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Water Nepal

Wate rNe palJOURNAL OF WATER RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT

Volume 7Number 2

Jan-Aug 1999

ISSN 1027-0345

editorial

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features

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book review 115-123

Issue and Authors:Water Wisdom

Values, Multiple Uses, and Competing Demandsfor Water In Peri-Urban Contexts

Ethics, Environment and Livelihood Issues inPeri-Urban Water Management: Insights fromYeman, India and the U.S.

Harvesting Rainwater: Simple and InnovativeApproaches to Water Management

Pricing of Rural Drinking Water: Reliance ofWillingness to Pay Estimates

Water and Sanitation Services: InstitutionalEvolution in Finland, 1850-2000

Local Level Water Management: The Experi-ences of Helvetas Nepal

The Political Economy of Water in South Asia

Dying Wisdom: Rise, fall and Potential of India'sTraditional Water Harvesting Systems

R uth S . Meinz e n-Dick

Marcus Moe nch

Adhityan Appan

V. R atna R eddy

Tapio S . Katko

Achyut Luite l and S hyam K.C.

R e vie we d by Dipak Gyawali

contents

EDITORIAL POLICY

Water Nepal Water Nepal

Water Nepal

Water Nepal

Water Nepal

Water NepalEditorial: Issue and Authors

Viewpoint

Feature Articles

Reports on Gray Literature

Book Review

Water Nepal

is published two times a year by Nepal Water ConservationFoundation. is a publication for planners, engineers, scientists, policymakers, and administrators engaged in water development and management. Its aimis to function as a forum for sharing experiences in different aspects of water re-source development. Each issue of includes summaries of new tech-niques, reflections on current approaches in water development, management, re-search findings, and case studies of innovative practices including field experience.As a matter of policy publishes articles not published elsewhere. Butpieces that are of policy relevance for Nepal, that serve educational purposes, willbe included.

Editorials, feature articles, and reports in will discuss water man-agement problems, analysis of long term development needs and trends, disputeresolution, impact assessment and mitigation, overcoming weaknesses and ensur-ing institutional learning for sustainable water development; as well as balancingwater development with social and environmental objectives at the micro, meso andmacro levels by understanding the interdisciplinary relationship between water useand sustainability.

Each issue of includes – an overview of the articles and authors in

the issue. – a column that offers views on contemporary water development

issues and provides a connecting thread to the views presented in the articlesof the particular volume.

– detailed presentations of theory and practices in water de-velopment. Members of Editorial Advisory Board and other peer reviewersreview these.

– reviews of past or contemporary public docu-ments in Nepal and abroad.

– books selected by the editorial board and reviewed by expertsin the appropriate field.

An Editorial Advisory Board of practitioners, scholars, and professionals in-volved in water development assists the editors in selecting materials included in

.Opinion expressed in the articles rests with the author/s and does not reflect

views of Nepal Water Conservation Foundation, advisors of the journal or its funders.

Editorial: Issues and Authors

WATER WISDOM

The Hague Meeting of March 2000

The Second World Water Forum held from 16 to 22 March, 2000, at the Haguehas identified four major themes for action: tackling urgent water priorities, mak-ing water governance effective, generating water wisdom, and investing for (check)a secure water future.1 The set of activities identified in the first theme includeprotecting and restoring water resource and ecosystems, achieving water-food se-curity, extending sanitation coverage and hygiene education, and improving themanagement of floods. The gathering at the Hague was a kaleidoscope of inter-ests representing the physical, social, cultural and political diversity of water man-agement. Academics, professionals, scientists, social activists, policy makers andadvocates of change at the level of grassroots armoured with hand-on-knowledgewere present at the meeting. The forum’s message was clear: the future of wateris not only about technological decisions, but is also related to reducing poverty,improving health, eliminating malnutrition and maintaining a healthy environmentin which clean water is available naturally.

The dawn of the twentieth century heralded a technologically-guided ap-proach to water. In 1900 A.D., the world witnessed the introduction of new meth-ods and techniques of fluid mechanics and hydraulics. To design water supply pipes,empirical equations in which hydrodynamics explained many aspects of fluid flowwere being established. The science of hydrology graduated to ‘empiricism’ afterits stage of modernisation from 1800 to 1900 A.D. The period of empiricism dur-ing which most of present-day hydrology was developed began in 1900 and lastedtill 1930. After 1930, when the young science ventured into maturity, hydrologyentered the stage of theorisation in many regions.2 In the Himalayan region, how-ever, the scientific monitoring of hydrological processes started only in the 1960’s.As a result, hydrological science is still passing through its youthful empirical stage,here.

In the beginning of twentieth century, South Asia already had large-scalecanal systems irrigating the of the Ganga and the Indus rivers; these werebuilt by the colonial government. While these systems did meet the objectives ofthe time – protective irrigation, revenue generation, and administrative control –

WATER NEPAL. VOL. 7, NO. 2, 2000, 1-7

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the canals were also life-size laboratories in which British scientists developed em-pirical theories of irrigation engineering. They also set the stage on which theoriesof practical hydraulics, sediment transport and river mechanics were subsequentlydeveloped. At the same time, the Bureau of Reclamation and the Corps of Engi-neers in the United States started large-scale water development activities, whichalso included the building of embankments for flood control. The efforts of thesetwo organisations created new knowledge about, hydraulics, geology and dam en-gineering as well as about material science related to these fields.

In the hundred-year period from 1901 to 2000, thousands of megawatts ofhydropower were generated. Globally 215 million hectares of land was broughtunder irrigation3 and safe drinking water became available to most of the people inthe developed societies. The manipulation of rivers by building water projects didbring benefits. The western United States, for example, was turned into one ofthe most prosperous economies of the world. Similar projects were also built inthe independent nations of the developing world although the specific contexts ofhydrology and the societal management needs of these countries were differentfrom those in America and Europe. Nonetheless, the particular paradigm of usingand managing water came to be recognised scientific and modern, while approachesrooted in local contexts were relegated to the vernacular.

The new knowledge came entwined with the notion of controlled manage-ment and of technical hardware solution ideas, which consolidated the perceptionthat principles based on experimentation, are universally valid.4 Indeed the basiclaws that explain fluid flow such as energy, matter and momentum conservationare universally valid. Ecology, society, and politics, however, introduce specificity,which necessitates the adaptation of this knowledge to specific management con-texts. In many societies, these linkages remain poorly understood, and, as a re-sult, water pollution, misuse and inefficiency are undermining not just water re-source base, but also base of sustenance on which communities live. Since thearrangements for managing water are iniquitous, a large section of the populationremains without benefits of improved water supplies.

The process of water development that occurred within growth based, con-sumption-oriented market economics also produced winner and losers. Those whohad to bear high social and environmental costs while water projects were beingbuilt have become losers even in developed western societies. Water policy ana-lyst Sandra Postel writes that the Cocopa Indians, who once lived on the plenty ofColorado River’s mouth, but today have to survive on the trickle that presentlyreaches the river’s mouth.5 The river’s flow is diverted via canals and aqueducts

ISSUES AND AUTHORS 3

to swimming pools, subsidised irrigation districts, golf courses affluent and con-dominiums of cities in the upstream reaches of the river. Over the time, Westernsocieties have established institutions that minimise differences, between losses andwinners while developing countries facing the challenges of modernisation havenot been as successful in achieving equity. Because of effective institutional ar-rangements, Western societies have taken better care of their water bodies, and itsaccess to their citizens and other users than developing societies have.

After independence, many developing countries embarked on the task of na-tion building; the construction of water projects was one of the major activitiestowards this end. While the new projects added MWs and cubic meters of waterfor allocation, they also led to high social and environmental costs, which eventoday remains unacknowledged. The tendency is to consider these costs as a nec-essary sacrifice in the quest for achieving greater common good. Because of theircomplex social stratification and social fault lines, the replication of the techno-logically guided knowledge system that evolved in the west without the concomi-tant adoption of its institutional arrangements to provide checks and balances con-tinues to widen the gap between winner and losers in societies of developing coun-tries. Institutionalised inefficiency, corruption, lack of empathy for the disadvan-taged, and a bureaucracy characterised by a propensity to filter out alternatives,however, maintains the technological hubris.

In recent decades, democracy has created some space for contestation, andthe certitude that only technological solution is the answer is being challenged. Thosewho bear the actual social cost have begun to question the mode of developmentembraced by the state, and lately projected as the playground of the market. Ques-tioning, however, is an anathema to the conventional way of doing business whoseexpectations are to rationalise only its own system of organising throughunconstested authority.

Given the extent of inequity in access to water, of misuse, and of degradation, theglobal events of the last decade of the twentieth century, which aimed to chart outthe principles of managing water, are logical. The onus started with the 1992 DublinConference, which stipulated four principles as follows:6

Fresh water is a finite and vulnerable resource essential to sustain life,development and the environment,

KNOWLEDGE AND PLURALITY

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Water development and management should be based on participatory approachesinvolving users, planners and policy makers at all levels,Women play a crucial role in the provision, management and safeguarding ofwater, andWater has an economic value in all its competing use and should be recognisedas an economic good.

The next important conference was the 1993 Earth Summit followed byThe Hague Forum of March 2000. These events have provided important lessons;the management of water is more than its physical manipulation, and involves in-teraction among users, organisations, markets and the society; tackling local levelsituations necessitates locally rooted responses; management decisions closer tothe resource use results in better outcomes; responses to water management donot occur independently of the larger social-political processes of governance.

The enunciation of the four themes by the Global Forum is significant interms of generating new water knowledge. The empirical theories of irrigation thatthe British engineers evolved in the of the rivers of the Punjab became thebasis of education. This knowledge developed within a political hegemony, in whicha managerial class exercised unchallenged power, and ignored social and ecologi-cal diversity. With independence and democracy, the power relation has undergonea sea of change. Bureaucratic authoritarianism, legal instruments, and organisa-tional arrangements designed to suit the bygone era, however, still continue to fostera strategy of control rooted in a monistic path to water management. Not only hasthe approach been unable to address misuse, inequity and degradation, but it hasalso stifled the innovations necessary for ushering in changes.

Therefore, it is within diverse contexts that the economic, social, ecologi-cal, cultural and religious functions of water have to be dealt with employing prac-tical and doable options. This process also needs to preserve the integrity of soci-ety without undermining the social, environmental and political interface. The as-sumption that one specific approach to water management is universally applica-ble in space and time lacks both scientific and historical backing. This understandingmust be internalised, as revived wisdom by establishments providing water educa-tion, which must also take cognisance of equity, ecology and efficiency. Thesewill form essence the of water management in the future, while ensuring water toa large section of the population still without access to it.

The papers of this volume of centre on the themes of values,wisdom and specific methods of fulfilling domestic water needs. The viewpoint

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by Ruth S. Meinzen-Dick, who is the senior research fellow at the InternationalFood Policy Research Institute, Washington D.C., looks at values of water in ur-ban and peri-urban regions. The author argues that for equitable water manage-ment, a society needs to go beyond simplistic notions about the desegregation ofmultiple uses and sources of water. Quality in addition to quantity needs to be partof the valuation of water and water rights. Negotiation among different stakeholdersis a useful approach while allocating and reallocating water in these regions.

Marcus Moench, President of the Institute of Social and Environmental Tran-sition based in Boulder, Colorado, examines points of tension over water use inperi-urban areas. He compares water use in Ta’iz and Sana’a in Yemen with simi-lar situations in the San Luis Valley in the western United States and Gujarat inIndia. Marketing as a mechanism to transfer water between agricultural and urbanuses has consequences for the interlinked environmental, economic and commu-nity systems in the areas of origin. A disjunction occurs because of a gap in un-derstanding the impacts the transfer has on systems that are interconnected. Thepapers by Ruth Mienzen Dick and Marcus Moench were presented in the panel onwater supply challenges in urban and peri urban region held at the 8th StockholmWater Symposium in August 1999.

The paper by Dr. Adhityan Appan Professor, School of Civil and Struc-tural Engineering Narjan Technological University, Singapore, discusses how In-donesia, Thailand and the Philippines have adopted rainwater harvesting systemsto meet water supply needs. Rainwater is not only a potential source for rural ar-eas, it is useful in meeting urban needs as well. The author discusses arrange-ments for collecting water from the roofs of high-rise buildings in Singapore touse for flushing toilet. The roofs of airports, factories, school buildings are poten-tial collecting surfaces to meet the needs for non-potable water in urban areas.Partnerships between water authorities and local level functionaries are needed ifurban runoff collection schemes are to be successful. The paper is based on thekeynote lecture the author delivered at the Conference of Rainwater HarvestingSystems organised by the Centre for Science and Environment in New Delhi inDecember 1999.

V. Ratna Reddy Professor at the Centre for Economic and Social Studies,Begumpet, Hyderbad, analyses estimates of Willingness to Pay (WTP) as a man-agement tool. The author argues that WTP should not be taken as an indicator forformulating price policies without analysing whether or not willingness to paymatches the ability to pay for drinking water. Presenting a case study of ruralRajasthan, the author suggests that WTP estimates may not always indicate the

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6 ISSUE AND AUTHORS

ability to pay for water, especially in water endowed regions. Household incomeinfluences WTP, and the burden on low-income households would be higher if ablanket pricing policy is adopted. Discriminatory pricing on the basis of incomewould be more appropriate, he argues. The paper is based on the report the au-thor prepared at Institute of Development Studies, Jaipur.

Tapio S. Katko, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Tempere, dis-cusses the history of water supply and sanitation in Finland. Before World War II,Finland was one of the poorest countries in Europe despite its rich water resourcebase. Changes occurred when the country began focussing on institutional reformsplacing more emphasis on trade and manufacturing sectors. In the drinking waterand sanitation sector, institutional changes involved the devolution of water supplyand sanitation service responsibilities to municipalities. The experience is relevantin developing countries, where the search is on for devising institutions that willimprove the quality of service with respect to water supply. It is based on theauthor’s book on the evolution of water services in Finland (Katko, 1996), thesummarised English version of that book (Katko, 1997), a case study on TampereCity water works (Juuti and Katko, 1998), and an on-going study on the experi-ence of private involvement in the provision services (Hukka and Katko, 1999).

With this issue we introduce a new column about innovation in the field.Achyut Luitel and Shyam K.C., currently piloting the method discuss the WaterResource Management Programme (WARM-P) approach introduced by Helvetas,Nepal in implementing rural drinking water systems. The programme aims at del-egating water management responsibility to the lowest appropriate level by facili-tating the Villages Development Committees (VDCs) in the acquisition of the insti-tutional capacity to plan and implement water projects. The approach would mini-mise problems caused by disputes over sources, which are endemic at the locallevel, by employing preventive rather than curative measures. With support andguidance, local leaders effectively contribute to improving management.

The Gray Literature of this issue deals with the political economy of waterin South Asia. We include both the concept note and the conclusion of a 1995conference at Madras. The conclusion has been expanded into a book in Nepalicalled which contains a translation of theReport of the Conference into Nepali and eighteen essays on different aspects ofwater. The book is currently being translated into Hindi.

Dipak Gyawali reviews published by the New Delhi based Centre

for Science and Environment (CSE). The effort that documents the traditional

Daksin Asia ma Pani ko Artha Rajniti,

Dying Wisdom: Rise, Fall and Potential of India’sTraditional Water Harvesting Systems


methods of water use is, according to the reviewer, a path-breaking exercise. How-ever, examining the product, the producer and the user in a composite frame, thereviewer concludes that the effort would have been much more valuable had amore ecological and less nation-centric approach been adopted for the researchthat went into producing the book. Perspectives of water management that are be-yond the nation-state should have been incorporated. He suggests that in its futureand revised edition, needs to bring out the wisdom of societies ofsimilar ecological regions of South Asia.

1 For themes for action, see DFID (2000)2 See K. Subramanya (1984)3 Based on Postel (1998)4 This concept is taken from Chapman (1995), who defines it as a legacy of Baconian science.5 Postel (1998).6 See Lonegran and Brooks (1994) for Dublin Principles

1. Chapman, G. P., 1995: E (Ed.)

Chapman G. P. and M. Thompson Mansell Publishing Ltd.2. DFID, 2000: , May.3. Lonergan, S. C. and Broods, D. B., 1994:

, IDRC, Ottawa.4. Sandra, P., 1998: Norton and company, New

York.5. Subramanya, K., 1984: , New Delhi, Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Com-

pany Limited.

Dying Wisdom

Op cit

nvironment Myth as International Politics: the Problems of BengalDelta in Water and the Quest for Sustainable Development in the Ganges valley.

Bringing water to the front burner - The Hague WaterWatershed: The Role of Fresh Water in the Israel-

Palestine ConflictPillars of Sand: Can the irrigation micracle last?

Engineering Hydrology

NOTES

REFERENCES

WATER NEPAL, VOL. 7, NO. 2, 2000, 9-12

Many languages have the expression ‘water is life’ because it indicates the highvalue that this resource has in many societies. It has many values: economic, so-cial, religious, ecological, and political. There are also many different uses of wa-ter such as, for agricultural and industrial production, human and animal consump-tion, physical and ritual washing, and ecosystem preservation. Each use hasdifferent values, depending on whose standpoint one takes, and what system ofvalues is used.

As long as water was abundant relative to demands, the differences werenot a problem. But as human populations have grown, along with per capita wa-ter consumption, competition and scarcity of water have emerged as major issues.Not only does each use take some water out, it also puts something into the wa-ter, causing water quality as well as quantity interactions among uses. This raisesbasic questions about how we value water across different uses and users.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in peri-urban areas, where demands forwater for industrial and domestic use, and for disposal of wastes, have been in-creasing most rapidly. Initially, municipal water supply was treated as a technicalissue of supply and waste disposal, often by a centralised authority. However, aswater demands exceed the availability of water near urban centres, and as the wastescreated exceed the capacity of treatment plants, water shortages and quality prob-lems have necessitated broader thinking and strategies to deal with the situation.Because many growing cities are located in basins where water supplies were al-ready being used, especially in the peri-urban areas, increasing water supplies hasoften required transferring water from other users (including the environment).This, in turn, requires assessing the values of water in its different uses.

VIE W P O I N T

RUTH S. MEINZEN-DICK,

INTRODUCTION

VALUES, MULTIPLE USES, AND COMPETING DEMANDSFOR WATER IN PERI-URBAN CONTEXTS

Senior Research FellowInternational Food Policy Research Institute

Washington DC, USA.

10 MEINZEN-DICK, R. S.

Drinking water scores high on most types of valuation systems for water use. Eco-nomic studies that use willingness to pay for water show very high values for drink-ing water, even among the very poor. From a public health standpoint, sufficientclean water for the population has a very high payoff, and from a political stand-point, lack of sufficient clean water is often a touch point for unrest anddissatisfaction with the government. Even most religions reserve special statusfor drinking water. In Islamic societies, this may apply to animal as well ashuman drinking water.

Supplying drinking water to growing urban populations is often used as arationale for expropriating water from other users to supply rapidly growing urbanwater demands. Many have even viewed the supply of potable water as the pri-mary function of municipal supply systems. But a closer look at how water isused in municipal systems reveals that a low proportion goes to drinking. Indus-trial, business and civic uses consume a large proportion of municipal water. Evenwhen we look at domestic water consumption, relatively little goes for drinkingand cooking, except among the very poor (who often do not have access to mu-nicipal water connections). As incomes rise, so does per capita water consump-tion, with an increasing share of water going to lawns, swimming pools, and othertypes of consumption. Urban and peri-urban agriculture may also use significantamounts of water from municipal supply systems, either in small home gardens orin commercial horticultural production centres adjoining the cities.

As cities have grown and incomes risen, the demand for water for munici-pal systems has increased dramatically. Furthermore, because municipal systemsgenerally aim to provide potable quality water, the growing pollution from indus-trial and sewage effluent around cities makes it increasingly difficult to meet thewater demand (often phrased as ‘requirements’) of cities from the rivers and aq-uifers around the cities. As a result, cities look further and further afield for theirwater sources.

When we go beyond drinking water, there are fewer consensuses on whichuses have the highest value. Judging by economic measures such as willingnessto pay, municipal and industrial uses often have the highest value, but when theimpact of such water withdrawals and their effluents on ecosystems is takeninto account, these uses may not be valued as highly. On the other hand, environ-mental uses that do not pay at all (free flow of rivers, and fish, wildlife, and eco-system uses) may be held above economic values. The Public Trust Doctrine, a

WATER USES AND VALUES

VALUES, MULTIPLE USES, AND COMPETITING DEMANDS 11

heritage of Roman law found in most countries, has been used in many contextsto protect environmental water uses and protect them from appropriation by otheruses that are willing to pay more.

Where growing municipal water use cannot be met by tapping ‘undevel-oped’ or ‘unused’ water, either because there is none available or because furtherexploitation is blocked by environmental conservation concerns, water transfersare required—either from other basins or from other users, usually agriculture. Thephenomenon of cities acquiring water from agriculture is found around the world,not only in major cities like Kathmandu, Ahmedabad, Madras, and Los Angeles,but also in smaller towns and urban centres. Water transfers may be private andad hoc, with individual well owners pumping water into tankers to be sold in thecity, or public and planned, with water districts taking water from irrigation sys-tems through a variety of institutional means, with and without compensation tothe irrigated farmers.

Transferring water from irrigation systems to municipal systems is oftenjustified on the grounds that it is going to a ‘higher value use.’ In economic terms,irrigation systems are seen as consuming large volumes of water, and producing arelatively low value of output, especially when used for staple grains that have lowand declining world prices. Even if all the water in municipal systems is not as-sumed to be drinking water, the higher prices charged for municipal water is anindicator of the higher economic value of water in urban uses.

But this approach misses many of the uses and values of water in rural ar-eas. Irrigation systems supply water for a range of productive and reproductiveuses. For example, a recent study of the Kirindi Oya irrigation system in Sri Lankafound water used not only for field crops, but also for permanent vegetation, gar-den horticulture, fishing, livestock, wildlife, and small enterprises. Rural populationsalso face challenges in meeting their basic drinking water requirements, althoughthese problems may not be as apparent or receive the same political attention asurban water demands. In Kirindi Oya, even where rural piped domestic water sup-ply systems are available, the quantities supplied are not usually enough for all do-mestic purposes, so people use irrigation systems for bathing, washing clothes,and even recreation. Although these uses may not consume much water and areoften overlooked in water resource planning, the Kirindi Oya study shows that theycan have high value for local people and their livelihoods.

At the same time, the growing use of agrochemicals in irrigation systemscan threaten other water uses, especially fishing, wildlife, and domestic use.Agricultural production can also be threatened by industrial effluents, either

12 MEINZEN-DICK, R. S.

downstream of cities, in peri-urban areas, or through dispersed industrial produc-tion. Thus, water quality issues have increasingly become part of the valuation ofwater. Even discussions of water rights must now address water quality as wellas quantity aspects.

Where the opportunity arises to sell water to cities, either through formalchannels such as water banks or through informal means such as pumping waterto tankers to sell to urban consumers, many farmers and rural well owners haveeagerly done so. Others, however, have argued that more is at stake than simpleeconomic transactions; that water is not a regular commodity, but one which hasa fundamental role in rural lifestyles and livelihoods. This is especially problematicwhere a few people participate in the decision-making and receive the benefits ofwater transfer, while the rest of the rural community loses out. Formal waterrights for these other users may not be ascribed or recognised by the state, butinterfering with them can cause protests (Bruns and Meinzen-Dick, 2000).

For equitable and integrated water resource management, we need to go beyondsimplistic notions to a desegregation of the multiple uses and sources of water inurban, peri-urban, as well as rural areas. This is essential for identifying the hy-drologic linkages between the sources of supply (and channels for waste disposal)of different uses and users. Recognising the different strategies employed by dif-ferent categories of people to meet their water and economic livelihood needs takesus beyond the concepts of a uniform service group, to identifying differences amongthe various stakeholders. Instead of seeking to impose a single valuation ‘currency’for water, the objective can be to create processes for negotiation among differentstakeholders, so that all can have input into the allocation and reallocation of waterin peri-urban areas.

