken into account when planning IWRM. Water Resources Management in the Mekong Region and in Cambodia The Mekong River Basin is a diverse region of 70 million people living across six countries: Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Burma and Yunan in China. As part of these countries’ push for rapid economic growth and development, there is pressure to increase access to water to generate electricity and agricultural irrigation, and to provide water to urbanisation and industrial development. Development is uneven. China, Thailand and Vietnam are investing more on generating electricity to support local production and urbanisation while Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar are still in the process of investing on basic irrigation systems for agricultural production. Intensification of water use in Cambodia has the potential to take Cambodia from being a relatively open catchment system toward a “closed” system. Closure brings a need for governance arrangement that do not arise in more open systems, as with different users water requirements become progressively interlinked and competitive. Co-riparian states tend to be more cooperative when dealing with water resources management than other resources, but the degree of cooperation still depends on self-interest and the capacity of individual states to accommodate individual development interests. Although international cooperation and negotiation to ensure equal rights to water access for individual countries’ development is recognised and institutionalised through the Mekong River Commission, it remains partial and weak. Despite increased private investment in the water sector, little effort has been made to include the private sector in the process of coordination and conflict mitigation in basin-wide approaches. Another challenge of regional cooperation to consider in Cambodia’s case is the cost of upstream effects on ecological systems downstream. Article 7 of the 1995 MRC Agreement on the Cooperation for the Sustainable Development of the Mekong River Basin requires each co-riparian state to make every effort to avoid, minimise and mitigate harmful effects that might occur to the environment, especially the water quantity and quality, the aquatic (eco-system) conditions, and the ecological balance of the Mekong River Basin water resources or discharge of wastes and return flows. However, Laos and Vietnam, for example, have been dam-building in the upper catchment of the Sekong River Basin, to generate electricity for sale to Thailand and Vietnam. These hydroelectricity dams affect hydrological flows and the livelihoods of the people who live along the Sesan and Srepok rivers, the Sekong’s tributaries, and the flow into the Mekong, affecting aquatic eco-systems, fish and fish production in the Tonle Sap. Internal limitations have constrained the capacity of the Cambodian government to voice its concerns over the negative impacts, and it has been left to donors and NGOs to voice concerns about the ecological and environment impacts of dam building on downstream activities in Cambodia. A key issue within Cambodia concerns the challenges of cooperation between agencies. By nature, a river basin cuts across many territorial boundaries. However, overlapping responsibilities amongst stakeholders make for inefficient management. There are many ministries involved in the management of water resources in Cambodia, but there is no framework for the management of water resources that integrates all the various sectors involved. Following the shift in the water management paradigm from large centrally managed schemes to small locally managed schemes, the ADB in 1999 introduced Participatory Irrigation Management and Development (PIMD) to Cambodia. This involves people at all levels, especially locals who are directly concerned with irrigation water, in the planning, development and management of water. However, donors come into an area with a new idea and try to instil it into the local community and it seems not to have been a great success. The success of PIMD depends largely on participation, but the required participation is often limited. Farmer Water User Communities exemplify the problems of achieving effective participation in decentralised water management for irrigation and other purposes. Institutions are essential in the management of water resources as they provide and enforce the rules governing the behavior of all actors to ensure predictability and certainty. However, institution building is a lengthy process, often taking generations to complete, and even then the outcome is unpredictable. Cambodian institutional performance has never been strong as Cambodia has been through difficult times for more than three decades. The most destructive time for institution building was when Cambodia was under the Pol Pot regime between 1975 and 1979. Aside from historical factors, it can also be argued that institutional performance in Cambodia is poor due to unclear definition of roles and responsibilities. For example, water-governing institutions in Cambodia have been operating in a vacuum, with comprehensive water law not coming into existence until May 2007. Related to the issue of water governance is the rule of law, and the legal frameworks put in place to regulate water. The starting point for the analysis of a regulatory framework as it pertains to water resources management is firstly to identify and secondly to evaluate the existing domestic and international legal frameworks. Research initially needs to determine what the rules are, and when and how these rules apply. To achieve the key objectives of sustainable development and equitable outcomes any regulatory framework for water management should address the triple concerns of appropriate implementation, enforcement and conflict resolution mechanisms. Customary legal systems are also important in water management. Customary legal systems are those based on existing norms and practices, whereas formal legal systems are those backed up by law and state apparatus. Both are important in the context of water resources management internationally. Laws and policies related to water resources management in Cambodia: On the domestic front the sources for water law in Cambodia are many and varied. They include:
Reform in natural resource management in Cambodia more broadly has focused on strengthening three important pillars: sustainable forest management policy; natural resources and biodiversity protection; and community forestry development promotion. The policies and regulations related to natural resource management in Cambodia include:
There are many commentaries on the impediments to the enforcement of laws in Cambodia. Some of those hurdles are related to the provisions of law and enforcement which may be the result of jurisdictional overlap, the absence of transparency mechanisms and a lack of political will. It is also important to clarify the regulatory framework as it applies to the legal agreements for water use ownership rights, especially at the local level with the Farmer Water User Community (FWUC). This paper reviews international, regional and in-country experiences relevant to water resources management from physical, governance and legal perspectives. Through a combination of this literature review and a field-based social/institutional assessment, the Water Resources Management Research Capacity Development Programme (WRMRCDP) seeks to draw on concepts derived from the several disciplinary approaches reviewed to pose relevant questions in two main contexts: irrigation development and management, and managing water in its catchment context. These contexts are closely related, in the sense that isolated irrigation scheme management needs to be considered with reference to the wider water supply and project impact issues.
This
literature review shows that in order to manage water effectively, it is
imperative to consider both the physical attributes of water within its
catchment context, and the socio-economic factors including governance, law
and the wider developmental context in which water is being used. The three
areas of literature reviewed in this paper provide an important background
for research geared to help achieve agricultural production increases and
sustainable uses of water resources in Cambodia A fuller literature review
would also incorporate economic dimensions. The key research questions,
derived in part from this literature review, and supplemented by the
field-based social/institutional assessment, will focus on six key issues:
coordination, scarcity, allocation, participation, evaluation process and
assumptions in project appraisal, and impact. To deal with these key issues,
physical, governance, economic and legal dimensions are considered in the
research framework of the WRMRCDP. |