Bruns, B.R. and Meinzen-Dick, R.S., (Eds.) 2000: International Foodand policy Research Institute, Vistaar Publications, New Delhi.

CONCLUSION

REFERENCE

Negotiating Water Rights,


MARCUS MOENCH

Tensions over water management are increasingly evident in peri-urban areas due to the multipleroles water plays as a critical resource supporting domestic and environmental use and economicsystems. Valuations of groundwater es tab lished through market mechanisms tend to reflectextractive, not , values. In the case of surface water values such as instream flows, foodsecurity, or cultural systems that depend, for example, on the s truc ture of rural agriculturaleconomies, also tend to be poorly reflected in the market price for water in different applications.As a result, tensions emerge. Tensions also emerge due to deeply held ethical positions regardingthe role of private and public rights to water. Islam emphasises the common nature of waterrights. Similar sentiments also underlie elements of common law in the West. Such concepts oftenconflict with equally deeply established traditions involving private water rights.This paper examines points of tension over water use in peri-urban areas near Ta’iz and Sana’a inYemen and compares them to similar situations in the San Luis Valley (Western United States)and Gujarat (India). It focuses on the existing water markets and water marketing proposals asmechanisms to transferring water among agricultural and urban uses. Details about water marketsare presented along with the consequences of transfers for environmental, economic and communitysystems in the areas of origin. Key gaps in our understanding of the impacts of transfers on theseinterconnected systems are also identified. Particular emphasis is given to: (1) the limits of scientificunderstanding of hydrological systems; (2) the limited understanding of environmental service;and (3) the soc ial, cultural and environmental values that ate poorly reflec ted in markettransactions. Insights from this examination are then related back to some of the underlying ethicalissues that influence how different societies view communal and individuals rights to water andto the checks and balances on water transfers associated with different mechanisms (market, andadministrative) under conditions of uncertainty.

The transfer of water from rural agricultural uses to urban domestic and industrialuses is an increasingly common feature in peri-urban areas world-wide. Transferoccurs through both formal and informal market mechanisms. These mechanisms,whether planned or not, treat water as an economic good and, as a result, areconsistent with management approaches advocated by international organisationssuch as the World Bank (World Bank, 1993). While, it is essential to recognise

ETHICS, ENVIRONMENT AND LIVELIHOOD ISSUES INPERI-URBAN WATER MANAGEMENT

INSIGHTS FROM YEMEN, INDIA AND THE U.S.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION

Boulder, coloradoPresident: Institute for Social and Environmental Transition

in situ

14 MOENCH, M.

that water is an economic good, it is equally important to recognise the limitationsof market mechanisms and the types of market failures inherently associated withmany water management issues. For markets to function efficiently, rights needto be clearly defined in ways that minimise the externalities associated with trans-fers. This paper argues that, in most cases, these externalities are sufficiently com-plicated that approaching water management needs from a rights and economicperspective is ineffective. Instead, the wide array of social, environmental and eco-nomic trade-offs inherent in water allocation necessitates political economic ap-proaches based on balance of power concepts.

This paper is organised around a series of themes central to debates overwater allocation and the role of markets. Each of these themes is illustrated byspecific examples drawn from case study areas in India, Yemen and the WesternUnited States. The study starts with the interconnected nature of systems.

In their classic engineering textbook, Viessman, Knapp, Lewis and Harbaugh, de-fine hydrology as encompassing ‘the occurrence, distribution, movement and prop-erties of the waters of the earth and their environmental relationships’ (Viessman,Knapp et al, 1977). This starting point reflects the dynamic nature of the hydro-logic system and the way that system interacts with environmental systems. Inthe rural context, the dynamics of hydrologic and environmental systems dynam-ics are heavily influenced by patterns of agricultural water use and other humaninterventions. Agricultural and other water use is, in turn, affected by agricultural,economic, technological, demographic and cultural systems. All these systems aredynamic. Their characteristics vary across different tie scales and are influencedby a broad array of local, regional and global factors. As a result, the water man-agement equation, on a conceptual level, can be characterised as a function of mul-tiple, interacting, dynamic and complex systems.

The above observation is not new. It does, however, raise questions aboutthe viability of comprehensive integrated approaches to water management. Be-cause the systems affecting water management needs and options are dynamic,efforts at comprehensive integrated analysis have often become outdated by thetime they are completed. The ground has shifted, or to put it another way, thewater has flowed under the bridge, by the time the integrated assessment isfinished. Recognition of this problem underlies calls for ‘systemic perspectives’(Moench, 1999) and adaptive management (Western Water Policy ReviewAdvisory Commission, 1998).

THEME 1: INTERCONNECTED SYSTEMS

ETHICS, ENVIRONMENTAND LIVELIHOOD ISSUES IN PERI-URBAN WATER MANAGEMENT 15

Returning to the core theme, it is important to recognise the degree to whichinteractions between hydrologic, environmental, economic and other systems shapethe characteristics of rural areas. In most rural areas, hydrologic systems havebeen heavily altered by decades or centuries of human intervention. Existing envi-ronmental economic and cultural characteristics reflect and, in many cases, havebeen created by these alterations. The case of the San Luis Valley (SLV) in south-ern Colorado illustrates this facts particularly well.

The SLV represents a remarkable example of environmentally compatible eco-nomic and cultural systems. In the SLV, irrigation return flows and associatedgroundwater recharge sustain a distributed network of seasonally flooded wetlandsand priority natural heritage sites that are classified by many environmental organi-sations as among the best in the inter-mountain West. These sites are dependenton patterns of water allocation. As one review concluded, ‘protection of the uniquehydrological regime of the Valley and the maintenance of the water table will benecessary to conserve both riparian and terrestrial sites and habitats.’ (Pague andSimonson, 1994). Wetland in-stream flows and vegetation communities often re-quire high water tables. Surface irrigation systems developed in the 1880’s play amajor role in groundwater recharge and in maintaining the high groundwater levelson which these environmental features in the valley depend. Take the specific caseof wetlands. The wetlands in the Alamosa wildlife refuge, which is a critical habi-tat for the Sandhill crane and contains the highest duck nesting density of anywetlands in the United States, were originally created by irrigation for hay mead-ows. The Fish and Wildlife Service operates the wetlands by maintaining the origi-nal irrigation system, and by utilising the water rights established by the previouslandowners for irrigation purposes. Furthermore, according to the refuge director,the high quality habitat in the refuge is critically dependent on the surrounding op-erational hay meadows as a buffer habitat and the more distant grain fields as aprimary food source for migratory waterfowl.1

In addition to environmental values, land use and hydrologic regimes are cen-tral to agriculture and to the economic foundations of communities in the Valley.The deep cultural roots in the SLV derive from early Hispanic communities andlater Mormon and other settlers. The SLV is among the oldest permanently irri-gated areas in Colorado. Irrigation started in the 1880’s and, ‘by the year 1900,1800 miles of canals, ditches and laterals had been constructed in the valley, andthe streams flowing into the valley were essentially fully appropriated’ (McFadden,1989). Now, irrigated agriculture: ‘is the basis of a traditional way of life for eth-nic communities that are proud of their histories and have a high level of interest

16 MOENCH, M.

in maintaining their historic way of life despite pressures for change’ (National Re-search Council, 1992). In sum, the cultural, economic and environmental charac-teristics of the San Luis Valley are tightly intertwined and directly dependent onpatterns of water allocation.

The interconnected nature of the water use patterns, the environment andthe culture found in the San Luis Valley is far from unique, indeed, it may be typi-cal of many areas throughout the world. In India, for example, irrigation is a criti-cal resource for an array of environmental values in rural areas. The role rice andother irrigated grain fields play as a food source for migratory waterfowl and otherwildlife can, for example, easily be observed. Tanks, water harvesting structures,and other surface irrigation systems also play major environmental roles due to thehabitat they provide for a wide array of plant, bird and animal species. In additionto biodiversity, surface water-harvesting structures and irrigation systems play amajor role in groundwater recharge. This is particularly important because the rapidexpansion of groundwater extraction over recent decades has resulted in widespreadoverdraft (World Bank, 1998). Surface water use patterns are thus important forthe sustainability of irrigated agriculture and for maintaining the rural environment.Finally, water harvesting structures and irrigation systems such as tanks have beena central cultural feature of rural areas in India throughout recorded history (Agarwaland Narain, 1997). As in the case of San Luis Valley, rural economics, culture andenvironmental characteristics are tightly interconnected. Many researchers now ad-vocate increasing in water harvesting through small-scale, locally-managed struc-tures as the best approach to addressing India’s water problems. This approachfits well with the traditional role water harvesting structures have played as a cor-nerstone of rural life and the environment in India.

In the case of Yemen, irrigated agriculture has been the primary foundationfor rural populations and their culture since prehistoric times. Average annual rain-fall exceeds 250 mm only in some western and southern mountain regions (WRAY-35, 1995). As a result, irrigation is essential for agriculture in most areas. Irrigatedagriculture may have developed in areas such as the Marib Plain as early as thesecond or even late third millennium B.C. (WRAY-35, 1995). The Great Dam nearMarib is probably the best example of the historical importance of irrigation inYemen. It was constructed in the sixth century BC and operated for between 1100and 1200 years until the beginning of the seventh century A.D. Analysts comment,‘Its apparent success could not have been achieved without well-organised soci-ety with firm political leadership and an advanced technical level. The dam waswashed away and, with huge efforts rebuilt several times. The final collapse, which


is mentioned in the Holy Koran, Surah XXXIV (Sura Saba), marked an abrupt socio-economic decline in the area, accompanied by the massive migration of farmers,(WRAY-35, 1995).’

The interconnection among water harvesting, economic systems and ruralculture in this high profile example is paralleled in the case of other water harvest-ing systems throughout Yemen both historically and at present. Traditional spateirrigation systems (designed to capture and allocate flood flows) are widespreadand, along with systems for allocating spring flows, allowed the development ofcultures based on irrigated agriculture throughout much of Yemen. The rules andinstitutions for the operation of these systems are complex and deeply embeddedcultural and religious characteristics of the areas where they are found. In addi-tion, over recent decades groundwater irrigation has spread rapidly and now formsthe economic mainstay of rural population throughout the country. Unfortunately,groundwater resources are limited and the expansion of irrigated agriculture basedon groundwater extraction over recent decades is largely unsustainable (WRAY-35, 1995). The high level of dependency on water combined with the complexarray of traditional and modern systems represents a major challenge for those seek-ing to introduce new water projects or to reform the legal structures governingwater use (Vincent, 1990; Al-Eryani, 1995). Access to water and the reform ofwater use systems in rural areas now represents one of the most politically sensi-tive issues in Yemen.

What do these experiences imply? In all three of the situations discussedabove, water use patterns are the primary foundation for rural economics and ru-ral cultures. As a result, as in the historical case of the Marib Dam, major changesin water allocation patterns will have equally major implications for the economiesand cultures that have developed based on patterns of water use. Water use pat-terns are also tightly interconnected with the environmental characteristics of ruralareas. This connection is particularly well documented in the case of the San LuisValley but, given the long history of water development and the extent to whichhydrologic systems have been altered from their ‘natural’ state, it is equally im-portant in India and Yemen. In many cases it is a misnomer to distinguish between‘natural’ environmental values and those created as a result of decades and centu-ries of environmental modification.

The overall lesson, therefore, is that changes in patterns of water allocationcan not be discussed only in terms of economic efficiency. Because environmen-tal, cultural and economic systems are tightly interconnected with patterns of wa-ter use, changes in water allocation are likely to have major effects on these larger

18 MOENCH, M.

regional systems. As discussed below, these effects are unlikely to be reflected inallocation systems based only on water rights and market mechanisms. A second-ary point has to do with the question of water use efficiency. In the San Luis Val-ley case, ‘inefficient’ flood irrigation techniques are a major source of groundwaterrecharge and are essential for maintaining regional wetlands. Increases in field ap-plication efficiency would reduce return flows to subsequent users and to the en-vironment. This is probably also the case in much of India and Yemen. As a re-sult, major questions exist regarding how water use efficiency should be meas-ured. The economic and technical efficiency of water use at the field and agricul-tural operation level generally reflects the returns to water within the subsystem ofthat individual operation. It doesn’t reflect the overall set of ‘values’, biodiversity,regional economic stability, and cultural maintenance, produced in conjunction withspecific water use patterns.

Markets for water are emerging in many parts of the world. Many of these mar-kets are relatively localised and, in rural areas, involve informal sales of water be-tween adjacent agricultural users. As urban areas have expanded, however, the trans-fer of water from rural to urban uses via market or market-related mechanismshas become increasingly common, particularly in peri-urban areas. World-wide, mostof these markets function on an informal basis. In only a relatively few areas aremarket transactions based on a formalised and regulated system of rights.

The emergence of rural-urban water markets reflects tremendous differencesin the economic value of water for urban users versus that for rural agriculturalusers. Urban consumers typically require relatively small amounts of water to meetdirect consumption and domestic use needs and are both willing and able to payhigh prices for supply. In contrast, agricultural users require high volumes of wa-ter and, given the typically low returns to water in agriculture, can’t complete withthe prices urban users pay. The above dynamics are relatively well known. It isimportant, however, to recognise the tremendous differences in the value of waterdriving the evolution of markets along with their distributional and other implica-tions. The case of Yemen is illustrative.

In Yemen, water scarcity for urban consumers has led to the growthof tanker markets which bring water from surrounding rural areas to sell tocity dwellers. The structure of these markets in the Ta’iz region is outlined in thetable below:

THEME 2: EMERGENCE OF WATER MARKETS


The tanker markets around the city of Ta’iz in Yemen involve the transportof water from areas within perhaps a 10 km radius surrounding the city to urbandwellers. The average market price of roughly 210 YR/m3 for untreated water inthe urban area is roughly a hundred times higher than the average market price of2-4 YR/m3 for water sold by adjacent agricultural water users. This difference in-creases by exponential leap to as much as 2000 YR/m3 X when water is purifiedfor over recent decades to drink.

Water markets such as those found in Ta’iz are common in most urbanareas of Yemen and are a major source of supply. Even in the capital Sana’a, twothirds of the water supply is provided by private individuals and organisationsoperating within an informal market for water. These markets are completely

Table 1:

Source: UNpublished final report of the Decentralized Management Study, World Bank, Yemen, 1996.

Note: One USD was roughly equal to 100 YR at the time this data was collected.

Water Markets in the Ta’iz Region, Yemen

Local Well Water Market Structure

Producer——>Well ownerCost1 to pump =YR 0.43/m3

Consumer-share cropper-hourly rate equivalent toYR 2-4/m3

Producer-— >Well owner costto pump =YR 0.43/m3

Consumers who have their owntransport— industry— hotels— poultry farms— agriculture Rate avg. YR 14/m3

Producer -— >Well ownerCost to pump =YR 0.43/m3

Retailer— >Tanker truck ownersRate avg. YR 14/m3

Consumers—individual homeowners—hotels/restaurants—industry—construction—agriculture (qat)Rate avg. YR 210/m3

Producer— >Well ownerCost to pump =YR 0.43/m3

Wholesalers— >Treatment Plants (generallyhave their own transport)

Retailers— >Shops

ConsumersIndividuals/familiesRate up to YR 2000/m3 for purifieddrinking water

Tanker Water Market Structures

20 MOENCH, M.

informal in the sense that there is no formal ownership of the water that is soldnor is there any formal legal or regulatory structure governing the operation of themarkets. In fact, under some interpretations of Islamic doctrine, the sale of wateris inherently illegal. Some Islamic scholars have interpreted Prophet Mohammed’ssaying ‘People are partners in three [things]: fire, water and grass’ as emphasisingthe common nature of water rights and forbidding the sale of water, whether fordrinking or other uses (Al-Eryani, 1995). The water markets thus operate in agray zone: they are widely accepted in practice but formal recognition in lawor on government policy would impinge upon deeply held traditions and religiousperspectives.

The fact that water markets in Yemen are informal is of increasing impor-tance due to the increasingly over-drafted state of aquifers supplying most majorurban areas. Groundwater extraction exceeds recharge in most of Yemen (Table1). The highland plains aquifers supplying both Sana’a and Ta’iz, are particularlythreatened because overall storage levels are low. Furthermore, the regional esti-mates in Table 1 understate the magnitude of the emerging problems. Throughoutmuch of Yemen, groundwater overdraft threatens the viability of irrigatedagriculture. Urban areas are also growing rapidly. With that growth comes increasingdemands for drinking, domestic and industrial water supply. On the local scale,many areas face acute water scarcity at present or will face shortages in the im-mediate future.

In the case of Ta’iz growing demands for water have been supplied by Na-tional Water Supply Authority (NWSA) primarily from the Al’Hima area. During

Table 2:

Source: (WRAY-35 1995) Table 6.3, pp 88.

Abstraction and Recharge in Yemen

Aquifer Complex

Tihama Quaternary Aquifer

Southern Coastal Plains(west of Mukalla)

Extended Mukalla Complex

Highland Plains

Approximateabstraction(Mm3/yr)

810

225

575

500

Approximateaverage recharge(Mm3/yr)

550

375

500

100

Freshgroundwaterstored (Mm3)

250,000

70,000

10,000,000

50,000


some periods the frequency of water supply to consumers has been as little as onceevery 45 days. Consumers meet the balance of their needs through the informalwater markets discussed above. Water supply problems in Ta’iz are not new. In 1989-90 and again in 1992 emergency deep well drilling programs were undertaken inthe al-Haima and Habeer areas. These tapped volcanic and sandstone aquifers un-derlying the wadi supplemented earlier well tapping alluvial wadi bed aquifers. Un-fortunately, yields in the new wells declined rapidly. Well field production in 1993following the completion of the 1992 emergency wells totalled 4.59 million cubicmetres, by 1995 this had declined to 2.6 million cubic metres.2 A similar situationis also found in Sana’a. When first water supply was developed several decadesago, the aquifers of the Sana’a basin were thought to contain sufficient water tomeet urban requirements indefinitely. Now, locally available supplies are expectedto be exhausted within a few years due to the high levels of extraction for agricul-ture and municipal supply. Water levels are, however, rising under the old city. There,leakage from urban sewers and water mains has resulted in the build up of pol-luted groundwater (Morris, Lawrence et al, 1994).

The informal nature of water markets and water rights in Yemen greatlycomplicates the development of responses to overdraft problems in areas such asSana’a and Ta’iz. Combined with the presence of markets, the high demand forwater in agriculture and urban areas creates strong incentives for individual wellowners to extract and either use or sell as much water as possible. Since the mar-kets and rights are informal and unrelated to total resource availability, there is noincentive for individual well owners to limit extraction to sustainable levels. In ad-dition, it is difficult for the government or local communities to regulate extrac-tion. To do so would require codification and regulation of a widely accepted andextensive but largely undocumented supply and marketing system.

Conditions in many urban sections of India parallel those in Yemen. Privatelyoperated tankers supply water from adjacent rural areas to urban consumers inmost major metropolitan areas. The price urban consumers are willing and able topay for water is generally ten times higher than that agricultural users can pay.Markets are generally informal, and formal recognition of them would conflict withdeeply entrenched traditions and cultural values. Market transfers also involve thesale of water itself rather than the transfer of water rights per se. This often oc-curs in a situation where surface supplies are fully allocated and groundwater isincreasingly over-drafted and polluted. In Gujarat, for example, water levels in partsof the Meshana aquifer system supplying the urban centres of Ahmedabadand Ghandinagar have been declining at rates of up to three metres per year and

22 MOENCH, M.

overdraft has been noted as a concern since the middle of the 1970’s (Moench,1992). The fact that power supplies for agriculture is heavily subsidised and thatinformal water markets are based on rights of capture greatly increases the incen-tives for over-extract ion. Although the possib ility of rights refo rm a ndextraction regulation has been widely discussed, the large number of users and theentrenched nature of the informal rights and market systems pose enormous prac-tical problems for the development of any formal rights and regulatory systems(World Bank, 1998).

On many levels the water markets in India and Yemen are fundamentallydifferent from the more formalised systems in the United States. On other levels,however, the issues associated with the three water markets are quite similar. InColorado, the state containing the San Luis Valley, water transfers between ruralagricultural users and urban areas are commonplace (National Research Council,1992). These transfers are closely regulated and generally involve the actual saleof water rights as well as the permanent reallocation of the physical flow thoserights pertain to. Also unlike the either situation in Yemen or India, in Coloradowater right transfers to urban areas have generally been from distant watershedsrather than from adjacent agricultural uses. Finally, although groundwater over-draft is an important concern, regulated rights systems are sufficiently well estab-lished to allow some control over extraction in locations where overdraft is a ma-jor concern.

The above important difference aside, many of the dynamics underlying thedevelopment of water markets in Colorado are similar to those in India and Yemen.In Colorado, the price urban users are willing and able to pay for water is ten timeshigher than can be paid by most agricultural users. In the Rio Grande Basin, forexample, recent studies have found that ‘at the margin, the value of water usedfor irrigation is no greater than zero.’ (Niemi and McGuckin, 1997). For somekey crops, such as pasture, the average returns per acre-foot of water applied areestimated to be negative (Negative $80/acre with an average application of 3 af/acre) (Niemi and McGuckin, 1997). In contrast, the same report estimates thatthe value of water to residential consumers in Albuquerque is $326/af at the tap or$652/af on a consumptive use basis (Neimi and McGuckin, 1997). The key pointhere is that the difference in the economic or market value of water in urban ap-plications is at least ten times higher than it is in agriculture and thus this is a ma-jor factor driving transfers.

A second level of similarity has to do with the structure of the markets. InIndia and Yemen, individual well owners sell water and receive the returns from


that sale. The water is transferred out of agriculture with little consideration forthe effects of that transfer on third parties. These effects have the potential to besignificant. The requirement for agricultural labour, for example, is likely to de-crease as water is removed, but agricultural labourers have no call on the profitsfrom a water sale. Similarly Colorado, despite the more extensive legal structuregoverning water, ‘has no law directing that the public interest be taken into ac-count in some form during water transfers’ (National Research Council, 1992).Water transfers in Colorado involve an exchange of water rights and the transfer-able portion is limited to consumptive use. This, however, does little more to pro-tect third parties than the direct water sales found in India and Yemen, and, as inthese countries, the returns from water sales accrue to the individual right holderin Colorado too. In sum, the returns from market transfers in all the areas only goto a small subclass of individual users.

Beyond actual market transfers (e.g. transfers in which a well owner or waterright holder actually sells his/her water or right to a specific buyer) lies the realmof ‘market driven transfers.’ In Colorado, the old adage is that ‘water flows uphilltoward money.’ The tremendous difference in the market value of water in urbanas opposed to rural and environmental applications is a major factor driving thereallocation of water through administrative and project mechanisms in all threestudy locations. In many cases, these project and administrative reallocation ac-tivities can be seen as extending the urban periphery into distant rural areas. Keyexamples of this include the following:

1. Major transfers of water from the Western slope of the Rocky Mountains to theDenver Front Range in Colorado along with proposed transfers from the SanLuis Valley.

2. Reallocation of water from major and medium irrigation schemes such as theDarhoi Dam on the Sabarmati River in Gujarat, India, to the urban centres ofAhmedabad and Ghandinagar. This dam was initially developed for irrigationpurposes but water released to meet municipal demands has been steadily increasingand in some drought years virtually no water is released for agriculture (Kumar,Chopde et al, 1999). This reallocation affects water availability in rural areasover 100 kilometres from the urban areas. It represents a typical example of theadministrative reallocation common in many irrigation schemes in India.

3. The development of water supply schemes by the National Water Supply Authority(NWSA) in the Habeer and Al’Hima watershed near Ta’iz in Yemen. Deep wellsdrilled by NWSA in Al’Hima effectively reallocated base flow from agricultural

24 MOENCH, M.

users residing along the wadi to urban residents in Ta’iz city. This has dried outmuch of the agriculture downstream of the municipal wells.3

A key point in the above list is that the peri-urban periphery, where differ-ences in the economic value of water between urban and rural uses drive watertransfers, now extends deep into rural areas. A type of zoning based on water maybe emerging in many Third World countries. Informal markets and transfers ofwater through tankers occur immediately adjacent to urban areas while majorprojects driven by the same economic differential but operating under more for-malised administrative water allocation mechanisms draw water to urban areas frommuch more distant rural areas.

The emergence of water markets and the large price and economic value differen-tials commonly found between areas give a strong indication of the relative marketprice of water in rural and urban applications. A major question exists, however,concerning the extent to which the price established in markets actually representsthe wider value of water in a specific application to society as a whole.

In the case of informal markets, where formal water rights systems do notexist, the price established in market transactions simply represents the value of aspecific quantity of water held by a given seller in the eyes of a specific buyer. Ina practical sense, this type of transaction is based on an implicit rights system thatequates capture with ownership. The ability to capture water (and therefore ‘own’and sell that water) bears little relation to the overall availability of water or thesustainability of the resource base. As a result, water resources managed under aright of capture system tend to be undervalued in that they don’t reflect long-termconsiderations concerning the sustainability of the resource or its potential forfuture use.

Beyond this, as a recent review of problems in valuing groundwater em-phasises, the price of water established through markets and market related valua-tion techniques tends to reflect extractive values rather than values (Na-tional Research Council Committee on Valuing Groundwater, 1997). The NRC de-fined the total economic value of groundwater as the sum of its extractive and

values. Market transactions reflect the value of water to the seller for his orher own applications (such as agriculture) and its value to the buyer for his or herown applications (such as domestic use). These values are dominantly extractive

THEME 3: VALUING WATER

in situ

insitu


– they involve the diversion of water from a stream or aquifer to a given applica-tion and reflect the value within that application relative to other extractive applica-tions rather than the value of the water if it remains in its natural location. Mostanalytical techniques such as contingent valuation, hedonic pricing, derived demandand production cost analysis, loss analysis, averting behaviour analysis and substi-tution analysis have similar flaws in their direct observation of market transactions:they tend to reflect use values for individuals rather than the total economic valueof water.

Market transactions and most analytical techniques also poorly reflect theexternalities associated with water transfers. Within any hydrologic or hydrogeologicsystem, uses are generally sequential and interdependent. Furthermore, as empha-sised in the first theme, of this chapter agricultural, environmental, economic andcultural systems are often tightly intertwined with patterns of water use. Sincechanges in water allocation affect these interconnected systems, the externalitiesassociated with water transfers can be major. Often, ‘waste’ from one use is theprimary source of water for a subsequent use. Tracing the chain of uses is a diffi-cult task in itself, to say nothing of valuing the contribution of water from eachsource to each use. As a result, the economic values associated with instream flows,and maintenance of aquifer levels tend not to be reflected in market transactions.Another important dimension is that markets tend to reflect ability to pay ratherthan the actual value individuals might place on water or the environmental andother services it produces. Access to water is a critical factor in the quality of lifeof socioeconomically marginal populations in developing countries. Their ability topay for access to water resources is, however, often minimal.

Water rights systems are the primary social response to the market failuresoutlined above. To be effective, rights systems need to be clear and to enable trans-fers to occur in a manner that reflects overall resource availability, reduces thirdparty impacts, and keeps transaction costs at a minimum. Rights systems that meetthese criteria have proven difficult to design and operationalise even in the ‘datarich’ environment of the United States. In the U.S., restrictions on rights oftenlimit the amount of water that can be transferred to the ‘consumptive use frac-tion’ and require that there be no impact on other rights holders. This has not,however, limited concerns over third party and environmental impacts. As a re-sult, the recent Western Water Policy Review states that: ‘water transfers that oc-cur without attention to their potentially damaging effects on local communities,economies, and environment can be harmful to ecosystems and social systems that

26 MOENCH, M.

depend on irrigation economies. Governing institutions are therefore faced with adifficult balancing act – to facilitate transfers on the one hand, recognising the ben-efits they may produce, and to scrutinise transfers on the other hand, understand-ing their potential costs to society.’ (Western Water Policy Review Advisory Com-mission, 1998). Balancing acts such as this are even more problematic in develop-ing country contexts where the number of users, the lack of data and to entrenchedcustomary rights complicate the development and implementation of balancedmechanisms for transfers (Moench, 1995).

As the discussion above indicates, markets and water rights systems rarely cap-ture the diverse impacts on the third parties and public goods associated with wa-ter transfers. In many cases, the value of these impacts and public goods is highlysubjective – it will vary between locations and conditions depending on culturalvalues and social objectives. It will also vary time as understanding increases andsocial objectives shift. The subjective nature of many – ‘values’ affected by watertransfers and the different weights given them in debates over management is im-portant to recognise. Key areas where values differ centre on issues related to en-vironment, culture and equity.

Perceptions of the spectrum of values related to water differ greatly amongindividuals and regions. In a general sense, attention in the West focuses more on‘natural’ areas and their preservation while the South emphasises the sustainabilityof human uses and the human managed environment. This distinction is both widelyrecognised and too broad to illustrate the types of challenges emerging in peri-ur-ban areas. More revealing is the contrast between conceptions of values that maybe affected by water transfers from rural to urban uses in specific situations. Re-cent research in the San Luis Valley by ISET reveals broad differences in the em-phasis of different groups.4 These differences break down into the following threemajor classifications.

Environmental organisation such as the Nature Conserv-ancy, when asked about key regional environmental values in the San Luis Valley,generally focused on natural systems. In interviews, they emphasise basic ecosys-tem and hydrologic system functions within natural units such as watersheds. Theyalso emphasise endangered species and relatively undisturbed plant communities.The relative ‘environmental value’ of an individual system depends on the degree

THEME 4: PERCEPTIONS AND ETHICS

Natural System Focus:


of disturbance and the potential for rehabilitation along with the rarity of the spe-cies or communities it contained. Less disturbed systems are classified as havinga higher value.

Ranchers and farmers, locally based environmental or-ganisations, water district and wildlife refuge managers generally focus on habitatvalues created in conjunction with agricultural water management systems wheninterviewed regarding environmental values in the San Luis Valley. Two primaryfoci were wetlands created as a result of irrigation systems and food sources formigratory waterfowl created by grain production. These groups emphasised thedependence of the major flyway for migratory birds running through the San LuisValley on the combination of habitat values created by irrigation and grain produc-tion. Some also noted plant communities and habitat, associated with irrigated pas-tures and the landscape mosaic created along fence-rows, irrigation channels andthe corners of centre pivot irrigation systems. High priority environmental valuesassociated with agricultural and ranching uses include habitat, endangered speciesand biodiversity. In addition, many farmers emphasised the sustainable manage-ment of the soil and of the water resource base as a key environmental value. Re-sources are viewed as environmental capital critical to the region’s future.

Cultural groups such asHispanics and Native Americans along with many small Anglo ranchers andfarmers emphasise what might be called lifestyle and community elements wheninterviewed regarding environmental values. These groups generally start bydiscussing the array of habitat and bio-diversity characteristics associated withfarming and ranching systems noted by the previous group. They tend, however,to rapidly move on and focus on a combination of values having to do withtheir relationship to the land, their ability to meet basic needs from small scalefarming and the pace of life as key environmental values. Stewardship alongwith a deeply ethical or personal relationship to specific locations was a majorconcept raised in many discussions.

The created habitat and lifestyle foci reflect a growing trend in manydebaters over water transfers in the United States. Initially most debate focusedon the ‘natural’ environment as opposed to managed habitats or communitycharacteristics. Language and attention are now shifting but most laws, such asthe Clean Water Act (which governs wetlands) and the Endangered Species Act,focus on specific characteristics of the natural environment. This shift is illustrated

Created Habitat Focus:

Lifestyle, Community and Stewardship Focus:

28 MOENCH, M.

by arguments in the public literature such as that put forth by the NationalResearch Council in relation to water use in New Mexico. They comment that:‘Lifestyle, community organisation, and personal relationships are all intimatelyrelated to traditional water uses and allocation arrangements. The state system,however, values water essentially as a commodity; it does not see water as an ele-ment of community cohesion, history, and collective aspiration’ (NRC, 1992).

The array of perceptions concerning values likely to be affected by watertransfers encountered in the San Luis Valley has parallels in both India and Yemen.In Gujarat, India, for example, debates over water transfers involving the SandraSarovar (Narmada) project have tended to emphasise: (1) impacts on indigenousforest-based communities; (2) loss of forest areas and biodiversity due to submer-gence; and (3) the probable unsustainability of agriculture based on major surfaceirrigation systems (Paranjpye, 1990; Independent Review, 1992). In the same re-gion, debates over the impacts of groundwater overdraft have generally empha-sised, first, the unsustainable nature of current utilisation patterns, and second, theimpacts on poor and marginal communities as they are progressively excluded fromaccess to groundwater because the cost of pumping increases as water levels de-cline (Moench, 1991). The main contrast in Yemen is that most debates overwater transfers focus on the sustainability of agriculture. Less emphasis is givento impacts on rural communities than in India and virtually no attention is givento ecosystem or habitat values. This is not surprising since water systems inYemen have been managed primarily for agriculture and drinking water supplythroughout history with little reference to values that may be associated with thenatural environment.

Differing perceptions of the values likely to be affected by watertransfers have major implications for approaches to water management inperi-urban areas. As previously noted, transfers through water markets tendto reflect the value of water to individual buyers and sellers, not the larger setsof va lue s tha t a re potent ia lly affec ted . A dministrative, le gis la tive a ndjudicial systems for reallocation also rarely reflect the full range of values heldby different groups that are likely to be affected by water transfers. Nunn andIngram (1988) have outlined some of the tradeoffs well. According to them: ‘Mar-kets process information on direct economic costs and benefits well but ignorethird-party costs; legislative bodies are sensitive to information about indirect andnonuser impacts but distort information on direct benefits and costs; neither thejudiciary nor the water agency is likely to consider community and social impactsof water transfers. Special districts could consider both direct and indirect values


but are often controlled by a leadership elite, pursuing narrow goals with mini-mum membership participation’ (Nunn and Ingram, 1988).

The mix of perceived values affected by water transfers and the relativeemphasis different transfer mechanisms place on those values represents a key pointof tension in water management debates. These tensions are substantial becausethey relate back to deeply held sets of values. For example, the religion in Yemensays that ‘People are Partners in fire, water and grass’. The statement emphasisesthe common nature of water rights and has been interpreted by some Islamic schol-ars as forbidding water sale whether for drinking or other uses (Al-Eryani, 1995).Similar sentiments also underlie elements of common law in the West. The PublicTrust Doctrine, which has played a major role in some water management deci-sions in the Western United States, for example, was initially derived from the In-stitutes of Justinian. This states that: ‘By the law of nature these things are com-mon to mankind – the air, running water, the sea and consequently the shores ofthe sea.’ (Institutes of Justinian, 2.1.1).5 This type of sentiment often emerges ininterviews with villagers in India and with Native American, Hispanic and somerural ranching communities in the Rio Grande. It contrasts directly with, for ex-ample, the dominantly private nature of water rights under Colorado law and thehighly centralised state ownership of water under the law in both India and Yemen.

Debates over water transfers and their impacts are complicated by over limitedunderstanding of hydrologic, environmental and economic systems and by the dy-namic nature of those systems. This problem is often less significant in the rela-tively ‘data rich’ environment of the United States than in countries such as Indiaand Yemen. A few examples will suffice to illustrate the challenges.

Hydrologic conditions are often poorly understood. Water balance studiesin the San Luis Valley have, for example, been on going since the early 1960’swhen Emery began his research (Emery, 1971; Emery, 1973). Despite the numer-ous studies conducted by consultants, the USGS, and other organisations sincethen interviews with local experts indicate that approximately 30 per cent of theinflow to the valley remain unexplained. It is often assumed that this occurs throughinflow from deep aquifers but the overall water balance equation remains unsolved.Similar situations are common throughout the western U.S. They are even morecommon in India and Yemen. In India, for example, groundwater level maps pro-duced by the state government often show fundamentally different patterns from

THEME 5: THE CHALLENGE OF UNCERTAINTY

30 MOENCH, M.

one years to the rest. In Yemen, detailed hydrologic studies in the Al’Hima areaindicated that the municipal wells tapping deep sandstone and volcanic formationsshould have little impact on stream flows and shallow wells. Local users indicate,however, that effects were evident immediately once pumping from these wellsbegan and, whatever the cause, spring flows and water levels in adjacent wellshave declined rapidly.

The above examples also point toward dynamics that extend beyonduncertainties related to data. In many cases the environmental services and thenature of their relationship to water resources are poorly understood. Groundwateravailability for development, for example, is often estimated on the basis ofthe volume stored within a given aquifer complex and on the annual recharge.Many environmental services-such as catchment base flow, the extent ofwetlands, and surface vegetation communities-are, however, dependent on depthof water, not on the volume in storage or the annual recharge. Similarly, in surfacesystems, environmental values often depend on the presence of minimum flowsand flushing flows rather than on the specific volumes that may be allocated to agiven use. Similar dynamics apply to the social and economic characteristics ofgroundwater. Access to groundwater generally depends on the economics ofpumping. This is a function of the energy costs for pumping combined withwell drilling or digging costs. When groundwater levels decline, marginalpopulations are generally the first excluded from access. As a result, changes inwater allocation can affect a wide array of social and cultural ‘services’ such aspoverty alleviation, food security, and health, in ways that are poorly captured bycommonly collected information on volumes available in storage or recharged onan annual basis.

The overall point here is that substantial scientific uncertainty exists con-cerning the dynamics of hydrologic systems in most situations. This uncertainly isalso present in the environmental, economic and cultural systems that are inter-connected with each other and with regional water use patterns. The dynamic na-ture of most of these systems further complicates debates over the impact of wa-ter transfers. Hydrologic and economic conditions change from year to year andcommunities and cultural values shift in response to long-term demographic trends.Water users and use patterns respond to these changes.

In combination, uncertainty and the dynamic nature of water relatedsystems create a situa tion in which, uncertainty re garding the effects ofwater transfers and management decisions is inherent in most situations. Thisis particularly true in peri-urban areas where water transfers are only one


component of a larger transition in land use and cultural patterns shapingregional characteristics.

Taken together the themes outlined above outline clear limitations inherentin utilising markets and private rights systems as a dominant mechanism for waterallocation and transfer in peri-urban areas. Whether informal, as in the case ofYemen and India, or formal, as in the case of the San Luis Valley, markets tend toreflect the interests of individual users and downplay the value held by communi-ties. Administrative mechanisms for water regulation and allocation are no better.Approaches to addressing the conflicting perspectives and values of different groupsin relation to water management and the uncertainties inherently associated withmanaging poorly understood systems are far from clear. A few principles may,however, move debates forward:

1.Different groups have

different perspectives regarding the values they view as important to protect inwater transfer decisions. These different perspectives are generally legitimate.The relative environmental value, for example, of an endangered species whosesurvival depends on a set of ‘natural’ conditions is difficult to balance againstthe value of a similarly endangered species that depends on wetlands createdthrough irrigation. Likewise, the quest for economic efficiency may he have nomore ultimate validity than a community’s desire for cultural continuity. This isparticularly true because many marginal groups lack sufficient resources toparticipate in market processes. The overall implication is that management anddecision making approaches need to be designed with

. Rather than characterising allocation processes indominantly economic terms, institutional structures that create checks and balancesand provide openings for different groups, particularly marginal ones, to participatein decision making are important.

2. Don’t seek certainty in water rights: The importance of clear, transferable, waterrights for market systems and water management is often emphasised. This isalso often interpreted as rights which are ‘unbounded’ by public interestconsiderations. As emphasised in Theme 5 above, however, uncertainty is inherentin most water management situations. Public interest considerations related to

BALANCING THE PERSPECTIVES

Recognise the political nature of water allocation issues in peri-urban areas anddesign allocation decision making systems accordingly:

balance of powerconsiderations is mind

32 MOENCH, M.

water rights through mechanisms such as the Public Trust Doctrine do notgreatly increase the degree of overall uncertainty faced by water users. At thesame time, these types of public interest limitations open avenues for individualsand groups to balance the power of economic interests. As a result, they canrepresent a core component of any approach to water management based onbalance of power concepts. Broad public interest criteria in national or statelegislation can also reduce the need for extensive and complicated rights reformprocesses. By opening up avenues for regulation and management, acceptinguncertainty would incrementally change public conceptions of rights.

3. Comprehensive integrated

approaches to water management imply an ability to document and correctlyinterpret both the nature of systems and their interactions. This unachievablegoal often results in large scale planning exercises that are incomplete and outof date when implemented. An approach that recognises systems and theirinteraction but acknowledges (or even emphasises) the limited nature of scientificand technical understanding is more realistic.

1 Interview with Mike Blendon, Director of the Alamosa Wildlife Refuge, July 1999.2 Unpublished final report of the Decentralised Management Study, World Bank, Yemen, 1996.3 Unpublished final report of the Decentralised Management Study, World Bank, Yemen, 1996.4 Interviews in July, 1999.5 National Aucubon, 658 P. 2d at 718 (quoting Institute of Justinian. 2.1.1)

Al-Eryani, M.I., 1995: Legal Reasibilities of the various Options for Sana’s Water Supply, .

Agrwal, A. and Narain, S. (eds.), 1997: , New Delhi. Gound-Water Association: 111-124.

Emergy, P.A., Boettcher, A.J. and McIntyre, H.J. Jr., 1971: Washington D.C., U.S., Geological Survey.

Emery, P. A., Robert J. Snipes, John M. Dumeyer, and John M. Klein, 1973: , South-Central Colorado, U.S. Geological Survey, Colorado Division of Water

Resources.Independent Review, 1992: , Ottawa, Re-

source Futures International.Kumar, D., Chopde, S. et al, 1999:

, Gujarat.

Emphasise systemic perspectives and responses to constraints rather thancomprehensive integrated approaches to management:

Sana’a,Extended Coordinativ Meeting on the Future for Sana’s Water Supply

Dying Wisdom: Rise, fall and potential of India’s tradi-tional water harvesting systems

Hydrology of the San Luis ValleySouth-Central Colorado,

Water in the SanLuis Valley

Sardar Sarovar: The Report of the Independent Review

Addressing Water Scarcity, Local Strategies for Water Supplyand Conservation Management in the Sabarmati Basin

NOTES

REFERENCE

e


McFadden, 1989: Aspects of San Luis Valley Water in 1989: Administrative, Investigative, andLitigative,

, Colorado, CGWA, Denver, ColoradoMoench, M., Caspari, E. and Dixit, A., 1999:

, Nepal Water Conservation Foundation (NWCF) and Institute forSocial and Environment Transition (ISET), Kathmandu.

Moench, M., 1991: Oakland, Pacific Institute for Studies in Environment, Devel-

opment and Security.Moench, M., 1992: Drawing Down the Buffer, XXVII (13): A-7-

A-14.Moench, M., 1995: Allocating the Common Heritage: Debates over Groundwater Rights in India

and the Western U.S. , Duke University, Durham, NC.

Morris, B.L., Lawrence, A.R., et al., 1994: The Impact of Urbanisation on Groundwater Quality( ), Keyworth, British Geological Survey.

National Research Council, 1992: Water Transfers in the West: Efficiency, Equity and the Envi-ronment. Washington, D.C., National Academy Press.

National Research Council Committee on Valuing Groundwater, 1997: , Washington D.C., National Academy Press.

Niemi, E. And McGuckin., T., 1997: ,Albuqurque, Western Water Policy Review Advisory Commission.

Nunn, S.C. and Ingram, H. M., 1988: Information, the Decision Forum, and third party Effectsin water Transfers, 24(4): 473-480.

Pague, C. A. and Simonson, S.E., 1994: Patterns of Rarity in the San Luis Valley of Colorado.Fort Collins, , Colorado State University.

Paranjpye, V., 1990: , New Delhi, Indian National Trust for Art andCultural Heritage.

Viessma , W., Knapp, J., et al., 1977: , New York, Harper & Row.Vincent, L., 1990: The Politics of Water Scarcity: Irrigation and Water Supply in the Mountains

of the Yemen Republic, , London, Over-seas Development Institute 28.

Western Water Policy Review Advisory Commission, 1998: , Albuquerque, NM, Western Water Policy Review Advisory Commission.

World Bank, 1993: ,International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

World Bank, M.O.W.R., 1998: India-Water Resources Management Sector Review, , Washington D.C., New Delhi, World Bank, Govern-

ment of India.WRAY-35, 1995: , Sana’a General Department of Hydrology, Re-

public of Yemen, TNO Institute of Applied Geosc ience, and Kingdom of the Nether-lands.

Water in the Valley: A 1989 Perspective on Water Supplies, Issues and Solu-tions in the San Luis Valley

Rethinking the Mosaic: Investigations into LocalWater Management

Sustainability, Efficiency, & Equity in Ground Water Development: Issues inthe Western U.S. and India,

Economic and Political Weekly

Paper presented at the first Open Meeting of the Human Dimen-sions of Global Environmental Change Community

Project Summary Report

Valuing Ground Water:Economic Concepts and Approaches

Water Management Study: Upper Rio Grande Basin

Water Resources Research

Colorado Natural Heritage ProgramHigh Dams on the Narmada

Introduction to Hydrology

ODI/IIMI Irrigation Management Network Paper

Water in the West: Challenge for theNext Century

Water Resources Management: A World Bank Policy Paper Washington D.C.

GroundwaterRegulation and Management Report

The Water Resources of Yemen

:


ADHITYAN APPAN

Besides the world-wide increase in the demand for water, there is a need to re-think basic conceptsrelated to its use. There has also been increasing interest in reviving traditional systems of rainwaterharvesting. The two main objectives of this paper are to look into recent attempts to revive theseancient methods and to describe some innovative and improved systems. The propagation ofrainwater harves ting systems in Indonesia and Thailand since the 1970’s have been described,and, using these systems as models, the ‘total approach’ adopted in Philippines is discussed.Special emphasis is placed on the human aspec t of these systems and repayment methods, inparticular. Collecting of roof water from high-rise buildings that incorporate dual-mode operationalfacilities is an innovative way of meeting the need for non-potable uses in urban areas. Teamworkis essential and co-ordination crucial for the success of urban runoff collection schemes and, fortheir revival, authorities and village level func tionaries should work together. Analys is of datafrom existing systems can improve operational efficiency of urban systems.

It is not unusual, of late, to be bombarded with alarming information that the finitewater resources of the world have been stretched to the limit. Worldwatch, a thinktank, has warned that by the year 2025, ‘40% of the world’s population could beliving in countries suffering from chronic water shortages’. A UN study publishedin 1997 has indicated that, by the same time, as much as ‘two thirds of the world’spopulation will be affected by moderate to severe water shortages’. These fore-casters are not merely harbingers of doom; they have facts to back their predic-tions. They are realists who are conveying a message that the world should actnow before catastrophe strikes. To deal with this problem, basic concepts regard-ing current approaches towards the harnessing, storing, usage and conservationof water need to be reconsidered. These approaches have to be looked into on aglobal basis and cater for widely varying national, regional and international crite-ria with respect to geographic and socio-economic conditions. An encouraging de-velopment on this score is that recently awareness of the impending situation has

HARVESTING RAINWATER: SIMPLE AND INNOVATIVEAPPROACHES TO WATER MANAGEMENT

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION

ProfessorSchool of Civil and Structural Engineering

Nanyang Technological UniversityRepublic of Singapore

36 ADHITYAN, A.

increased and attempts have been made explore more realistic methods that couldhelp to prepare us for the future.

The main objectives of this paper are:

to look at recent attempts to revive the practice of rainwater harvesting withemphasis on the simple methods,to present some innovative systems that have been successfully designed forsmaller projects andto develop working methods for extending the current practice of using protectedcatchments and to reappraise operational strategies.

As water is essential for life, the history of the collection of rainwater is as old asthe history of mankind. In fact, most ancient civilisations evolved in areas that hadvast hinterlands where water was available for irrigation and navigation.

The use of rainwater collection systems is known to have existed as earlyas 400 years ago in the semi-arid and arid regions of the Negev dessert in Israel(Evenari et al, 1982), which has less than 150 mm of rainfall annually. Hillsideswere cleared to increase runoff and contour ditches collected water for irrigation.Underground storage volumes of up to 300 m3, enough for 10 families and theirflock for a year, have also been reported (Weiner, 1987).

In the Mediterranean region, rainwater collected from roofs and stored incisterns was the principle source of water during the Phoenician, Carthaginian andearly Roman times from the sixth century onwards (Crasta et al, 1982). Up to the16th century, rooftop collection and storage was practised in Venice (Fok et al,1980), and there is evidence that 177 public and 1,900 private cisterns held 665,000m3 of water to supply about 16 litres per capita per day (Latham and Schiller, 1987).In Iran, rain harvesting has been gaining considerable prominence and high levelsof technology have been attained in the spreading of floodwaters (Proceedings,1997).

It has been reported that in the early Buddhist era in India, monks living inthe Elephanta caves in Bombay and the Udayagiri and Candagiri caves in Orissahad laboriously hewn an intricate series of gutters and water cisterns in rock facesto provide their domestic water supply throughout the year. In addition, the Chola

n

n

n

HISTORY OF RAINWATER COLLECTION

HARVESTING RAINWATER: 37

and Pandya kings in the seventh and eighth century AD had constructed rainwatercatchment tanks at the feet of many hills. Temples like Madurai, have large watertanks and the communities living around depended on them for their domestic wa-ter needs (Pakianathan, 1989).

In Thailand, the existence of rainwater harvesting and storage systemsgoes back more than 2000 years and there is evidence that an elaborate systemof dykes was built and used about 800 years ago (Dept of Fine Arts, 1978).Because surface water and groundwater are brackish in the Kalimantan areain Indones ia , ra inwa te r has bee n co llec te d there for s everal c entu ries(Doelhomid, 1981). In the Philippines, the use of rainwater is still beingpractised in the provinces as it is traditionally believed that it is safer thanriver water for household and human consumption (Cuyugeng, 1983).

In Africa, catchment systems have been used for at least 2000 years (Gould,1993), in which rainwater collected from thatched roofs is collected in open jars.There are isolated instances of the use of roofwater catchment systems in China,but rainwater is largely used for irrigation purpose. Similarly, in Japan, the use ofrainwater has always been a way life. In most urban areas, rainwater is collectedand stored in basements and subjected to some form of treatment. In earthquakeprone cities, rainwater is collected and stored for fire-fighting when normal sup-plies are disrupted (Murase, 1994).

In the 1960s, there was a revival of rainwater harvesting on a small scale in someSouth-East Asian countries. In fact, with the launching of the International Drink-ing Water and Sanitation Decade (1981 to 1990) in the late 1970s, attempts to endthe problems of poor water supply and sanitation throughout the world started.Large numbers of rainwater collectors were established in Kenya, Tanzania, Bot-swana, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe (Ongweny, 1979, Gould, 1982, Whiteside,1982, Ray, 1983). Most developing countries in Asia began to tap this potential,largely with the assistance of non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Threecountries in South-East Asia have made special attempts to organise thepropagation of rainwater harvesting systems to supply drinking water to theirpeople. Some of the successful projects, which have been undertaken, arediscussed below:

RECENT REVIVAL OF SOME SIMPLE METHODS

38 ADHITYAN, A.

In the early part of this century, planners in Thailand strove to achieve a wide-spread impact and began to plan elaborate systems that involved large dams andreservoirs (Prempridi, 1982). Such systems, however, required substantial exter-nal assistance, which was not forthcoming. This led to the realisation that rainwa-ter catchment systems on a smaller scale could be adopted because they were rela-tively simple and cheap and did not require imported material or expertise. As aresult, in 1982, emphasis shifted to providing clean drinking water to rural areasthrough shallow and deep wells and programmes of rain harvesting. The fundsthus made available enabled the building of communal systems executed either byvillage councils, foreign development agencies, government or private organisations.The Population and Community Development Association (PDA), a non-profit de-velopment organisation, developed and implemented a successful programme.

The operations carried out by PDA emphasised the selection of the partici-pants who had taken part in village development programmes (Hayssen, 1983).The identification of areas that needed water most, low repayments and an appro-priate collection system were integral components of its methodology. In the pro-gramme that evolved, the villagers who were trained by PDA carried out constructionfor the whole village, while others in the village provided the necessary labour.

In fact, the willingness of the villagers to participate in such developmentprojects was a key to its successful implementation. The scheme, with some for-eign aid, proved to be so encouraging that a more elaborate construction programmewas carried out from 1983. In this programme, indigenous material like bambooreinforced concrete (brc) was tried; this technique reduced cost to almost half thatof conventional steel reinforced concrete.

The success of this project and the interest it generated among the ruralpopulation in dry areas was instrumental in spurring on research using both con-ventional and unconventional building materials. Plastic, steel, bamboo, bricks, in-ter-locking mortar and ferrocement were tried out as different construction mate-rials. The costs per the unit of storage (m3) of the tanks varied from US$ 129 toUS$ 0.14 (Vadhanavikkit and Viwantanathepa, 1982, Vadhanavikkit, 1983)

Water quality tests were carried out to ascertain the constituents of rainwa-ter in the open air, runoff from different roofing materials and quality after storagein different types of tank (Bunyaratpan and Sinsupan, 1983). From the studies com-pleted, it appeared that rainwater kept in storage is clean enough for drinking pro-vided that the cisterns are well-maintained.

Thailand


A similar programme was started in Indonesia in 1979. The criteria used to selectan appropriate material for cistern construction was that the material be locallyavailable, the design be within the villagers’ technical capability and that none ofthe activities conflict with their way of life. In addition, the construction cost hadto be within the government budget (Doelhamid, 1982). Bamboo reinforced con-crete and ferrocement cisterns were standardised (Winarto, 1982) and a methodof most effective construction using community participation was developed(Aristanti, 1983). This approach of implementing roofwater collection systems bygetting the users involved was similar to that in Thailand. A non-government or-ganisation (Dian Desa) realised that villagers in Indonesia placed importance on thejoy and value of working together. Dian Desa got involved in the Gunung Kidularea ensuring the following:

(i) Local community participation to develop technical skills,(ii) Consideration of local lifestyle, tradition and local opinion on water

consumption,(iii) Project schedules to match local time constraints, and(iv) Transfer of technical skills and maintenance know-how

Initially, indigenous material (instead of sand), stone and cement were usedto build the tanks. Skilled labour and cement were supplied while the users pro-vided labour. In 1978, ferrocement tanks were built but because the cost was pro-hibitive, brc tanks were used in 1979.

In the Indonesian system, the areas where roof-water collection systemswere most effective and feasible were identified first. Emphasis was placed on themixing and mingling of Dian Desa’s field officers with the villagers. Discussionswere held between the village head and government officials to determine feasibletechnology appropriate for each village. An important element of this model wasthat recipients of support were the ‘poorest of the poor’ in the region. Fieldworkerstrained villagers to build tanks. Villagers with the right ability and aptitude weregiven extra training and were recruited as local cadres. When the next set of tankswere constructed, they trained other villagers and thus expanding the core of cad-res who could build tanks.

Due to the limited funding from external sources and the low economic statusof the borrower, an innovative financing scheme was devised. Two she-goats were

Indonesia

40 ADHITYAN, A.

loaned to a family that needed a rainwater tank and when they bear (normally)four young ones, two were returned to the lender while the borrower kept theother two. The borrower looked after his/her two young ones and when they hadgrown up used them as payment for the rainwater tanks (Aristanti, 1983). Specialcare was taken to treat the stored water. There was, however, some misuse andgenerally poor operation and maintenance of the tanks. The greatest impact of themodel was the ability for the villager to participate and become involved in solvinghis/her own problems.

Having studied the system of establishing roofwater collection systems in Thai-land and Indonesia, a method taking all the relevant factors into consideration wasconceived for a particular location in the Philippines. Since the proposed methodof building roofwater collection systems was technologically sound and took thesocio-economic and cultural factors into considerations, it was deemed a ‘total ap-proach’ (Appan and Lee, 1987, Appan et al, 1989). The first step was to selectthe most appropriate location for building the tanks. The province of Capiz in PanayIsland in the southern half of the Philippines was selected because only brackishwater was then available there. The average rainfall is 1,700 mm and the area ofthe province is 2,633 km2 supporting a population of 490,000.

Three pilot locations were selected based on earlier investigations (Appan,1985), each having different topographical conditions. Together they represented30% of the province. In each of these locations, ten ferro-cement tanks were in-stalled. At the same time, the rainfall, water-use pattern and quality of rainwaterwere monitored. Before commencing with the scheme, two officers from the projectteam visited Thailand and Indonesia. They studied the methods and observed theextensive use of ferrocement tanks, which were cheap and also easily handled bynon-technical personnel. In Capiz, meetings were held with residents to solicit theirsupport and participation. Local officials and influential people were contacted atthe (village) level. A household survey was conducted to collect base-line information on demographic characteristics, annual income and expenses, dailywater consumption rate and general water-use habits.

The potential of establishing rainwater collection tanks in Capiz and the pro-posed large numbers to be ultimately built demanded a design that would be easyto construct, economical and durable. Emphasis was put on construction of thetanks by locally available trained persons and preferably using local building

The Philippines

barangay


materials. Accordingly, tanks of only two sizes (5 m3 and 16 m3) were selected,analysed, constructed and tested. The relevant methods of construction and de-tails were made available to the potential users, and, to ensure proper transfer oftechnology, two of the project officers obtained the necessary training from thedesigners (Lee et al, 1986).

During the actual construction, the project team lived on site to establish betterrapport with the recipients and to obtain their support. This was done with theobjective of ensuring that the village groups involved would acquire the skills forconstruction, installing and, subsequently maintaining their own tanks. Installation ofthe tanks was completed in early 1988. Following the completion of the 30 tanks,constant monitoring was carried out with respect to rainfall pattern and water quality.Health education was imparted to ensure that water use was not abused and that thequality was not affected by poor collection methods.

Since the villagers were very poor and had collected the basic material forconstruction, they were asked to offer their suggestions for the most suitable repay-ment method. They favoured engaging in hog raising. The project authority providedthe piglets and basic training on how to raise them. This proposal was akin to theIndonesian ‘two she-goat’ system policy, wherein the results were highly encourag-ing. While constructing the 30 tanks, the villagers found the procedures so adaptablethat many villagers built their own tanks. A total of 600 additional tanks were built.

The collection of rainwater also offers opportunities to supplement the water needs(of urban areas) in the Republic of Singapore with an area of 639 km2 and where50% of the land area is being used as water catchment. Besides, Singapore im-ports almost 40 to 50% of its water. Due to competing demands for the limitedland area, all possible measures are being taken to maximise the use of the annualrainfall of about 2,400 mm. Some innovative schemes have been introduced andexisting systems are being re-appraised.

A fair amount of research and developmental work has been done in thecountry for maximising the abstraction of rainwater. There are schemes involvingthe use water collected from the roofs of high-rise buildings, the abstraction ofrunoff from airports for non-potable uses and integrated systems using the com-bined runoff from industrial areas of 2 ha, an aquaculture farm and a polytechnic.In all cases involving roofwater collection, a simple input/output model has beenused (Appan, 1982) to determine the available quantity of rainwater.

DEVELOPMENT OF INNOVATIVE AND IMPROVED SYSTEMS

42 ADHITYAN, A.

: High-rise buildings in ur-ban areas have roof areas that can be used as catchments. The potential for usingsuch rooftops is quite encouraging in Singapore where currently 86% of the popu-lation lives in high rise buildings (HDB, 1994). From 1997, three sets of studieshave been carried out.

In the first study by Appan, (1982), a simple computer programme wasdeveloped and a nomogram that relates the roof areas, tank sizes and roofwateravailable prepared. In the system implemented in a fifteen-storey building, the col-lected roofwater was diverted to two tanks and the water was used only for toiletflushing. In case there was insufficient stored rainwater, the potable supply wasused. The fact that there was no ban on the mixing of these waters actually con-travened the existing regulations (PUB, 1977). The rainwater quality appeared tobe acceptable in terms of colour, turbidity and bacteriological content though thetotal solids and chloride levels were marginally higher than the acceptable limit.Experiments showed that the major issue, particularly in tanks at ground level, wasthe breeding of an abundance of mosquitoes. This problem was partly overcomeby dosing the stored water with paraffin oil.

Appan et al (1987) developed a computer programme to incorporate a sim-ple dual-mode system (DMS) in the collection tanks. The programme also cateredfor variations in demand, overflows and amount utilised. An economic appraisalestablished that there was an effective saving of 13.7% of water. The cost of therainwater was S$ 0.395/m3 less than the cost of potable water, which was S$ 0.535/m3. The most recent work (Appan et al, 1997) involves high-rise buildings in anurban residential area of about 742 ha having a total of 49,000 flats. Using a fur-ther modified programme, it was possible to compute the volume of potable waterto be pumped when there was no stored rainwater and also determine the frequencyof such pumping. In this DMS, it was shown that tanks placed on the roof re-sulted in lower water costs (S$ 0.96/m3) than tanks placed on the top-most floor(S$ 3. 95/m3).

: Aqua-culture farms havelarge tracts of land and can fruitfully utilise rainwater. In a case study involving anaqua-culture farm (Appan and Tay, 1989), there was extensive cultivation of orna-mental, food fish and aquatic plants. The rainwater collected was more than theamount needed and helped to dilute water within other water bodies that were sub-jected to high nutrient loads. Using the same concepts, a study was undertakenfor typical two hectares plots in the industrial belt (Appan, 1989). The systems

Roofwater collection systems in high-rise buildings

Use of rainwater in Aqua-culture and Industrial Plots


incorporated a DMS and, for water yields varying from 50 to 100 m3/d, the opti-mal saving amounted to S$ 10,500 to S$ 84,000 yearly, a 13 to 25% saving in theuse of potable water.

: Catchment areas in airport are much largerthan the roof areas of high rise buildings, and both surface runoff and roofwatercan be harnessed. A typical case outlining such a system is the Singapore ChangiAirport. In this scheme which was established in 1986, the runoff from runways,the associated turfed area and the roofs of buildings is collected.

Appan (1993), showed that in a catchment area of 530 ha two impound-ments were necessary, one of which retained most of the runoff. Raw water fromthe main reservoir is pumped to a pre-treatment plant and the treated water is usedfor fire-fighting and toilet flushing. As the airport is close to the sea, the secondreservoir is used for storm relief when the time of incoming tides and storm dis-charges coincides. Annual savings in water usage amounted to about S$ 390,000.The main finding in the case study was that the existing storage volume of 3,888m3 was grossly under-designed; as a result, 13% of potable water had to be used.By increasing the storage volume to 80,000 m3, all current demands could be metby rainwater.

With more data, the system was studied in further detail (Appan et al, 1995)and another model incorporating three programmes was developed to take into con-sideration tidal effects. It has now been confirmed that the required storage shouldbe not more than 100,000 m3 and that the buffer reservoir needs to have a volumeof only 68,000 m3 against the current 100,000 m3 capacity. Besides, if raw wateris pumped at a rate of 164 m3/h against the current 128 m3/h, there will be noneed to use any potable water.

: Institutions like schools, polytech-nics or universities have some land and roof areas. Utilisation of there areas toaugment existing potable sources has been looked into. In one teaching institutionin Singapore, where the total land area is 30 ha and the roof area 15,000 m2, rain-water collection system was successfully implemented more than a year ago. Sur-face runoff and roofwaters are directed to a collection chamber where the wateris subjected to chemical treatment followed by sedimentation and chlorination. Thetreated water of 20 m3/d is used to water sports fields while the untreated waterof 90 m3/d is used for irrigation. The saving amounts to S$ 74,000 per annum.Another study has shown that the roofwater of 38,714 m2 can be collected from

Harnessing of runoff from airport

Teaching institutions for collection of runoff

44 ADHITYAN, A.

the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) for use in the laboratories and flush-ing of toilets (Appan, 1998). The additional storage tank in this proposed DMSwould be 41 m x 15.5 m x 4 m in size, and would result in saving about S$ 18,500per month.

Impounding reservoirs are generally located far away from inhabited areas. Con-sequently, catchment areas are relatively, clean and most raw water collected is ofa reasonably high quality. In Singapore, specific locations have been gazetted, asareas wherein pollution contributing activities are prohibited (Nature Reserves Act,1951). However, when cities grow at a rapid pace and begin to encroach on thehinterlands, pollution levels in run-off tend to increase. Suitable measures have tobe taken to curb high pollution in order to minimise the impact on the quality ofwater, which is actually urban runoff. Besides, very often, reservoirs are operatedusing old data and on rule curve regulations that have not been updated. To ad-dress these issues the following efforts are being made.

: A study was undertaken of the Sungei Seletar-Bedok Water Scheme (Appan, 1977a), which involves a catchment area of 5825ha. In this scheme, the urban catchment area extended to 45% of the total area.Urban run-off is collected in 8 storm water collection ponds and directed to theBedok Reservoir. The urban area is densely covered by of high-rise buildings andits surface run-off contained different types of contaminants and so the control ofwater pollution was the main priority. Not less than six, government and quasi gov-ernment groups met frequently and developed programmes for strict pollution con-trol. The action was essential because success was dependent on the effective-ness of pollution control. To control runoff quality, there are facilities to divert alldry weather flows with high pollution loads. Another feature in the collection pondis the facility to remove debris from the first flushes of storm-water flows. Theseponds also function as sedimentation tanks and in all the systems, quantity andquality are continuously monitored. The water quality of the ponds is comparablewith that of water from catchments from protected areas.

: In another study, Chua (1998)selected three existing impounding reservoirs and computed the annual inflow fig-ures for a period of 10 years. Using the demand pattern of the systems, storage

DEVELOPMENT OF IMPROVED SYSTEMS

Utilisation of Urban Catchments

Reappraisal of rule curves in existing projects


capacities and reliable yields were computed. The results indicated that, by up-grading the operation mode, it was possible to increase the yield from 41% to 112%of the current value.

In Thailand, the construction of cisterns was part of a village development pro-gramme. The costs of each of the units and repayments were low as local materi-als were used. Besides, an appropriate fund collection system was designed.

In Indonesia, emphasis was placed on the human dimension of development.Dian Desa’s officers mixed freely with villagers and were aware of their limita-tions. Villagers were trained and in turn trained other villagers. Besides, the ‘poor-est of the poor’ were given priority in the programme and the ‘two she-goat sys-tem’ helped to address the issue of repayment.

When the programme in Capiz was being planned, there was awareness thatpropagation of roofwater collection systems can considerably affect the lifestyleof the villagers with the greatest impact being felt in the cultural and socio-eco-nomic aspects of their lives. Hence, a methodology was developed to ensure thatall relevant aspects of the villagers’ lives were taken into consideration in a ‘totalapproach’, which was recommended to be adopted at the village level. This ap-proach proved to be quite successful.

In individual roofwater collection systems, the responsibility for operatingand maintaining the system is transferred from the central water authority to indi-vidual users. This makes it more necessary for the cistern owner to be aware ofthe health related aspects of maintaining the systems to ensure that the tank yieldsbacteriologically safe water. Training, therefore, is necessary.

In the execution of the project, finance plays an important psychologicalrole. The feeling that the tank is not being freely given and has to be paid for has apositive impact on the beneficiaries. Ownership is essential to maintain users’ self-respect and build self-reliance, which will encourage greater care of the tanks duringconstruction. Besides, during the re-payment period, the maintenance of the tankswill also be of a higher order.

Harnessing roofwater in high-rise buildings, industrial plots, and institutionsshow that they are economically viable. Thus, the use of small catchments is aconcept worth looking into. In Singapore Changi Airport, run-off has been har-nessed for more than a decade. Even though the airport is close to the sea, har-vesting has been successful and other airports should adopt such an approach.

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

46 ADHITYAN, A.

The use of urban catchments needs continuous co-ordination among sev-eral departments. The success of the utilisation of urban runoff largely dependson the ability of the water authority to closely monitor the quantitative and qualita-tive characteristics of the collected water.

By monitoring runoff into impoundment and by re-appraising the potentialof abstraction schemes, there is a possibility of considerably increasing the reliableyields of impoundments (from 41% to 112%). Such analyses must become partof the routine activities of water supply authorities because improving operationalstrategies and optimising output could prove to be far more economical than em-barking on new schemes.

Appan, A., 1982: Some Aspects of Roof Water Collection in a Subtropical Region, Honolulu, USA, pp.

220-226.Appan, A., 1985: Preliminary Investigations for establishing roofwater Monitoring Stations in S

East Asia. , Ottawa,Canada, April.

Appan, A., Lim, K.L. and, Loh, S.K., 1987: The Utilisation of High-rise Building Rooftops forDevelopment of a Dual-Mode Water Supply in Singapore.

, Khon Kaen, Thailand, pp.C10-1 to 14.

Appan, A. and Tay, G, 1989: The Use of as the Sole Source of Supply in Aquaculture., Manila,

Philippines, 2-4 August, pp. G2-1 to 14.Appan, A., Villareal, V. L. (Jr) and Lee, K. W., 1989: The Planning Development and Implemen-

tation of a Typical RWCS: A case study in the province of Capiz. , Manila, The Philippines, 2-4 Au-

gust, pp. C3-1 to 12.Appan, A., 1989: Proposal for a Dual-Mode Cistern System in Industrial areas of 2

Hectare Lots. , Manila, Philippines, 2-4 August, pp. 12-1 to 14.

Appan, A., Jeyaprakasham, T. and Punithan, S., 1995: A Total Approach Towards the Design ofRWCS in Airports Subjected to Tidal Effects.

, Beijing, China, June, pp. 7-51 to 60.Appan, A., H. C. Ho and Wong, H. J., 1997: Alternate Dual – Mode Working Systems for the

Collection and Use of Rainwater in High-rise Buildings for non-potable uses. , Teheran, Iran,

21 to 25 April, pp. 3-9.Appan, A., 1997(a): Collection of Runoff in Urbanised Catchments for Augmenting Storage in

Conventional Water Impoundment Schemes. , Teheran Iran, 25-29 April, pp. 527-533.

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December, pp. 88-99.Chua, B.H., 1998: Analysis of Rainfall Data to Appraise the Potential for Maximising Yield in

Impounding Reservoirs. , Sin-gapore, October.

Crasta, F. M., Fasso, C.A., Patta, F. and Putzu, G., 1982: Carthaginian – Roman Cisterns inSardinia. , June1882, Honolulu, USA, pp. 37-45.

Cuyugkeng, T., 1983: Rainwater Utilisation as Appropriate Technology in the Resettlement Areaof Cavite, Philippines. ,Khon Kaen, Thailand, 30 November to 2 Decemper, pp. 161-173.

Dept of Fine Arts, 1978: Master Plan of Sukhothai Historical Park. , KhoaPanish Press, Bangkok.

Dielhomid, 1982: Rainwater Cistern Systems in Indonesia. , Honolulu, June 1982.

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Fok, Y.S., R.H.L. Fong, J. Hung, E.T. Murabayashi and A. L.O., 1980: Bayes-Markov Analysisfor Rain-Catchment Systems. , Water Resources Research Centre,University of Hawaii, Honolulu, USA,

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HDB, 1994: Housing and Development Board, , Singapore.Latham, B. and Schiller, E., 1987: Rainwater Collection Systems: A Literature Review.

, Khon Kaen, Thai-land, 14-16 January, pp. A-1 to 29.

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Lee, S.L., P. Paramasivam, K.C.G. Ong, K.H. Tan and K.W. Lee, 1987: Ferrocement CylindricalTanks for Rainwater Collection in Rural Areas.

, Khon Kaen, Thailand, pp. C12-1 to 20.Murase, M., 1994: Can Rainwater save the Water Situation in a Large City?

, Tokyo, Japan, pp. 34-38.Nature Reserves Act, 1951: , Singapore National Printers, Republic of Singapore.Ongweny, G.S., 1979: Rainfall and Storm Water Harvesting for Additional Water Supplies in

Africa, .

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Prempridi, T., 1983: Current Research and Practice in Rainwater catchment and Storage in Thai-land. , Khon Kaen, Thai-land, 30 November to 2 December 1983, pp. 114-131.

Proceedings, 1997: , Teheran, Iran, 25-29 April, Volumes I and II.

PUB, 1977: The Public Utilities Board (Water Supply) Regulations, , Gazette No. 25, No. S126, Clause 10(3), Republic of Singapore.

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Vadhanavikkit, C. and Vivavanathepa, S., 1983: Inter-locking Mortar Block Water Tank. , Khon Kaen, Thailand, November

30 to 2 December pp. 34-49.Vadhanavikkit, C., 1983: Ferrocement Water Tank.

, Thailand, November 30 to 2 December, pp. 7-21.Weiner, L., 1987: Cisterns in Israel’s Negev desert – Past and Present Development.

, Khon Kaen,Thailand, 14-16 January, pp. A2-1 to 17.

Whiteside, M., 1982: How to Build a Water Catchment Tank. , Gaborne Government Printers.

Winarto, 1982: Rural Cistern Design in Indonesia. , Honolulu, USA, June, pp.294-298.

RainwaterProceedings of the 4 th International Conference on Rainwater Cistern Systems

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Rainwater Proceedings of the InternationalConference on Rainwater Cistern Systems


V. RATNA REDDY

Provid ing assured supplies of drinking water in required quantities to the population isone of the main ob jec tives of public po licy. The policy makers often formulate pricepolicies based on willingness to pay (WTP) estimates. Generally this is empirically set atabout five per cent with the assumption that average households are or can willing tospend about five per cent of their income in drinking water. However, it is o ften questionedin terms of whether or not rural households can or are willing to spend about five per cent.A s tudy conducted in rural Rajas than shows that WTP estimates may not be always beindicative of the ability to pay for water, especially in the regions where water is endowed.Using WTP es timates fo r p ric e fixa tion may resu lt in sub-op timal pric ing of waterresources. The willingness to pay should no t be taken as an ind icator for formulating theprice policies because the actual ab ility to pay for water appeared to be higher than theWTP b ids in the region. Since, household income influence WTP, the burden on low-income households would be higher if the blanket pric ing policy is adopted. Discriminatorypricing on the income basis would be more appropriate.

Social sector reforms are likely to have far reaching effects on the rural poor. Amongsocial consumption items, the first target of these reforms is drinking water. Be-cause drinking water is the most compelling problem of today, providing an as-sured supply in the required quantity to the entire population is one of the mainobjectives of any public policy. Recent policy changes that pricing water on thebasis of cost is essential in order to ensure the economic and financial viability ofwater supply schemes so that they can be run in a sustainable manner in the longrun. In fact, that certainty of the financial viability of a scheme is one of the con-ditions for external funding, be it by World Bank or by private agencies. However,the feasibility of this market oriented approach is often questioned in terms ofwhether or not rural households can or are willing to spend about five per cent oftheir income on drinking water. The validity of this assumption can be questionedon two grounds:

PRICING OF RURAL DRINKING WATER; RELIANCE OF‘WILLINGNESS TO PAY (WTP)’ ESTIMATES

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION

ProfessorCentre for Economic and Social Studies

Begumpet, Hyderabad

50 REDDY, V. R.

1. does willingness to pay (WTP) bids match with the actual ability of the households’to pay; and

2. does the five per cent rule of thumb holds good universally i.e.; across regionsand across income groups within the same region.

While five per cent rule of thumb hypothesis has been rejected in fragileenvironments and low income areas, the relation between WTP and ability to payhas not been given due importance, especially in the endowed regions. In endowedregions WTP as a proportion of household income may be lower than five percent irrespective of their ability to pay.

This paper analyses various aspects that govern the pricing of water in ru-ral area and questions the trustworthiness of WTP estimates. It asks if we reallyrely on WTP estimates for the purpose of formulating price policies in the contextof rural drinking water? It is argued that WTP estimates may not be indicative ofthe ability to pay for water, especially in endowed regions. Therefore, using WTPestimates for price fixation may result in sub-optimal pricing of water resources.The focus of this paper is the endowed region of rural Rajasthan. The main issuescovered in the study are:

(i) demand for water,(ii) willingness to pay for improved water supplies,(iii) ability to pay for drinking water, and(iv) factors influencing the willingness to pay for water.

The paper has seven sections. The first section discusses the database andMethodology used for the study. The second section briefly discusses the Contin-gent Valuation Method (CVM). A profile of sample villages is presented in sectionthree. Section four provides details about household water use in the sample house-holds. The willingness and ability to pay for water services are examined in sec-tion five while factors that affect willingness to pay are analysed in section six.Section seven consists of concluding remarks.

The districts of Bundi and Kota selected for study are situated in the CommandArea of the Chambal River of Rajasthan. Four villages within and two villages out-side of the command area of the river were selected for the study. The main source

DATA BASE AND METHODOLGY

PRICING OF RURAL DRINKING WATER 51

of drinking water in all villages is the hand pump. Though sources are limited theavailability of water is satisfactory in both study locations. Rapid appraisal meth-ods and structured questionnaire techniques were used to collect information onvarious aspects of water use. Qualitative information was obtained through groupdiscussions, and transacts walks. The Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) wasused to collect information on willingness to pay by asking the respondent directlyabout the maximum amount of money they were willing to pay for improved wa-ter supply and also to get responses in the context of a hypothetical market.

At this stage it will be relevant to briefly discuss the Contingent Valuation Method.It deploys direct valuation questions relating to an individual’s willingness to payfor certain environmental changes (Jordan and Elnagheeb, 1994). The questionsmay be in the form of a referendum or pay card as well as direct questioning aboutthe exact amount an individual/household is willing to pay. The referendum ap-proach includes dichotomous-choice, close-ended, and take-it or leave-it questionformats, while the payment card format specifies a range of values from whichrespondent is asked to mark the highest value he or she would be willing to pay.Another way of eliciting information is a bidding game procedure, where the re-spondent is offered different hypothetical bids until a range is generated. In thismethod the true willingness to pay is expected to lie between positive and negativeresponses rather than on a single point.

Indeed this is the general criticism of CVM. The validity of insights derivedfrom people’s responses to hypothetical situations is questionable. How reliable oraccurate would the estimate be? The awareness of respondents about the suggestedenvironmental amenities, which can be esoteric (like polar bear, acid rain, rainfor-ests in arid zones, etc,) is crucial for getting reliable estimates from CVM. Lackof knowledge regarding the ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in question may also result in hypo-thetical answers. Recent studies have started a verbal protocol analysis to learnabout the psyche of the respondent while answering the CVM questions (Schkadeand Payme, 1994).

The sample villages can be grouped into those in the command area and thosein the non-command area. Tables 1 and 2 present important features of the se-lected villages, where the dominant castes are Gujar, Bhil, and Mali. About 8 - 25

CONTINGENT VALUATION METHOD (CVM)

PROFILE OF THE SAMPLE VILLAGES

52 REDDY, V. R.

per cent of the households are landless, while marginal farmers own up to twohectares of lands. Since the areas located in the tail ends of the command area, donot get water in time or in required quantities, the area effectively irrigated is lessthan the listed figure. The two villages in the tail end regions are irrigated onlyonce a year. On the other hand, villages located in head reaches face waterloggingdue to excess irrigation and lack of proper drainage. Farmers in the middle reachesin contrast are comparatively happy because irrigated water is properly managed:they face neither scarcity nor waterlogging.

The scarcity situation in the non-command area villages is same as thatin Jodhpur in terms of their cropping pattern and dependence on non-farmactivities (Table 2 and Reddy, 1995b). The groundwater situation here is betterand makes their standard of living comparing with that of the villages in thetail end of the distribution canal. The general economic condition in the commandarea villages is better than that of the non-command area villages and scarcityregion. The cropping pattern in the command area is more diversified: three tofour main crops including high value crops are grown instead of the lowvalue and subsistence cropping pattern followed in other regions.

None of the sample villages have medical facilities. Villagers travel to dis-trict headquarters located at a distance that ranges from five to twenty kilometres.Although all the villages have primary or secondary schools, classes are irregularbecause teachers show up only once in a while. The command area villages have

Table 1:

Note: HP= Hand pump.

Social Characteristics and Status of Drinking Water in theSample Villages if Endowed Region.

Village Name

Chaparda

Jhakhana

Rangapur

Seentha

Banda

Dharmapura

Status ofWaterSupply

Shortage inSummer

Good

Shortage inSummer

Sometimesin Summer

Irregular

Shortagefor Cattle

No.of HH

60

150

200

133

150

70

SocialStructure

Mali

Gujar

Dhakad +Gujar

Brahmin +Meena

Bhill

Gujar

TraditionalWater Supply

River

Well

River

Bawdi + Well

Bawdi

Tank + Bawdi

PresentWater Supply

HP + Well

HP

HP

HP

HP

HP

Mode ofSupply

Manual

Manual

Manual

Manual

Manual

Manual


Table 2:

Notes: Figures in bracket indicate effective irrigation. * Irrigated by wells and stream.LL= landless.

better road systems and transportation facilities. Only one of the village in thescarcity region is connected with the road and even that one does not haveproper transport facilities. The same is the case with the non-command areavillages of the endowed region. On the other hand, three of the four sample vil-lages in the command areas are connected with the road The situation re-garding the residential water supply in the sample villages is discussed in detail inthe following section.

The hand pump is the main source of drinking water in the sample villages. Theseareas have a richer groundwater source than the scarcity region because of theriver. The villages, however, have poor irrigation facilities. The sample villagescan be grouped into command area and non-command area villages. Again the

Economic Status of the Sample Villages of the Endowed Region

pucca

pucca .

VillageName

Chaparda

Jhakhana

Rangapur

Seentha

Banda

Dharmapura

L.L

13

20

25

8

10

14

Marg &Small

85

40

72

38

90

-

Med.

-

27

38

-

78

Big

2

13

3

16

-

8

% of Households Belongingto Holding Class

Crop Pattern

Makka JowarMustard [R]

Jowar MakkaMustard [R]

Soyabean [K]Dhaniya [K]Wheat [R]Mustard [R]

Paddt [K]Soyabean [K]Wheat [R]Rajkar [R]

Makka [K]Till [K]Wheat [R]

Makka [K]Till [K]Wheat [R]Mustard [R]

GeneralEconomicStatus

Fair

Fair

Very Good

Good

Bad

Fair

MainOccupation

Agri. &Labour

Agri.

Agr.

Agr.

Labour &Agri.

Dairy & Agri.

% AreaIrrigated

63 * [19]

80

85-90

100

20*

14*

STATUS OF DRINKING WATER

54 REDDY, V. R.

command area villages can be grouped into villages located at the tail end, middlereaches and head reaches of the distributory system.

Chaparda and Jhakhana are located on the branches of a riverfed by continuous drainage, which has excess irrigation water in its head reaches.Traditionally, the villages depended on wells for drinking and cooking, while riverwater was used for bathing, washing clothes and cattle. They now use handpumps installed by the ten years ago. However, for cattle watering,bathing and washing they still use the river about a kilometre away. In Chapardal,the use of river increases during the summer as the supply from hand pumpsdecreases and consequently the time spent in fetching. It also increases becausethe queue for hand pumps is long. During the summer, the quality of pump wateralso decreases. Most of the villages have tankers to fetch water from the river.Though the villages are willing to pay for a piped water supply, drinking water isnot their priority.

Rangapur and Seentha are better-off than tail endvillages in terms of economic condition and availability of water sources. Fewhouseholds possess private hand-pumps and seldom use public hand pumps.Traditionally, the villagers depended on , wells and nearby streams andrivers for drinking water. Now they use these sources for other purposes.The discharge of water from hand pump decreases during the summer monthsand increases the waiting time. An improved water supply is not the first priorityof the households.

This village is socially dominated by Scheduled Castes and the ScheduledTribe of Bhils. Neglected and backward, their main occupation is daily labour. Mi-gration to a nearby town for work is common.

Traditionally the villagers used as a water source but they are notused nowadays. A few years ago, the installed four hand pumps; twoare functional throughout the year while the other two do not. A local stream pro-vides irrigation for the limited land in the village and is used for drinking. The cat-tle population is marginal and so is their water requirement.

The village is dominated by Gujars, a cattle-tending caste. The vil-lage is reasonably well-off though the availability of irrigation is as scare as in

Tail-end villages:

Middle and Head Villages:

Banda:

Dharmapura:

panchayats

bawdis

bawdi ,panchayat

NON-COMMAND AREA SITES


Banda. The villagers depend on a stream located two kilometres away from thevillage in the summer. Farming is predominant economic activity of Dharmapura.There are about 500 large cattle distributed among 60-70 households. Farmers sellmilk in nearby towns. They commute by bicycles and two wheelers. Some timesthey even hire transport to sell milk.

The tanks used for drinking water fell into disuse after four hand-pumps wereinstalled by the . Cattle use water from the tank, which also provides waterfor irrigation and recharging underground aquifers. Villagers are capable of affordingthe cost of repairing it, but show no interest in doing so; instead they wait for thegovernment to do the needful work. They demand a piped water supply system forthe entire village and are willing to pay the water charges.

The main source of drinking water in the sample villages is hand pumps except inBandha where people used stream and . More than 90 per cent of the house-holds depend on hand pumps. In all villages people use a river, canal, stream or

for bathing and washing clothes. It is difficult to provide water to domesticlivestock. Water from the hand pump is used for drinking, cooking, washing uten-sils and for bathing, especially by old people and ladies.

Accordingly, inter and intra-village variations in per capita use of waterexist (Table 3). The mean capita use of water ranges from 7 litres per capitaper day (lpcd) in Bandha to 15 lpcd in Jakhana. At the household level it rangesfrom 54 litres in Bandha to 130 litres in Rangapur. T he inter householdvariations in per capita water use in the endowed region are more or less similarto the variations in the scarcity region. The higher variations in the case of

Table 3:

panchayat

bawdi

bawdi

Domestic Use of Water across Sample Village

DOMESTIC WATER BUDGETING

Village

RangapurSeenthaJakhanaChapardaBandhaDharmapuraAll

Per Capita Use ofWater [LPCD]

Mean Range CV[%]

11 6-22 498 5-13 36

15 5-31 5211 3-21 387 2-24 589 5-12 42

10 2-31 54

Household Useof Water Ltrs/day

Mean Range CV[%]

130 45-500 8381 30-225 85

117 60-250 4675 15-150 4554 30-120 4285 30-150 5491 15-500 75

Average size of HH

1210877

109

56 REDDY, V. R.

households’ use of water are mainly due to variations in their size. Though theaverage size of households in the endowed region is more or less same (8.9 against9) the variations in average household size among the villages are high, that is,ranging from 7 to 11.50.

At the village level access to water does not seems to have any bearingon the consumption level. The per capita consumption level is low (8 lpcd)in Seentha, where water is available in plenty, while it is the highest in Jakhanawhere water is relatively scarce. Compared to water supply norms of 40 lpcd theconsumption levels are low, which may be due to the fact that bathing and wash-ing cloths are done at the source. Nevertheless, consumption levels in rural areasare low even in the endowed region and hence the fixed norms may not serve theprevailing socio-economic conditions. Water requirements may increase as aware-ness, literacy levels and economic condition improve. It is often argued that fam-ily size tends to be larger among poor household. But our evidence does not seemto support this argument. In fact, the scarcity region has relatively smaller averagefamily size than the relatively better off (economically) villages do. However, thisvariation needs to be checked further at the household level.

The extent of watering livestock at households is negligible in thesample villages and therefore has not been considered. These villages do notface a serious water shortage, but there are no water markets for drinkingwater and households do not incur any direct expenditure while getting domesticwater. However, households incur indirect costs in terms of distance walkedand time spent fetching water, these costs substantially lower than those inthe scarcity region did (Table 4). In the endowed region, villagers walk about 150metres on an average to fetch water. In Seentha they walk about 85 metres,the shortest distance, while in Rangapur villagers have to walk 253 metres tofetch water. Similarly, on an average each household spends about an hourevery day fetching water. The time ranges from 0.84 hours in Bandha to 1.31hours in Rangapur. Compared to the scarcity region, the time spent is normal(1 hour as against 18 hours in the scarcity region). This may be due to theavailability of hand pumps in the vicinity of the households. Moreover, thewaiting time in the endowed region is insignificant compared to that in thescarcity region. Given the variations across the households with regard totime spent, distance walked and per capita water consumption, it would beinteresting to analyse factors influencing the per capita water consumption at thehousehold level.


The factors that effect the per capita consumption of water were identified usingthe OLS method. The functional forms of the method is:

PCWCi

= ƒ (FSIZE; FINC; DIST; TIME) + VD1 +…..+ VD

6 +U

i

W he re , P CW C = Per capit a water co nsumpt ion i n ith house hold in jt h vill age

FSIZE = Family size of the ho usehold

FIN C = Fami ly inco me (annual income in Rs)

D I ST = Distance between the household and water source (in m etres)

T I M E = Tim e spent by the ho useho ld f etching water (hours/day)

VD1… VD

6= Village dummies

Ui

= Dis turbance ter m.

Theoretically family size is expected to be negatively related with water use.As the number of residents in a household increases the per capita use tends to godown. The annual income of a household has a positive influence on per capitause because higher income households often use water more lavishly and for morepurposes like gardening than poor households do. On the other hand, the distancebetween a household and its water source and the time spent by a household fetchingwater adversely effect the per capita water use for obvious reasons (in this regardsee Reddy, 1993). Though factors like social status and education level are alsoimportant theoretically, they are not considered relevant in this analysis. The fourindependent variables are correlated with the dependent variable PCWC. The vil-lage dummies are incorporated to capture the variations across the villages. Theestimated equations are as follows:

Table 4:

FACTORS INFLUENCING WATER CONSUMPTION

Distance Walked and Time Spent by Households for Fetching Water Across the Villages

Village


Distance in Mtrs

Mean Range CV [%]

129 0-220 10485 0-300 101114 20-500 106102 20-200 72197 20-500 85216 75-500 74159 0-500 160

Time Spent [Hrs/day]

Mean Range [CV %]

1.31 05-2.0 420.93 0-2.0 781.26 0.5-3.0 501.11 0.25-2.0 470.84 0.50-2.0 500.95 0.5-2.0 421.07 0-3.0 55

58 REDDY, V. R.

PCWCij

= 10.31861**-0.7704FSIZE*+0.00005FINC*-0.00094DIST + 5.6382 TIME*.(1)(5.31) (0.154) (0.000022) (0.0022) (1.017)

R2 = 0.37; N = 89; DF = 84PCW

ij= 10.2237*-0.7228FSIZE*+0.00007FINC*-

0.00018DIST+4.4919TIME*…………….……(2)(4.90) (0.145) (0.0002) (0.0021) (0.987)

R2 = 0.49; N = 89; DF = 79

Note: Figures in brackets indicate standard errors *; ** indicates level of significance at 1 and fiveper cent, respectively.

The estimated specification are fairly good in terms of explaining the varia-tions in water consumption across households (that is, R2 = 0.49 with village dum-mies). All the selected variables show the theoretically expected signs and are alsoconsistent (eq. 1 and 2). Three of the four selected variables turned out to be sig-nificant to one per cent. Family size had a negative sign, indicating that as thenumber of people living in a household increased the per capita water consump-tion declines because the amount of water required for other uses in a householdremains more or less same irrespective of the number of residents; this result isconsistent with estimates in urban areas (Reddy, 1993). Higher income householdstend to consume more water per capita perhaps due to the free availability of wa-ter in richer households: they have the means to obtain water from other sourcesor have in-house sources.

Time spent fetching water showed a positive sign, which does not agreewith the theoretical expectation. Usually households prefer to spend less time infetching water. But this may not be true in other regions where water sources arenot far of and where the time spent fetching water is not substantial. In fact, theaverage time spent by a household in the endowed region is about half the timeused in scarcity region, which is eighteen hours. Therefore, the time spent is de-termined by the level of water consumption rather than vice-versa as the house-hold is not constrained by time due to the proximity of the source in the endowedregions. This point is confirmed by the non-significance of the variable DIST indi-cating that the distance between the water source and the household does not playan important role in determining the per capita water consumption at householdlevel.

These results indicate that economic development in rural areas tends to in-crease the per capita water consumption levels and hence the total demands for

?


water. Economic development is often associated with increasing income andsmaller family sizes. Besides, the demand for improved water supplies such ashouse connections also goes up. This is evident from the comparison between thescarcity and the endowed regions. In the scarcity region, the priority of house-holds is to get an assured water supply closer to their houses and they are willingto pay for it, whereas in the endowed region the majority of the households arenot willing to pay anything for stand post supplies as water is freely available nowthrough hand pumps. They would prefer household connections.

Therefore, in order to meet the demand for improved water supplies in en-dowed regions, it is important to know how much these households can contributefor the improved water supplies. This would facilitate an examination of the finan-cial and economic viability of the schemes, which in turn is vital for making in-vestment decisions. From a social point of view it is important to understand whethera household’s willingness to pay matches its ability to pay. The ability of the house-holds to pay should be taken into account while formulating price policies, espe-cially in the social sector. The following section examines the issues of willing-ness and ability to pay for improved water supplies.

There are quite a few negative responses to the question of willingness to pay.These negative responses are more in the case of house connection (ten) than standposts (only one). The difference may be due to the attitude of the people in theendowed region towards paying for water. Though this may have also occurreddue to the strategic bias in the contingent valuation method, the evidence in thecase of willingness to pay for irrigation water also suggests that peoples’ attitudestowards public good is of a free rider nature (Reddy, 1995c). The negative re-sponse to the CVM question may not be entirely due to strategic bias. On theother hand, the number of zero bids is quite high in the case of stand post supplies(51 out of 89) in comparison with house connections (4 out of 89). This reflectsthe demand for improved water supplies in the region though our analysis is lim-ited to house connections.

The distribution of WTP bids (Table 5) indicates that the average WTP forall the villages is about Rs 21 per month for house supplies of water. At presentthese households do not pay for water. The average WTP bid is close to the scar-city region bids which is about Rs 22. across the villages, however, the WTP bids

WILLINGNESS AND ABILITY TO PAY FOR IMPROVED WATERSUPPLY

60 REDDY, V. R.

Table 5:Frequency Distribution of WTP Bids in the Sample Villages for Improved Water Supplies

[house connections]

Bid [Rs/month]Rangapur00-1011-2021-5-> 50N.RSeentha00-1011-2021-50> 50N.RJakhana00-1011-2021-5-> 50N.RChaparda00-1011-2021-50> 50N.RBandha00-1011-2021-50> 50N.RDharmapura00-1011-2021-50> 50N.RAll00-1011-2021-50> 50N.R

Frequency--33811-3252-4--294---1552-2--823-3--3431--4

2328222

10

Percentage--

19195066-

19133113-

25--

136027---7333313-

13--

501319-

19--

2736279--4263125211

Cumulative --36

141516-35

1012-

16--2

1115---16

1113-

15--8

1013-

16--37

1011--4

2755777989

Cumulative %--

19388894

100-

19326376-

100--

1373

100---7

407387-

100--5-6382-

100--

276491

100--4

30628789

100

Average WTP [Rs]30-8

1833100

-140

101828--

20-

101928--

170

101928--

14-8

2027--

30-

102043100

-2109

1931100

-

f


vary from Rs14 in Seentha and Bandha to Rs 30 in Rangapur and Dharmapura.These variations reflect the availability of water and economic conditions prevail-ing across the sample villages.

Seentha is located in the head reaches with plenty of water and better eco-nomic conditions. Bandha is the poorest among the sample villages with relativelypoor access to water. On the other hand, Rangapur is economically better off thanSeentha though availability of water is better in Seentha, while Dharmapura haseconomic conditions similar to those of Seentha and access to water akin to thatin Bandha. The data does not provide a systematic pattern with regard to the rela-tion between willingness to pay and the availability or access to water on the onehand and economic conditions or ability to pay on the other. A rigorous exerciseto identify the factors influencing household level willingness to pay for water there-fore is called for.

As far as the distribution of bids is concerned, except in Rangapur, about60 % of the sample households are willing to pay less than Rs 20 per month (av-erage bid Rs19). About 25 per cent of the households are willing to pay betweenRs 21-50 with an average bid of Rs31 per month and only two per cent of thehouseholds are willing to pay Rs100 per month. It is interesting to note that theaverage WTP bid for all the villages, that is, Rs 21 per month is close to the flatrate charged for house connection in urban areas of the region. This, however,does not indicate any strategic bias as there are no house connections in the sam-ple villages and most of the households are not even aware of the water rates inurban areas. A similar pattern has been observed in the case of rural Kerala (Singh,et.al, 1993). Given the low water consumption rates in these villages, Rs 21 permonth may be substantially higher than the prevailing rates. In urban areas wateris charged at Rs 1 for 1000 litres. Even if one includes livestock and other con-sumption needs, the per month water consumption in villages will not be as highas 21,000 litres per month (at present their average consumption is less than 3000litres per month, (Table 3). The willingness to pay on the basis of a unit of watermay be reasonably higher than the existing rate.

The size (landholding) class-wise distribution of WTP bids also does notshow a systematic pattern (Table 6), though there appears to be a positive asso-ciation between farm size and average WTP bid. Landless households have a higheraverage bid than that of landed households. This is due to one extreme bid obser-vation in which one household has unusually bid Rs100 per month. If this extremevalue is removed the average bid comes down to a reasonable level (Rs11/month)comparable with the scarcity region bids in other regions (Singh et.al, 1993 and

62 REDDY, V. R.

Table 6:

Reddy, 1995b). When only landed households are considered, the positive relationbecomes clearer. In the smaller landholding size 30 % of the households bid in therange of Rs 0-10 per month. These figures go down as one moves to higher ranges.Therefore, if farm size is treated as a proxy for rural household income, this re-flects a positive relation between WTP and income.The ability to pay of a household is examined in terms of household expenditureon various items, especially education and health vis-à-vis the share of the WTPbid in the total consumption pattern of the household. As in the case of the scar-city region, here also WTP for water compares poorly with other expenditure items(Table 7). As against four-five per cent expenditure on education and health, house-holds are willing to pay less than two per cent of their expenditure for water.

This finding re-emphasises our earlier argument that the five per cent rule

of thumb regarding rural households’ willingness to pay for drinking water maynot hold good universally. Our study proves that even in endowed regions a house-hold’s willingness to pay will not exceed five per cent of its family expenditure.

Frequency Distribution of WTP Bids across Size of Holding

ZeroFrequencyPercentage

0-10FrequencyPercentage



Above 50FrequencyPercentage

N.R.FrequencyPercentage

Average Bid [Rs]

Total Bids

Landless

117

233

--

117

117

117

29

6

< 1

--

833

729

521

--

417

17

24

1 – 2

--

632

632

316

--

420

18

19

2 – 4

319

531

424

425

--

--

16

16

4 – 10

--

17

750

536

17

--

29

14


Table 7:

On the contrary, WTP for water is low in proportionate terms in endowed villagesdue to their high-income levels. Therefore, it may be erroneous to rely on WTPestimates alone for fixing water prices. For instance, Seentha village, which is eco-nomically better off and has the ability to pay high rates bid an average of lessthan one per cent (0.68) for its WTP share. This income expenditure relation isclear in the case of other consumption items. The share of food is lower and theshares of education and health are higher in the better off villages. Other consump-tion items, which include clothes and recreation, are also higher. On an average,more than 50 per cent of the expenditure goes for food, followed by health, educa-tion and fuel.

About a quarter of the sample households are willing to pay less than one

per cent of their total expenditure on water and about 10 per cent are willing topay about 3 per cent. (Table 8). But none of the sample households is willing topay more than five per cent. The landholding size class wise analysis also revealsthat the average WTP does not exceed 3 per cent in any of the farm size groups(Table 9). The proportion of WTP to total expenditure across size classes does notindicate any systematic relationship. WTP for water in proportionate terms is thehighest for the landless class. Among the landed classes it fluctuates between 0.9

Table 8:

Percentage of Expenditure on Various Items and WTP Bids to Total Household Expenditure.

Frequency Distribution of WTP Bids as Percentage of Total Household Expenditure

WTP

1.550.681.601.601.552.141.52

Food

45.6948.1356.3857.4161.5455.6454.13

Fuel

5.514.200.900.901.902.882.72

Education

5.556.596.552.240.334.904.36

Health

5.927.015.684.973.765.325.44

Others

37.3334.0730.4935.2032.4631.2633.48



< 1%

6 [37.5]7 [43.8]4 [26.7]2 [13.3]1 [6.3]2 [18.2]

22 [24.7]

1.1 – 3%

7 [43.8]5 [31.3]9 [60.0]

10 [66.7]11 [68.8]6 [54.5]

48 [53.9]

3.01-5%

2 [12.5]-2 [13.3]1 [6.7]1 [6.3]3 [27.3]9 [10.1]

> 5%

-------

N.R.

1 [6.0]4 [25.0]-2 [13.3]3 [18.8]-

10 [1.2]

64 REDDY, V. R.

Table 9:

(semi-medium size class) and 1.5 (medium size class). With regard to other socialconsumption items, health expenditure appears disproportionately higher for poorhouseholds, which may be due to their poor quality of food and unhygienicmicroenvironment of the surroundings. There seems to be a positive relationbetween farm size and the percentage of total expenditure spent on education. Inthe case of WTP for water, the burden seems to be disproportionately higher onpoorer households.

The above analysis shows that WTP for water is lower than the usually

assumed five per cent of the total consumption. This is true irrespectiveof the prevailing economic conditions and hence pricing of water on the basisof willingness to pay may be erroneous. A blanket pricing policy may bebiased against poor households with respect to their ability to pay. Given thepresent pattern of household expenditure on health and the link between hygienicwater and health conditions, the evidence supports the higher ability of thehouseholds to pay for water. However, in order to achieve the objective of equity,discriminatory pricing policies across income groups need to be adopted. Inthe absence of any clear pattern with regard to the relation between WTP andother related factors like income, an attempt is made in the following section toestimate the WTP function in order to identify the factors influencing a house-hold’s WTP. This is necessary because so far we are dealing with groups of house-holds rather than individual households.

The WTP function is estimated with the help of ordinary least squares. The func-tional form used is as follows:

Consumption Items Along with WTP Bids as a Percentage of Total HouseholdExpenditure Across size Classes

Farm Size [ha]

Landless0-11-22-44-10Above 10

Food

51.456.552.048.648.849.1

Fuel

4.91.54.02.73.83.4

Education

2.43.43.66.08.05.5

Health

6.76.05.9

11.35.64.2

Others

34.632.634.531.433.837.8

WTP Bid

2.81.31.40.91.501.2

FACTORS INFLUENCING THE WILLINGNESS TO PAY FORDRINKING WATER


WTPi j

= ƒ (SS; LIT; FS; HHS; TIME; TEXP; INC; DIST; VillageDummies)

W he re , W TPi j

= Maxim um willi ngness to pay for water o f ’i’ household i n jthvi llage

SS = Social status of the household, ie., O for SC and ST and 1 forothe rs

L I T = Lite racy (number o f years of schooling) of the respondent

FS = Farm size (hect ares)

HHS = Household size, ie., number of people living in the householdTI M E = Total time spe nt by the household i n fet ching water (hours/

day)

TE X P = Total annual expe nditure of the house hold (in Rs)

IN C = Annual inco me of t he hous e (Rs/year)

D I ST = Distance between the house and the water source in metresVD 1..VD6 = Six village dummies are used to capture the variati ons across

vil lage s.

Of the number of specifications estimated only two combinations are re-tained for analysis. Two variables annual expenditure (TEXP) and annual income(INC) of the household are used interchangeably in two specifications. Three vari-ables turned out significant with expected signs and the explanatory power of theequations is good (about 50 per cent). Though village dummies are used, their co-efficients are not presented here for simplicity. The equations are as follow:

W TPi j

= 2.3 9+0.0 4DIST*+3.9 2TIME**+0.0001TEXP*… … … … … … … … … … … (1)

(1 1.91 ) ( 0 .00 5) (2 04 2) (0 .0 00 1)

R2 = 0.52; N= 79; DF = 75

W TPi j

= 10 .0 7+ 0.034 DIST*+ 3.64TIM E+ 0.000 5TEX P* +VD1… ..+ VD

5… ..... .. .. ..(2 )

(1 1.59 ) ( 0 .00 6) (2 .4 8) (0 .0 00 2)

R2 = 0.57; N = 79; DF = 70

W Ti j

= 5.76 +0.000 1INC*0 .04DIST*+5.3 9TIME* … … … … … … … … … … … ....... (3)

(1 2.54 ) (0 .00 00 4) (0 .0 05 ) (2 .5 0)

R2 = 0.46; N = 79; DF = 75

W TPi j

= 14 .27+ 0.0 001INC* +0.0 4DIST* +5.6 7TIME*VD1… … … .+VD

6… … .… .....( 4)

(1 2.19 ) (0 .00 00 5) (0 .0 05 ) (2 .5 6)

R2 = 0.65; N = 79; DF= 70

Note: Figures in brackets are standard errors. *, **; *** indicates level of significance at 1,5 and10 per cent respectively

66 REDDY, V. R.

As expected income/expenditure has a positive impact on willingness to payfor water. In other words, households with higher income levels are willing to paymore. This indicates that income or economic status of the household can be takeninto account for adopting discriminatory price policies. This applies in scarcity re-gion also. However, a policy of discriminatory pricing between the regions may bemore pragmatic. Variables DIST and TIME have turned out significant. Both ofthem have consistent positive impact on WTP. These two variables are not of im-portance in the case of per capita water consumption. Despite the fact that house-holds in the endowed region walk short distances and spend less time fetchingwater than those in the scarcity region, households seem to put some value ontime in this region. This may be due to the higher opportunity cost for female la-bour. In this region wage rates and the level of employment are high. This meansthat indirect costs (value terms) are quite high though they are not substantial inphysical terms. Moreover, there are no cultural taboos with regard to female la-bour. In fact, in some of the villages in the non-command area, both male andfemale family members jointly go to work. The opportunity costs of female la-bour do play a significant role in determining the willingness to pay for water. Inthese villages, therefore, as the opportunity costs of female labour go up, the de-mand for improved water supplies will raise the willingness to pay for water.

The preceding analysis may be synthesised into the following issues of policy rel-evance.

1. The policy intervention of providing hand pumps for drinking water is effectivein the villages of the endowed region. The demand for improved water supplieswas on the rise in economically better off villages, where the opportunity costsof female labour are high.

2. At present water consumption levels are substantially lower than the fixed normsof 40 lpcd. The design of the water supply systems needs to reconsider thesenorms.

3. For providing improved water supply availability is not a constraint in the samplevillages. Most of the villages have either canal water or groundwater or provisionsfor lift irrigation schemes. The main constraint is the lack of funds.

4. There is no match between willingness and ability to pay for water. Our studyrejects the rule of thumb, five per cent of total expenditure. The willingness

POLICY IMPLICATIONS


to pay for water is much less than five per cent; in fact it is less than two percent irrespective of economic conditions. However, the ability of households topay for health and education is about five per cent of the total expenditure. Thelow willingness to pay for water may be due to the attitude of the peopletowards securing public goods like water free of costs.

5. The low willingness to pay cannot be taken as the role indicator for formulatingprice policies. The actual ability to pay for water appears to be much higherthan that stated by the respondents.

6. Though the willingness to pay is low, in the context of low water consumptionlevels in rural areas per unit basis, the WTP is substantially higher than theprevailing rate in urban areas of the region. Even at this rate, the potential forgenerating finances at the local level is reasonable and to some extent may coverthe operations and maintenance costs given in table 10:

Table 10

The actual income generation ranges from Rs 12,000 in Chaparda to Rs72,000 in Rangapur at the mean WTP bids. At the medium WTP bids it rangesfrom Rs 10,000 in Chaparda to Rs 60,000 in Rangapur. These figures provide acase for pricing improved water supplies in rural areas.

7. However, since WTP is highly influenced by household income, the burden onlow income household would be higher if a blanket pricing policy is adopted.Discriminatory pricing linked with income levels may be more equitable thoughits feasibility at the implementation level deserves more analysis.

8. In the endowed region the demand for water and WTP will increases as theopportunitycosts of female labour moves upwards over time. Public policyneeds to be geared to meet the future demand. Cost recovery need not beconsidered a major bottleneck in this region. Households can afford to pay for

RangapurSeenthaJakhanaChapardaBandhaDharmapura

WTP/Month [Rs]

Mean Median

30 2514 1520 2017 1514 1030 20

No. of HH

20013315060

15070

Total IncomeGenerated [Rs]

Mean Median

72000 6000022344 2394036000 3600012240 1080025200 1800025200 16800

WTP/Year [Rs]

Mean Median

360 300168 180240 240204 180168 120360 240

Potential for Generating Finance at Local Level

68 REDDY, V. R.

water on the basis of its cost provided that water supplies are assured in termsof quality, quantity and regularity. Discriminatory pricing on the basis of incomeis an appropriate instrument even in endowed regions.

Various aspects of water pricing in rural areas raises questions about thetrustworthiness of WTP estimates. We cannot really rely on WTP estimates forthe purpose of formulating price policies in the context of rural drinking water.

Jordan, J. L. and Elnagheeb, A. H., 1994: Consequences of using Different Question Formats inContingent Valuation: A Monte Carlo Study: , Vol. 70, No.1, February.

Reddy, V. R., 1993:Project Report Institute of Development Studies, Jaipur.

Reddy, V. R., 1995(a): , Working Paper, Institute of Development Studies, Jaipur.

Reddy, V. R., 1995(b): , Work-ing Paper Institute of Development Studies, Jaipur.

Reddy, V. R., 1995(c): , Un-PublishedPaper, Institute of Development Studies, Jaipur

Schkade, D. A. and Payne, J.W., 1994: How People Respond to contingent valuation Questions:A Verbal Protocol Analysis of Willingness to Pay for an Environmental Regulation,

, Vol. 26, pp. 88-109.Singh, B., Ramasubban, R., Bhatia, R., Briscoe, J., Griffin, C.C. and Kim, C., 1993: Rural Water

Supply in Kerala, India: How to Emerge From a Low-Level Equilibrium Trap , , Vol. 29, No. 7, July.

REFERENCES

Land Economic Demand for water in Rajhasthan: with Specific Reference to Urban Residen-

tial Water, ,User Valuation of Renewable Natural Resources: Some Methodological

IssuesQuenching the Thirst: Means and Costs In Fragile Environments

,Access, Ability and Willingness to pay for Irrigation Water

Jour-nal of Environmental Economics and Management

WaterResources Research


TAPIO S. KATKO

Despite its rich water resources, Finland was one of the poores t countries in Europe till thebeginning of 1950’s. Till that time the country’s economy was largely based on forestry andagriculture, which began to change when trade and manufacturing became major sectors of theeconomy. By 1990, Finland had come to occupy its place among the top fifteen nations in termsof gross domestic products. Along with these changes, the water supply and sanitation sectoralso evolved by decentralising in which municipalities had major responsibilities. This his toryhas useful lessons for developing societies.

Finland is a country with abundant water resources. About 56,000 lakes dominatethe country’s central and eastern parts constituting about 9.9 per cent of its area.The lakes are shallow and their total volume is relatively small. Some of the lakeshave a diameters as short as 300 m. Groundwater deposits of good aquifers aresituated in alluvial regions formed during the Ice Age. In coastal areas, groundwatercontains excess iron and manganese and is of poor quality. In the western part ofthe country, river water is rich in humus and natural organic matter. Rivers andforests cover two thirds of Finland’s land surface. In the 1990 the quality of wa-ter varied; the condition of surface water of low quality is improving, while thecondition of surface water of high quality is gradually declining despite theimplementation of extensive water pollution control measures since the 1960’s(FEI, 1996).

Fairly large compared to its population, Finland has a land area of 338,000km2. Of the country’s five million people, the majority live in the south and west.The country’s economy traditionally depended on two main sectors: agricultureand forestry. While many industrialised countries of Europe have experienced astructural change in their economies, Finland’s economy had largely remaineddependent on the two sectors. Changes started much later compared to other in-dustrialised western countries; the economy began to grow when manufacturing,construction and services became major sectors. In the 1920’s the agriculture and

WATER AND SANITATION SERVICES: INSTITUTIONALEVOLUTION IN FINLAND, 1850-2000

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION

Senior Research FellowTampere University of Technology (TUT)

Institute of Water and Environmental Engineering (IWEE)

70 KATKO, T. S.

forestry sectors together employed about 70 per cent of the country’s workforce.By 1945, the share of the population employed in the two sectors had dropped toabout 50 per cent, and by 1993 the share in the two sectors had decreased fur-ther: they employ only nine per cent of the population (Heikkerö, 1987).

Of the 450 municipalities of Finland, 102 are cities, although they would bebetter termed ‘towns’ as only twelve cities have a population of over 50,000 (TheAssociation of.., 1996). About one million people live in the Helsinki MetropolitanArea. In Finland, the pace of urbanisation accelerated following the Second WorldWar but actually began to decline after the oil crisis of the early 1970’s. Commu-nities are scattered and compared to European standards, the building density islow. The major part of Finland’s infrastructure was built after the Second WorldWar, but needs to be renovated to meet challenges of the 21st century.

The country has a strong history of local government (municipal adminis-tration), which dates back to the mid-1860’s. In 1875 AD, local government (townsor rural municipalities) were given the authority to tax residents. After 1917, localcouncils were directly elected and local self-government was guaranteed in the coun-try’s constitution. The Local Government Act of 1995 took into account the dif-ferences between individual local authorities and stipulated that each municipalityarrange internal administration and operations as it sees fit.

The provision of education, social services, health care and the managementand maintenance of infrastructure fall within the jurisdiction of local governments.Also, local authorities and municipalities have played a key role in the managementof water supply in municipalities, cities, towns and rural centres, and have, at leastindirectly, acted either as service providers or facilitators through municipality-ownedwater and sewage utilities of various forms.

This paper discusses the evolution of the urban and rural water supply and sanita-tion sector in Finland over the last 130 years.1 The paper focuses on water andsanitation services and on the pollution of water by municipal and industrial waste.The research was based on a literature review as well as semi-structured inter-views of about 160 senior sector professionals in the country. Interdisciplinary re-search combines historical and technical information on water supply and sanitaryengineering. In addition to the historical development of technology, institutionaland management issues related to water services were analysed. Regarding certainstrategic sectoral decisions that incur long-term impacts, the path dependence theoryis used, and linked to future research using analogies (Bell, 1997).

OBJECTIVES, METHODS AND APPROACHES

WATER AND SANITATION SERVICES: 71

MAP OF FINDLAND

72 KATKO, T. S.

Examples of the oldest water system in Finland are found all over of the country-side. The technologies used in ‘rural’ areas were also used in early urban centres.Wells were the main source of water supply, and the so-called well-witchers tradi-tionally sited wells. Like practical geologists, well-witchers were expected to lo-cate sites with the most potential wells based on landscape and vegetation. In 1949-50, 42 famous well-witchers were invited to locate water veins in the botanicalgarden of University of Helsinki. With their eyes covered they tried to locate wells.All the results were different (Wäre, 1953), but the belief in water veins and witchersis strong and citizens still rely on witching methods to locate them.

In the early days, timber was used in wells, but with the emergence of con-crete rings in the market, they were replaced. Counterpoise lift and winches, andlater hand pumps were introduced and were manufactured from wood and fac-tory-made models of cast iron. After the Second World War, the Work EfficiencyInstitute introduced an improved model of the women’s double yoke, which hadbelts that rested on the shoulders of the carrier. The model was desperately needed,since in 1951 it was estimated that Finnish woman carrying water from wells totheir cowsheds and houses walked the distance from the earth to the moon andback everyday (Wäre, 1952).

In 1863 AD, the first written proposal for building a common piped watersupply system appeared in the , a Swedish-language newspaper. Theproposal suggested that a gravity flow pipeline to carry water from a natural springbe built (Anon, 1863). The case of such a system was first documented by Ilmajokiin Ostrobothnia in 1872. Subsequently, other small systems were built in the samearea. The system used wooden pipes drilled manually from pine logs. In one daya skilled driller could produce about 40 to 50 metres of pipe. Later, in the1930’s, a special machine was developed for drilling pine logs (Mäkelä, 1945,Peräkylä, 1953).

Gradually, rural water pipelines extended. Systems were first built to supplywater to meet the need of cattle farming and then of rural households. Under theaction of gravity, water was taken from natural springs located along riverbanks.There was a long tradition of collective efforts by consumers in developing theirsystem. It is believed that this tradition originated partly from the lake drainageassociations which were common in the 18th and 19th century (Anttila, 1967).

In rural areas, water supply systems were largely built to provide water forcattle farming. First, an electricity connection was provided to farmhouses, then,

DEVELOPMENT OF RURAL WATER SUPPLY

Wasabladet


a water supply pipe was built to serve the cowshed. Thirdly, a sewer was built todispose off wastes from the house, and, finally, a water supply pipe was laid toserve the household (Katko, 1992). Only in 1951, subsequent to the promulgationof the first Financial Support Act, did the Government begin supporting the devel-opment of rural water supply systems.

In the mid-1800’s urban water supply systems were similar to the private and publictubewells common in the countryside. The wells were first introduced to MiddleAge castles, and gradually spread to the surrounding areas. In urban areas, an im-portant need for water was for fire fighting. Because houses in old cities werebuilt with pine and spruce and constructed closely together, they were prone tofrequent fires. With increasing urbanisation, water from the wells became inad-equate to meet the need. The quality of well water also deteriorated. The urbanwater supply and sanitation in Finland evolved to meet the needs of fire, domesticdrinking water, health and hygiene.

The first attempt to organise a common water supply in an urban area oc-curred in Tampere in 1835, when a German-made pump was tested. About 50years later, a gravity flow pipeline from a lake to the central square of the city wasbuilt. In 1866, Von Nottbeck, a private investor, suggested that a concession-basedprivate water works be built for the city of Tampere. His proposal was based onthe idea that an investor would bring the money if the city would bear the risks.The proposal was rejected and the city started to develop its own system (Juutiand Katko, 1998).

The first urban water supply system in Finland was established in Helsinkiin 1876. The system was constructed originally by a private company, which wasgiven an initial concession for 75 years. Following an economic recession, the con-cession was bought by the city in 1882 (Lillja, 1938). Since then, municipality-owned utilities provide urban water services in the country, and from early daysmunicipalities have bought various services from the private sector.

The water supply systems in Helsinki and Tampere were followed by sys-tems in Vyborg in 1892, in Oulu in 1902, and in Turku in 1903. The water supplysystem in Vyborg was the first system in the country to use groundwater. Thecity was given a special award during the Annual Public Health Fair held in St.Petersburg the following year. The formal establishment of city water supply and

DEVELOPMENT OF URBAN WATER SUPPLY AND SEWERSYSTEMS

74 KATKO, T. S.

sewage works was often proceeded by a more informal construction of waterpipes, particularly sewers.

The experiences from groundwater use in Vyborg and Turku (Åbo), led toa lively debate about the feasibility of groundwater utilisation. The geological ‘bird´seye view’ and the method based on soil conductivity were considered contradic-tory alternatives. The latter method provided optimistic estimates of groundwateryields and many cities decided to turn to the use of surface water (Sederholm,1911). After the shift to surface waters by the year 1920, it took several decadesbefore large-scale utilisation of groundwater started. Yet, by combining both it wouldhave been possible to develop groundwater at that early stage (Katko, 1996).

Helsinki and other bigger cities were directly connected to Sweden and Ger-many. Finnish civil servants went on study tours to these countries and their for-eign experts were also invited to Finland (Hietala, 1987). Communities on the west-ern coast of Finland had contacts with other foreign cities, but knowledge andexperience was also gained from the capital, Helsinki. The water works of Vyborgwere involved in the establishment of water works in other cities and townships ineastern and central Finland. The overall development was not capital-centred asstated in several other studies, though in the diffusion of water services to house-holds, the capital was undoubtedly the forerunner. This also seems to be true ofsolid waste services (Nygård, 1999).

In earlier days water was stored in ground-based reservoirs, built of stoneand bricks, similar to those in Helsinki, Vyborg and Tampere. Occasionally, woodentowers were used. The tower in Tampere is still used and is a reminder that insome areas water system can have very long lives. The first elevated water reser-voir (or water tower) was built in 1910 in Hanko in the south-western corner ofthe country. At Vaasa, on the western coast, another water tower was constructedin 1914. This tower like several others was selected on the basis of an architec-tural competition that solicited many proposals. Each tower reflects the construc-tion tradition of its time (Asola, 1999). Later, Finnish elevated water reservoirs builtof pre-stressed reinforced concrete gained international reputation (Nagler, 1966).

The first sewers in a Finnish city were constructed for draining land. TheHealth Act of 1879 required that authorities survey city areas and check elevationsin order to plan gravity-based drainage and sewerage systems (Nygård, 1999). Bythe turn of the century, the use of flush toilet became common and sewer sys-tems were built. Wastewater treatment plants were first constructed in Lahti andHelsinki in 1910. The plant in Lahti, the first one in the Nordic countries, was builtfor the whole city. The plants comprised a septic tank and a trickling filter of natural


gravel. The filters of the Lahti plant, for example, contained about 450 cubic me-tres of hearth cinder and pieces of burned brick. Activated sludge plants were con-structed in Kyläsaari, Helsinki in 1932, in Rajasaari in 1936 and in Pietarsaari onthe western coast in 1938.

Between the late 1950’s and the 1980’s, water supply and sanitation services inFinland expanded to a large scale and led to increase in total water consumption.The design of water supply and sewer networks was largely based on projectedgrowth. In the 1960’s it was assumed that cities would grow fast, but the projec-tions could not foresee that about 0.5 million consumers would move out of thecountry during the decade. It was also commonly believed that specific water con-sumption rates (litres/capita/day) would follow the North American pattern, thusdoubling water demand (Figure. 1).

Figure 1. Total water demand estimates from the mid-1960’s and theactual rates for the city of Tampere (Juuti and Katko, 1998).

EXPANSION OF WATER SUPPLY AND SANITATION BETWEENTHE 1950’S AND 1980’S

76 KATKO, T. S.

After the oil crisis of 1972 and the introduction of the Sewer SurchargeAct, specific water consumption began to decrease. The introduction of leakagecontrol, better pipe materials, and improved water fixtures as well as consumers’increased awareness about conservation began to have effects and the total waterconsumption started to decrease. The lower consumption rate had brought aboutnew challenges for water supply utilities; they need to guarantee adequate flowvelocities in the network and also generate cash income. Subsequently, improve-ments in water treatment and awareness of the artificial recharge of groundwaterwere introduced. The first such modern plant, based on Swedish experience, wasconstructed in Lappeenranta in 1970. To treat surface water, slow sand filtrationmethod was reintroduced as a tertiary method in the 1990’s. In Helsinki, this wasused as the primary and sole method as early as the 1880’s.

The Water Act of 1962 officially introduced the concept of controlling ofwater pollution. In the 1950’s the key element of watercourse protection was theassumption of ‘self-purification of water bodies’. The construction of municipalwastewater treatment plants increased rapidly in the 1960’s, and by the 1980’s prac-tically all communities had constructed wastewater treatment plants (Figure. 2).The removal of phosphorus started in the early 1970’s. Typically the simultaneousprecipitation method, in which a precipitating chemical and the water to be treatedare introduced simultaneously to the aeration tanks, was used. The key precipitat-ing chemical, Ferro-sulphate, is a by-product of titanium oxide and consequently,is cheap. Encouraged by the Swedish experience some utilities on the western coaststarted to use the so-called post-precipitation method where separate sedimenta-tion tanks are built downstream of the aeration base. The effectiveness of the twomethods led to a debate; ultimately, simultaneous precipitation method was provedto be as efficient as the Swedish method.

Figure 2:


Simultaneous precipitation method was used overwhelmingly, and is still inuse, while the development of alternative methods has failed. In the 1990’s, sometreatment plants along with river bodies, especially in coastal areas, were obligatedto remove nitrogen. However, in 2000, natural scientists cannot agree on the fea-sibility of nitrogen removal. Some of the latest results suggest shifting the empha-sis to removing phosphorus.

The first bedrock wastewater treatment plant was completed in 1967. It wasfollowed by the construction of similar underground structures in Lahti and Hel-sinki. From the point of view of land use, these have several advantages, espe-cially since Finnish rock tunnelling technology is of a high standard, although theyare fairly expensive (Katko and Lehtonen, 1999).

Wa te r po llut ion contro l star te d fi rs t in the food and ta nningindustries. Wastewater treatment plants were constructed first in the 1950’sand biological-chemical treatment was introduced in the 1960’s and 1970’s.Forest industries emerged in Finland at end of the 19th century. Most oftheir plants were established along inland waterways, a practical sites consideringthe location of forest resources and the fact that transportation was basedon timber floating and that water was needed for processing. Yet, at thesame time, the quality of water bodies started to deteriorate. For instance,water pollution caused by the sulphite pulp mill of Mänttä was discussed as earlyas the 1930’s.

Water pollution loads from forest industries started to decrease in the1970’s and 1980’s even though total timber production has increased (FinnishFores t Indust ries Federat ion, 1995). A biologic al -c he mica l trea tmentmethod similar to that used to heat municipality water was not implementedtill-1980’s. A key objective of control was to reduce the use of chlorinecompounds in pulp blea ching. However, fo rest industries s till disc hargeconsiderable amount of organic and nutrient loads into water bodies. Forestindustries started to treat their wastewaters with biological and chemicalmethods 15 to 20 years after municipalities started waste treatment. Smalltown and rural centres began building wastewater treatment plants first. Thesequenc e in the protection of water bodie s and control pollution looksirrational, but probably implies that forest industries and bigger cities wereable to advance their interests in decision-making better: they had a loudervoice and less difficult exit (Paul, 1990).

78 KATKO, T. S.

The agricultural engineering districts led to the growth of the Finnish environmen-tal administration. The first such districts were established in Vaasa and Oulu re-gions in 1889. New districts whose boundaries largely reflected the country’s re-gional administration were then gradually established. Water districts were estab-lished in 1970 as part of the Water Administration and later regional environmentalcentres were formed.

In 1912, during the city engineers´ first annual seminar, the role of munici-pal technical services in general and of water supply and sewage utilities in par-ticular, were debated. Mr. B. Wuolle, the head of the electricity works in Helsinkiand later a professor, made a presentation in which he discussed the operationalprinciples and objectives of these utilities. Citing foreign examples, he stated thatwhen establishing water supply works, the main emphasis should not be on mak-ing profit, but on improving health and other indirect benefits (Wuolle, 1912). Inrecent times, privatisation of water utilities has been emphasised in internationalforums, while health and other benefits, which should not be compromised, havereceived less attention. Water charges paid by users are the traditional source offunding for Finnish water works, while sewage services used to be financedthrough municipal taxes. Governmental support to the sector has always been mi-nor and has been directed mainly to inter-municipal projects, groundwater investi-gations and other activities.

Water and sewage utilities in cities and townships were under municipal ad-ministration. Figure 3 presents an estimate of the relative shares of public and pri-vate contributions to urban water and sewage services. Though the first systemswere private, by the mid 1880’s municipalities had assumed responsibility for or-ganising and providing water services. Over the years, there have been somechanges in the relative shares, but on the whole it has been based on a public-private partnership. In the 1990’s many urban utilities have greater autonomy andhave also introduced commercial principles to their operations.

Figure 4 presents the public-private partnership in Finnish water services.In normal conditions, the water level and filling ratio in the towers fluctuates fromabout 30 to 100 per cent, and so does the share of services bought from theprivate sector. The stem of the tower represents the core competence of themunicipality-owned utility. The tower rests on a community of customers sup-ported by the local government. Demand is satisfied by water service. Throughthe ‘roof’ the central government guides sector policies supported by the regional

THE INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK OF DEVELOPMENT


administration. Although small systems do not necessarily need a tower, such asystem is in principle, ‘democratic’ since the decision making for services remainat an appropriate level and is also responsive to local pressure.

Small private water associations are a unique Finnish solution. These asso-ciations can be partnerships, water co-operatives or joint-stock companies. Somewater co-operatives have merged with larger systems, while at the same time newones have been established especially in rural areas where settlements are scat-tered. Figure 5 shows the changes in the relative responsibilities of stakeholders inwater co-operatives over the years The relative share of consumers has declined,but over the years it has always been important to find one enthusiastic person, a‘champion’, who initiates action (Katko, 1992). Instead of maximising profit, theco-operatives have tended to minimise costs, even at the risk, especially earlier oflowering the service level. Based on their nature and age, water co-operatives canbe classified into three types.Figure 5. Changes in the relative responsibilities of stakeholder in Finnish waterco-operatives (Katko ,1992, modified).

Since the 1970’s, joint-stock companies have been established for inter-mu-nicipal systems. The first inter-municipal water works were created along rivervalleys on the western coast. These systems were largely based on plans presentedin the 1960’s. In the early 1970’s, a water company in the Helsinki metropolitanarea built a 110-km tunnel through bedrock, which was then among the longestones of its kind in the world to draw water from Lake Päijänne. The tunnel wasan over investment, and probably constituted the strongest argument used in laterdiscussions to build social pressure for more efficient wastewater treatment in theforest industries located upstream from Lake Päijänne. Within a few years, otherpulp and paper mills in the country also adopted technology for waste treatment.

Finland’s water supply and sanitation sector has many professional associa-tions, which have contributed to the development of sector education and generalpolicy. In the first decade of the century, the Union of Civil Engineering Techni-cians developed Finnish terminology in the sector mainly on the basis of Swedishterminology. Other professional associations include municipal central associations,the Finnish Municipal Engineering Association and the Agricultural Engineering As-sociation, which later became the Finnish Civil Engineering Association. The Finn-ish Water and Wastewater Works Association (FIWA) that started its activities inthe 1950’s initially represented the interests of small water works, but later ex-panded to represent all water and sewage utilities. Professional associations havealso contributed towards developing public relations and education. Even before

80 KATKO, T. S.

professional associations were established, informal networking among professionalswas extensive.

Water pollution control associations focus largely on operation in a certainriver basin through voluntary activities. The oldest organisation in the non-govern-mental sector was established in 1961 for the Kokemäki River basin; it is also thelargest organisation in terms of its activities. A considerable share of the activitiesof these associations consists in providing laboratory services.

Compared to the early beginning of water supply and sanitation services,specialised training in the field started much later. Still, the curricula of agriculturalengineers in the early part of the century included both engineering and agricul-tural subjects and were multi-disciplinary in nature. They can also be regarded asthe country’s first environmental engineers. The first chair in water supply andsanitary engineering was established at Helsinki University of Technology in 1967,followed by an associate professorship at Oulu University in 1969 and a chair atTampere University of Technology in 1973. Since 1960’s, continuing education andlater international education in this sector have been significant.

Water research began at Helsinki water works in the late 19th century. Theresearch projects dealt with the health impacts of lead pipes and the chemical treat-ment of surface water. In the 1950’s, research activities on water supply and sani-tation started. These studies dealt with water use, water supply, pipe materials,and water quality in wells. As a result of this research, the use of lead as the mainwater pipe material was forbidden.

In the 1960’s groundwater explorations were started especially to meet in-ter-municipal water supply. The first studies related to wastewater dealt with theuse of marshland as well as stabilisation ponds. Universities also conducted re-search. Research, however, has often been conducted after practical applicationswere made. This was true in the 1970’s with municipal wastewater treatment andthe same process was repeated in the 1980’s in relation to the control of waterpollution by forest industries. The Water Association of Finland established in 1969has also promoted water sector research, specifically in pollution control. The as-sociation’s members include almost the entire water sector as well as experts inseveral other disciplines. The association organised its first annual research semi-nar in 1970, eutrophication, one of the unsolved problems of water bodies in ofthe country, was the theme.

R. Huber, one of the pioneers in the sector, originally came to oversee theconstruction of the Helsinki water works and later established his own companyin the capital. He also prepared practical instructions on how to use a flush toilet.


In 1912, the Swed ish Company ‘Al lmä nna Inge niö rsbyrå’ established asubsidiary with the aim of getting involved in the construction of Russianrailways. Later the subsidiary gave birth to the key water sector company,YIT Ltd. New contracting and consulting companies, which were establishedafter the Second World War, were directly or indirectly connected to YIT.The f irst consu lting c ompany of the country, So il a nd Water, Ltd , wasestablished in 1949. The Association of Rural Municipalities also established acompany, which later became Plancenter, Ltd. The consulting companies wereoriginally established to provide professional services to for the developmentrural water supply and sanitation.

In the late 1950’s YIT planned the sewerage system of Reykjavik,Iceland, and built the Karpala water works in Iraq; thus started the process ofproviding expertise to other countries. These activities expanded gradually toother Arab countries and to the former Soviet Union. In the 1990’s, expertisewas provided to China, Central and Eastern European countries, and the Balticregion. Water supply and sanitation has also become one of the key sectors inthe bilateral development co-operation the Finnish government is involved in.The first bilateral development co-operation project was started in Tanzania inthe early 1970’s and lasted until the early 1990’s. Other water and sanitation projectshave been supported in Sri Lanka, Kenya, Vietnam, Egypt, Mozambique, Nepal,Namibia, and Ethiopia.

The experience gained from development co-operation by enterprises andindividual professionals has also created the ground for co-operation in the Balticregion, especially in the field of environmental protection because water pollutionand its control is one of the key issues (Helcom, 1998). For example, in the Gulfof Finland, the highest pollution load comes from the wastewater of St. Petersburg,Russia, this indicates the problem has a trans-national dimension. The experiencegained has also been important in the implementation of other activities supportedby the European Union.

The development of the water supply and sanitation sector in Finland wasbased on the co-operation of several parties. Special water courts independent ofthe environmental administration, which operate as autonomous courts with bothjurists and water professionals as members, have been established. Industries, waterand sewage utilities, professional associations and sector personnel have played im-portant roles. In short, the evolution of water supply and sanitation services hasbeen a national ‘civilisation project’, which continues even today.

82 KATKO, T. S.

The development of water supply in rural and urban areas has progressed alongdifferent paths because demand is different. Even so, the systems have graduallycome closer to each other in terms of technological use and management. Visiting‘distant lands’ in the sector that started 100 years ago has been useful. In the 1990’s,water and sewage utilities were one of the major international activities of the Finnishgovernment. The expansion of water supply and sewerage systems has substan-tially the improved general hygiene of the Finnish people and lowered mortality rates.By the 1880’s, the mortality rates of urban areas were at the level of today’s LDCsand higher than those in the countryside (Turpeinen, 1979; Katko, 1997). Nowa-days Finland’s infant mortality rate is among the lowest in the world.

The development path of the Finnish water supply and sanitation sector canbe divided into seven development phases. The first initiatives, when early sys-tems were constructed, took several decades to mature. After independence in 1917,water supply and sewage services spread to cities and townships and rural cen-tres but stopped during the Second World War. The post-war reconstruction pe-riod in the 1960’s and 1970’s was accompanied by the greatest expansion of theservices. Thereafter, the sector reached a plateau although new challenges haveemerged. At the same time international activities have increased markedly.

The service provided by Finnish water supply and sanitation systems is ef-ficient, extensive, and high quality; this level can probably be found only in a fewother countries around the world. For implementing water supply and sanitationservices, the Finnish ‘model’ is based on co-operation between the public and pri-vate sectors. The services are provided by publicly owned utilities that operate ona non-profit-basis but adhere to commercial principles, with the benefit of profitaccruing to the consumers. The other major principle is that the services are sup-ported by direct consumer payments, with low governmental subsidies. The thirdkey principle has been to organise rural water supply through consumer-managedwater co-operatives. Other ‘best practices’ and management principles include theestablishment of water courts consisting of jurists and professional members in-dependent of the environmental administration.

The expansion of water supply and sewer systems has been gradual. . The130 years of history show that there are no shortcuts to success in this sector.On the other hand, the process has been rapid in areas such as the developmentand use of plastic pipes, wastewater pumping technology and use of waterchemicals. Technologies such as activated carbon and slow sand filtration in

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS


water treatment used in the last century were abandoned over time, only to bereintroduced later as supplementary methods. The decisions by several cities around1920 not to use groundwater had long-term effect on the sector: the interest ingroundwater use, artificial recharge and groundwater protection did not revive un-til the 1960’s.

Compared to other countries Finnish experiences present several interestingsimilarities but also significant differences. A comparative study on these similari-ties and differences is worth considering. The paper has also identified further re-search needs on

the development and projections of water demand, and the overall effects of theforeseeable decline in demand on the management of drinking water servicesa detailed study on public-private partnership in water and sewage servicesinstitutional development and the linkages among the key parties involved in thesectoran in-depth analysis of the factors and their implications for future water andenvironmental management in the countryfuture strategies of water and sanitation services in Finland and its internationalco-operation activities.

A comparative study of the evolution of water services in selected coun-tries needs to be taken because such an analysis will improve the understanding ofthe key requirements for viable services. Such an exercise would also contributetowards building international co-operation in the sector. In order to know wherewe go, we need to know where are and where we come from.

Thanks are due to professional colleagues in Finland and elsewhere. Financial sup-port from SHOT, the Academy of Finland, and the Ministry for the Environmentin Finland is gratefully acknowledged.

1 It is based on the author´s book on the evolution of water services in Finland (Katko, 1996),the summarised English version of that book (Katko, 1997), a case study on Tampere Citywater works (Juuti and Katko, 1998), and an on-going study on the experiences of privateinvolvement in the provision water services (Hukka and Katko, 1999).

n

n

n

n

n

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

NOTE

84 KATKO, T. S.

Anon, 1863: Nimimerkki, Hn , 7.3.Anttila, V., 1967: Järvenlaskuyhtiöt Suomessa (Lake drainage associations in Finland),

, Turku University, pp. 360 (In Finnish).Apellgren, 1901: Det underjordiska Åbo. . Finska Fornminnesföreningen, Vol. 18,

No. 4, pp. 49-65. (In Swedish).Asola, I., 1999. Vesitornien kehitys Suomessa (Development of water towers in Finland), TUT,

IWEE, MSc thesis, pp. 202. (In Finnish).The Association of Finnish Local Authorities (AFLA), 1996: The world of Finnish local authori-

ties, pp. 47.Bell, W., 1997: Foundations for futures studies. Vol. 1, Transac-

tion Publishers, pp. 365.Finnish Environment Institute (FEI), 1996: .Finnish Forest Industries Federation, 1995: The way of wood,

pp. 66.Heikkerö, T. E., 1987: Kehitysmaiden kehittämisen vaikeudet (Constraints on developing LDCs)

No. 5/87, s. 263-271. (In Finnish). Helcom (Helsinki Commission), 1998: The Baltic Sea joint comprehensive environmental action

Programme, Recommendations for updating and strengthening, No. 72.

Hietala, M., 1987: Services and urbanisation at the turn of the century - The diffusion of innova-tions , pp. 23-481.

Hukka, J. J. and Katko , T., 1999 (draft). Privatisation of water services? A critical study (InFinnish, summary in English).

Juuti, P. and Katko, T., 1998: Ernomane vesitehdas- Tampereen vesilaitoksen kehitys 1835-1998,(Marvellous water factory - Evolution of Tampere City Water Works 1835-1998). (InFinnish).

Katko, T., 1992: The development of water supply associations in Finland and its significancefor developing countries. The World Bank, Water supply and sanitation division,

No. 8, pp. 57.Katko, T., 1996: Vettä! - Suomen ves ihuollon kehitys kaupungeissa ja maaseudulla. (Water! -

Evolution of urban and rural water supply and sanitation in Finland). , Helsinki,pp. 416. (In

Finnish).Katko, T., 1997: Evolution of water supply and sanitation in Finland from the mid-1800’s to

2000, FIWA, Helsinki, pp. 102.Katko, T. and Lehtonen, J., 1999: (forthcoming) Evolution of wastewater treatment in Finland.

Vol. 55, No. 3.Lillja, J. L. W., 1938: (Helsinki city water works) 1876-1936.

(In Finnish).Mäkelä, U. O., 1945: Painevesijohdoista Toholammilla, (Of pressure water pipes in Toholammi),

1944-1945, pp. 113-127. (In Finnish).Nagler, B.E., 1966: Elevated water reservoirs in Finland. . Vol. 58, No. 11, pp. 1429-

1445.

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VasabladetDoctoral

DissertationFinsk museum

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Vatten,Helsingin kaupungin vesijohtolaitos

Annual of agricultural engineers,J AWWA


Nygård, H., 1999 (draft): History of solid waste management in Finland. Åbo Academi Univer-s ity.

Paul, S., 1990 (draft): Accountability in public services - exit, voice and capture. CECPS.Peräkylä, O.,1953: Kairattujen puuputkien käyttö vesijohtoina (The use of drilled pipes as water

conduits). , 1951-1952, pp. 175-185. (In Finnish).Sederholm, 1911: Ännu en gång grundvattnet i Finland. . Vol. 21, No. 711, pp. 27-28.

(In Swedish).Turpeinen, 1979: Fertility and mortality in Finland since 1750. . Vol. 33, No.

1, pp. 101-114 .Wuolle, B., 1912: Kuntain teknilliset liikeyritykset (Municipal technical enterprises).

, pp. 88-103. AFLA archives. (In Finnish).Wäre, M., 1952a: Maaseudun vesihuolto (Rural water supply). Mitä-missä-milloin,

1953, Vsk. 3. Otava: s. 216-219. (In Finnish).Wäre, M., 1953: Veden kuljetus maaseututalouksissa vuonna 1950 (Water transport in rural house-

holds in 1950): s. 31-51, Vesihuolto-opas, Vesiteknillinen Insinööritoimisto Oy Ves to,Helsinki. s. 132. (In Finnish).

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kansalaisenvuosikirja

WATER NEPAL, VOL. 7, NO. 2000, 109-116

ACHYUT LUITEL1 AND SHYAM K.C.2

Bilateral and multilateral aid agencies have been involved in Nepal’s rural drinkingwater and sanitation sector since the 1970’s. Helvetas, a Swiss agency, was oneof the agencies, which supported the construction of drinking water systems inthe country’s Western Region from 1976 to1994. The agency implemented the Com-munity Water Supply and Sanitation Programme (CWSSP), and in the process com-pleted drinking water projects to benefit over half a million people. Despite its name,the programme was construction oriented, and the role of the beneficiaries waslimited. The lesson of the programme was that the support agencies need to play afacilitative role and to work closely with the beneficiary community. In 1995,Helvetas initiated the Self-Reliant Drinking Water Support Programme (SRWSP).The focus of the SRWSP is to enable communities to construct and maintain drink-ing water systems. Within the framework of this approach, the agency has workedwith the civil society institutions like non-governmental organisations (NGOs), com-munity-based organisations (CBOs), and community groups. This approach putsthe community at the centre stage of project development. In an extended socialphase, attempts are made to thoroughly prepare the community to construct andmaintain the systems thus built.

Helvetas Nepal is involved in supporting the development of drinking water sys-tems by selecting projects on the basis of requests from community based groups.While such specific need-based initiatives’ are progressive because they respondto emerging needs, problems arise since support organisations find it difficult toselect projects on a planned and prioritised basis. As a result improper water sourcesand cases with less hardship are selected, project areas are scattered, and theinstances of disputes about source ownership and mode of their uses increased.

1 Programme Team Leader Self-Reliant Drinking Water Support Programme ofHelvetas Nepal.

2 Monitoring and Information Coordinator, Self-Reliant Drinking Water SupportProgramme of Helvatas Nepal.

LOCAL LEVEL WATER MANAGEMENT:THE EXPERIENCES OF HELVETAS NEPAL

BACKGROUND

SHIFT IN APPROACH

‘

110 LUITEL, A. & K. C., S.

Of the 109 projects taken up by Helvetas Nepal between 1994 to 2000, forexample, almost a fifth reported source disputes of some kind. There was a sig-nificant rise in inter- and intra-community level competition and in disputes overthe right to use water. Such situations not only lengthen the duration for complet-ing a project, but also affect implementation for an uncertain period. In some cases,‘might becomes right’ and the less powerful do not get rightful access to a sys-tem that provides a higher level of drinking water service. During the workshopon ‘Source Disputes and Settlements’, other organisations involved in the waterand sanitation sector expressed a similar concern. 3

The other constraint in implementing community based drinking watersystems is the overcrowding of implementing organisations. In the westernregion, many agencies are involved in the sector, but the lack of co-ordinationamong them has emerged as one of the vexing problems. A 1995 study showedthat at least twenty-three organisations were active in the sector in the regionat tha t time . 4 Each agency follows its own working procedure and micro-policies for support. The difference has created confusion among the beneficiar-ies, while the duplication of efforts has led to a sub-optimal use of water. Besides,some organisations guided by the interest to meet annual targets attract NGO part-ners by providing unusually high incentives; this practice tends to commercialisethe voluntary sector.

The emerging challenge is to utilise the available, human, financial and natu-ral resources, realistically in a co-ordinated and collaborative manner. Eventually, acommunity should be able to manage its drinking water system on its own whenexternal support is stopped. To achieve such an end, investment decisions need tobe pragmatic and well targeted as well as realistic and suited to the actual needs.

Helvetas Nepal made the decision to change its sectoral approach of dealing onlywith drinking water. Its shift in approach was made after intense internal discus-sion during the participatory self-assessment in the agency in early 1997.5 The is-sues of non-coordination, source dispute and investment decisions could be betteraddressed if integrated water resources management were followed.6 At the sametime, it was agreed that community consensus was key to the success of the de-velopment and management of water resources and co-ordination with variousstakeholders was essential. The new initiative called Water Resources ManagementProgramme (WARM-P) would commence from 2001.

WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT PROGRAMME (WARM-P)

LOCAL LEVEL WATER MANAGEMENT: THE EXPERIENCES OF HELVETAS NEPAL 111

Although providing drinking water would remain a focus under the new ap-proach, planning and development would be tackled in a broader manner by deal-ing with the local water resources of a particular area. The role of Helvetas Nepalwould be limited to providing support to Village Development Committees (VDCs)to develop Integrated Water Use Master Plans (WUMP) at the VDC or other ap-propriate level of the watershed and to implement projects identified in the plan.Furthermore, to address other needs identified in the WUMP, efforts would be madeto establish links between the VDCs and potential support organisations

The primary aim of the programme is to delegate water management re-sponsibility to the lowest appropriate level and facilitate the community in acquir-ing the necessary institutional capacity to plan water use and management projects.A key objective of the approach is to achieve the participation of the beneficiarygroups, including women and the non-privileged. Capacity building measures suchas training, observation visits, facilitation and support to local management com-mittees and CBOs form the core elements of the programme.

The four components of WARM-P, are (i) water supply and sanitation, (ii)irrigation and drainage, (iii) environment and ecology, and (iv) others The conceptof WARM-P can be explained by model called the WARM-P Chair (Figure); thefour components can be compared to the legs of a chair. The of the chairsignifies the support that other resource organisations provide to VDCs. All fourlegs need to be firm enough to function properly and to provide stability, hence,the four components of WARM-P should be properly addressed to execute water-related activities in an efficient and sustainable manner.

Figure 1: Warm-P Chair

backrest

112 LUITEL, A. & K. C., S.

Before its full-fledged execution, Helvetas Nepal established partnerships with twoVDCs and implemented pilot projects in sequence. The first test was carried outin Bajung VDC of Parbat District in 1998. The second one, which started in De-cember 1998 and will conclude in October 2000, is located in Baidi VDC of TanahunDistrict. Since the VDC is the lowest political administrative institution, it was se-lected as the partner for the pilot study. The objective was to investigate the

of the WARM-P concept.Based on the experience at Bajung VDC, the following sections discuss the

key steps to be taken to implement the WARM programme.

In the WARM-P approach the authority of decision-making is assigned to the low-est level. The functionaries at that level hence need to inculcate necessary capac-ity for which training activities are needed for building. The training should coverthe basic concepts of integrated water resources management, social and genderissues, and government policies. Training of officials, including women ward rep-resentatives, in various issues and in raising awareness about water use is neces-sary. Also the training helps generate a shared vision among the members aboutthe challenges faced by the community. Those who have received the training, inturn, act as resource persons in the WARM-P activities at the different stages ofimplementation of the programme.

Following the formulation of a shared vision, VDC personnel, carry out a socialassessment in each ward of the VDC. They prepare social profiles, identify allwater sources, and assess and prioritise needs. To facilitate the process, the socialteam uses PRA tools, such as the transect walk, resource mapping and Venn dia-grams. Women and underprivileged groups are especially encouraged to partici-pate in the process. The VDC functionaries who have received training facilitatethe process further.

Based upon the social profile at the ward level, a technical assessment iscompleted. During the technical assessment water sources are identified and their

KEY STEPS

CAPACITY BUILDING

SOCIAL ASSESSMENT

TECHNICAL ASSESSMENT AND DRAFT DEVELOPMENT PLAN

prac-tical implications


locations mapped. Existing infrastructure are verified and water sources catego-rise on the basis of prior use, quality, quantity, accessibility and suitability. Thetechnical assessment is carried out in April/May, because it is the driest month ofthe year (before the monsoon). Beneficiaries need to be involved in the technicalassessment activity, and the findings are used to prepare a draft development plan.The plan includes all possible WARM-P projects (drinking water, drip irrigation,and sprinkler irrigation) require to address the needs identified during social as-sessment exercise.

In the next stage a workshop is organised to prepare a master plan. In the the findings of the social and technical assessments are shared with

the VDC officials, who also verify them. The VDC officials prioritise the projectsidentified in the draft plan, and classify the external and internal support requiredfor their implementation. They prepare a list of immediate (one year) and long-term (5 year) activities, which together form the Water Use Master Plan (WUMP)of the VDC.

One of the objectives of WARM-P is to develop and strengthen the mechanism atthe VDC level to cooperate with potential support organisations as a part of thelong-term plan. This can be achieved in different ways. The best approach is toorganise a co-ordination workshop, in which potential organisations that could be-come partners and help the plan to materialise participate. Such a workshop wouldbe a forum for the VDC to share the Water Use Master Plan with support organi-sations and to explore the possibilities for co-operation in implementing the identi-fied projects. The forum can also be utilised to obtain, where possible, a clearstatement on commitment to implementing the prioritised projects from theparticipating organisations.

Direct cost is incurred in training, completing social and technical assessments,organising planning workshop and preparing WUMPs. In Bajung VDC, the exer-cise cost about Rs 500,000, which was on the higher side because consultants

MASTER PLAN WORKSHOP

POTENTIAL SUPPORT ORGANIZATION CO-ORDINATIONWORKSHOP

COST

MasterPlan Workshop

114 LUITEL, A. & K. C., S.

were hired in some areas to prepare the WUMP. The involvement of project per-sonnel in several of the tasks including fieldwork, monitoring and documentationare indirect costs. If the personnel of the organisation complete these activities,the cost can be lower.

The number of water sources identified during the process was five timeshigher than the number the VDC knew about before this exercise was undertaken(123 sources identified against 25 recorded by the VDC). The beneficiariesincluding women, showed enthusiasm and actively participated in watermanagement activities. They also possess better knowledge of the problems andpossible solutions.To complete the WARM-P activities, key social figures of the village includingVDC office bearers should be involved. The majority of member in the maincommittee should come from the VDC to ensure that WARM projects are VDCprogrammes. The involvement of VDC functionaries improves the chances ofmobilising resources available with the VDC.If a water source is trans-boundary in nature, located in an adjoining VDC,functionaries of both VDC should be represented in the main committee.Formulation of the master plan should initiate social mobilisation, which includescapacity building for the beneficiaries, including the poor and the disadvantaged,whose lives are likely to be affected by the decisions made as part of theWARM-P process. Orientation of communities to various WARM-P activities,including water-related legal issues, should be conducted.

Key Lessons

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The social assessment process needs to be transparent so that technicalassessment will be easier and more effective. The master plan will also becomemore realistic.Emphasis should be given in involving the underprivileged, lower-caste groupsand women. Non-formal education and income-generation activities supportedby like-minded organisations can be interwoven into the plan.Potential support organisations must be invited to observe the social assessmentprocess and the capacity-building training. If they become involved in the processof the master plan formulation, the possibilities of their future co-operation withVDCs will be enhanced.

The SRWSP has aimed to institutionalise water management decisions close towhere use takes place with an assumption that the VDCs are capable of executingthe tasks. The WARM-P pilot projects have provided opportunities to emphasisethat when the right kind of support and guidance is provided, local leaders cancontribute to improving management and making it effective. The experience dem-onstrated that water management is indeed a subject of public understanding andis hence a public venture. Not only is the VDC the appropriate institution whereauthority and responsibility can be devolved, but also the channel that can respondbetter to local needs.

The approach offers a scope for addressing the problems caused by sourcedisputes. The solutions, however, are preventive rather than curative. Problem canbe minimised if sources without any disputes are selected in the first place. Theconsensus reached while prioritising needs during the formulation of a master planreduces the possibilities of disputes. At the same time, by preparing a master plan,chances of duplication of activities within the village is also minimised. The majorrisk in the success of the approach is the assumption that VDCs are fully capableof implementing the WARM tasks.

SRWSP has been keenly monitoring development in Bajung VDC, wherepiloting of WARM-P concluded in December 1998. A follow-up was carried outin December 1999 to review the status of the Master Plan. It revealed that (i)during 1999, Bajung VDC had established contacts with fourteen new organisa-tions for implementing its Master Plan (ii) Sixteen projects identified in the WUMPwere being implemented, and (iii) the VDC had completed one drinking waterscheme by mobilising its own internal resources. If the VDC uses only the

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CONCLUSION

116 LUITEL, A. & K. C., S.

resources available to it, such as the annual government grant of Rs 500, 000, itwould take about 22 years to implement all the activities identified in the WUMP.The Bajung experience showed how different organisations could work in part-nership to expedite local water development initiatives in needy communities.

1 Programme Team Leader Self-Reliant Drinking Water Support Programme of Helvetas Nepal.2 Monitoring and Information Coordinator, Self-Reliant Drinking Water Support Programme of

Helvetas Nepal.3 For discussion see SRWSP (1999).4 See Vliet (1995).5 The review by Whiteside and Shrestha, (1997) endorsed the need such a of transition.6 Integrated water Resource Management is conceptualised as development and management of

water in terms of use, protection and by considering all sections and institutions which useand affect water, (DANIDA, 1991).

DANIDA, 1991:

, Rio, Brazil.SRWSP, 1999:

, SRWSP, Pokhara, NepalViet, M., 1995: , SRWSP,

Pokhara, Nepal.Whiteside, G and V Shrestha, 1997:

, December.

NOTES:

REFERENCE

Copenhagen Report, Implementation Mechanisms for Integrated Water ResourcesDevelopment and Management, Nordic Fresh Water Initiative for UN Conference on en-vironment and Development

Report on Workshop on Source Dispute and Settlement: Experience with respect toLaws of the State

Status of Drinking Water Programme in SRWSP Working Districts

An External Evaluation of the Self-Reliant Drinking WaterSupport Programme of Helvetas Nepal


In January 1995, a four-day conference on the Political Economy of Water in SouthAsia was held in Madras, which was sponsored by the Joint Committee on SouthAsia (JCSA) of the Social Science Research Council/American Council of LearnedSocieties and by the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS). It broughttogether leading researchers from diverse disciplines, with broad experience in SouthAsian water studies. For the first three days, the participants, among whom wereanthropologists, economists, historians, sociologists, and legal and environmentalscholars, discussed the presented papers. On the fourth day, they visited MadrasPetro Chemical Limited and observed its water recycling system. The conferencewas expected to stimulate future research, notably by younger scholars.

The three general goals of the conference were:

1. to address issues of central importance to natural resource management in SouthAsia in an integrated and comprehensive manner;

2. to provide for experts and policy makers a compendium of current scholarshipon water issues in three distinct regions of South Asia; and,

3. to draw on the rich South Asian experience to further our scholarly understandingof the dynamics of co-operation and conflict in the political economy of watercontrol.

The participants of the conference considered interactions of water utilisa-tion and policy making within the unifying framework of political economy. Thesesubjects are usually discrete areas of scholarship and policy research. The com-parisons among Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, and Nepal assisted in separating the institu-tional, economic, and political variables that pertain to water control in general fromthose particulars specific to individual states or regions.

It also considered together demand sectors such as urban and rural, indus-trial and agricultural, and public and private, which are kept separate. There arefew studies that consider, for instance, commonalties between domestic water useproblems in rural and urban areas. Particular attention was directed to inter-sectoralcompetition in water use. For example, pollution from industrial water uses, suchas bleaching, can poison the irrigation and drinking water of downstream rural com-munities or contamination can travel in the reverse direction: agrochemical runoff

C R ITIC AL LITER ATU R E

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WATER IN SOUTH ASIA

88 THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WATER IN SOUTH ASIA:

can pollute urban water supplies. Rural-urban interactions need not be always nega-tive: urban sewage, for example, can be cleaned and recycled for agricultural andforestry uses.

A report of conference was prepared and circulated. Paul Appasamy, PranabBardhan, James Boyce, David Ludden, and Itty Abraham, organisers of the con-ference helped prepared the summary. James Boyce and David Ludden took thelead in writing and editing, while the staff of the South Asia Program of the SocialScience Research Council (SSRC) co-ordinated the reproduction and distributionof the report. The organising of the conference and publishing of the Report wassupported by the Ford Foundation and the Swedish Agency for Research Co-op-eration with Developing Countries. The Report has been translated into Gujarati,Tamil and Nepali. Mihir Bhatt, Nirmal Sengupta, and A.R. Venkatachalapathy aidedthroughout the translation process. The Nepali edition was expanded into a bookby Nepal Water Conservation Foundation that also included eighteen relevant es-says on water issues in South Asia. This Nepali book is currently being translatedinto Hindi.

In the following section reproduces the conference ConceptNote as well as the its Report. The former encapsulates the thinking that wentinto organisation of the conference, which would be relevant to researchers tounderstand the context of the initiative, and the later summarises the conceptualoutcomes that will have added relevance in the days ahead as water projectsof the past must undergo serious social auditing. The co-operation of IttyAbraham of SSRC in bringing the findings of the conference to local level iswarmly acknowledged.

Water control has always been a central issue in South Asia, from the desiccationof the Indus Valley and Fatehpur Sikri and the erosion of the Himalayas to the dam-ming of great rivers and the pollution of drinking water throughout the subconti-nent in South Asian history and a critical contemporary problem for social scien-tists and policy makers.

The evolution of water control problems in South Asia is embedded in itspolitical economy, their interactive complexity, and the possibilities for their effec-tive policy solution. In South Asia three central uses of water are

Water Nepal

CONFERENCE CONCEPT

WATER CONTROL IN SOUTH ASIA

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WATER MANAGEMENT: 89

1. agricultural water use in rural areas;2. industrial water use, primarily in urban areas; and3. domestic water use in both rural and urban areas.

The principal geographical foci that South Asia represents may be groupedinto following broad three regions and associated urban centres: Tamil Nadu/Ma-dras, Gujarat/Ahmedabad, and central Nepal/Kathmandu.

Agricultural water use embraces irrigation, drainage, and flood control,all of which are intended to secure the right amount of water at the righttime. Agricultural water control often entails local-level collective action and/orstate engagement.

Industrial water use includes the use of water as input in diverse produc-tion processes, and the use of water as a medium for the disposal of industrialwastes. The principal agents in this case are the individual firms, acting within aregulatory environment established by the state.

Domestic water use includes the consumption of drinking water and the dis-posal of domestic wastes. Depending on the locale, domestic water supply entailsindividual, group, and/or state action.

Water is a key limiting economic factor in monsoon Asia for two reasons.First, in agriculture as in industrial and municipal water supply, water control re-quires fixed capital investment prior to productive utilisation. Second, water con-trol in general cannot be secured by individuals acting in isolation, but rather re-quires joint action. The ‘green revolution,’ which involved the introduction of highlyfertiliser-responsive rice and wheat varieties, has further magnified the importanceof water control in agriculture, since this is a precondition for successful cultiva-tion of new varieties. At the same time, industrial growth and urban expansion es-calate water requirements for non-agricultural uses.

The social process of water control in South Asia has a long and rich his-tory, much of which has only begun to come to light.1 Some local water controlsystems have persisted for centuries.2 Others have decayed over time or disap-peared entirely. Records of this loss of organisational capacity dot the documen-tary remains of British rule, when new, large-scale systems arose under state con-trol. Such new systems have become more numerous and complex with the rapidgrowth in surface water and groundwater irrigation in recent decades.3

Yet much water control potential remains untapped. In Indian agriculture,for example, only 60% of potential acreage received any irrigation in the mid-1980’s


(Vaidyanathan, 1991). Moreover, the effectiveness of existing irrigation is often farbelow potential.

Collective action problems are key element of the hydraulic constraints fac-ing South Asian agriculture (Bardhan, 1984; Boyce, 1988). To illustrate:

When exclusion from a water system is difficult, each potential user may preferto let others bear the investment and maintenance costs. This may prevent theestablishment of a system, or undermine its maintenance if one is established byexternal intervention.When the state provides water, individuals with privileged access, by virtue oftheir location or political influence, often find it possible to use water profligately(for instance, growing highly water-intensive crops, or flooding fields to reduceweeding costs). This pre-empts water supplies to other users and reduces totalsystem productivity.Encroachment by individual cultivators who sow crops in the beds of small-scale reservoirs, called tanks, has often led to the demise of these local irrigationworks.The extraction of groundwater at rates in excess of natural replenishment cancause adjacent wells to become dry, setting off costly contests for deeper anddeeper wells.

There is accumulating evidence of situations in which private actions cul-minate in serious public problems in industrial and domestic water use, also. Forexample:

Studies of organic pollution in Madras’s Cooum River have reported levels ofbiochemical oxygen demand more than twice the legal limit for treated sewage,and coliform bacterial counts more than 1,000 times the standard; in addition toa heavy domestic sewage load, the Cooum estuary receives some 250,000gallons/day of industrial effluent (Appasamy, 1989).Groundwater levels in Gujarat’s Mehsana District, north of Ahmedabad, aredeclining at 5-8 metres/year, up from 1 m/yr prior to 1970, threatening drinkingwater supplies (Moench and Matzger, 1992).In Ahmedabad, half of the industrial units using chemicals reportedly lack effluenttreatment plants, while some with treatment facilities evade regulatory controlsby night-time discharges (ibid.).

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What variables shape the extent of co-operation and conflict in water con-trol within and between the rural and urban sectors? Consider, as an illustration ofpossible answers, the effect of inequalities of wealth and power. Some research-ers argue that inequality fosters co-operation, by giving a dominant minority thepower and incentive to organise collective action (Olson, 1965; Wade 1988).

Others argue that ine quality inhibits c o-operation by allowing thedominant minority to pursue their self-interest at the expense of the publicinterest, exacerbating conflict and mistrust (Harriss, 1977; Palanisami and Easter,1986; and Boyce, 1987).

The effect of inequalities on co-operation and conflict may vary, dependingin particular on their legitimacy in the public imagination. Moreover, wealth andpower are not the only sources of social heterogeneity that affect collective ac-tion. Differences of caste, religion, locality, political party, and gender may alsohave important consequences for the ability and willingness to co-operate.

The intellectual framework of the conference drew significantly from studiesand theories of collective action. Collective action problems arise wheneverindividual welfare improvements require Joint action by a number of people. Aclassic example is the provision of a public good from which all could benefit:if each individual attempts to avoid the costs of provision by ‘free riding’ on thecontributions of others, no public good is provided. Co-operation – sometimesinvolving state action, sometimes not – can solve collective action problems.Conflict can prevent solution, but it may also be necessary to resolve differencesand create co-operation.

Two broad types of collective action problems can be distinguished. In thefirst, collective action would make everyone better off (or no one worse off), asituation sometimes described as a ‘positive-sum game’. In the second, collectiveaction would make some better off, but others worse off. The latter ‘winner-losergame’ involves a transparent conflict of interest. But the first case is not neces-sarily conflict-free, since different parties may favour different alternatives in therange of outcomes preferable to the status quo.4 Both types of conflict can lead tocollective inaction.

Co-operation has two immediate foundations: values and institutions. Valuesshape conceptions of self-interest, of the interests of others, of what constitutesgood behaviour, and the relative weights of these in individual decisions. The

COLLECTIVE ACTION AND INACTION


debate as to whether Southeast Asian peasants are ‘moral’ or ‘rational’ (Scott, 1976;Popkin, 1979) illustrates the fact that values are variables, not universal constants.

Institutions structure the social environment in which individuals, groups,and classes interact. Notable examples are the market, the state and local com-mon-property institutions:

provide an environment in which atomistically self-interested individualscan co-operate to mutual benefit. The reach of the so-called ‘invisible hand’ isconstrained, however, by market imperfections (including incomplete informationand market power) and by market failures arising from public goods and externalities(effects on parties’ external to the market exchange). Even if these limitationswere inconsequential 9which they are not), markets require non-market foundations:the state (in its minimal role as definer and enforcer property rights) and/orsuitable norms of individual conduct.

can solve collective action problems through coercive power. A classic,idealised formulation of the state solution is Wittfogel’s (1957) notion of ‘orientaldespotism’, in which an absolute ruler calculates social advantage and compelshis subjects to act accordingly.5 But real-world states are neither omniscient noromnipotent; indeed, the state itself is frequently a prime arena of conflict.

often secure co-operation and resolve conflict,notably in the management of natural resources as such as water, fisheries,forests, and grazing lands. These institutions have only recently attracted muchattention from social scientists6 , but they have provided the main framework forcollective action in much of human history.

The values and institutions, which afford solutions to collective action prob-lems, do not fall from the sky, nor do they emerge automatically as needed. Moreo-ver, the solutions are seldom perfect: success, however measured, is a usually matterof degree. Drawing on the empirically rich and historically deep South Asian expe-rience in water control, the proposed control, the proposed conference aims tofurther our understanding of the social origins of collective action and inaction.

The conference reviewed agricultural, industrial, and domestic water uses prob-lems in South Asia that involves different patterns of co-operation and conflict. Itwill compare the dynamics of conflict and co-operation in rural and urban areas in

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Markets

States

Common-property institutions

THE MEETING


Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, and Nepal, each of which has a long history of water con-trol and faces serious current policy problems involving water. It will devote par-ticular attention to inter-sectoral conflicts and complementarities in water control.The aim is two-fold: to contribute to the success of current and future water con-trol efforts, and to explore what can be learned from South Asian experiences aboutthe political economy of water more generally.

The focus differed markedly from those of past conferences on kindredtopics. A 1982 conference on ‘Productivity and Equity in Irrigation Systems,’sponsored by the Ford Foundation and the Giri Institute of DevelopmentStudies in Lucknow, examined the impact of irrigation on equity, but not thecausal linkages in the reverse direction from equity and other variables towater control (Pant, 1984). A 1984 conference on ‘Community Responses toIrrigation,’ sponsored by the JCSA and the Indian Institute of Managementin Bangalore, focused mainly on responses to external initiatives, and touchedonly tangentially on the internal sources of co-operation and conflict (Ramamurthy,1984). A 1988 workshop on ‘Future Directions for Indian Irrigation,’ organisedby the International Food Policy Research Institute and Tamil Nadu AgriculturalUniversity, focused on strategic management issues facing policy makers in theirrigation sector (Meinzen-Dick and Svendsen, 1991). The August 1991 confer-ence on ‘Common Property, Collective Action and Ecology,’ sponsored by theJCSA and the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, was concerned primarilywith forestry, and focused on the viability of common-property institutions ratherthan their origins (Herring, 1990).

The base of knowledge gained from these and other prior researchinitiatives provided rich intellectual support to Mardas conference. By differingroutes, researchers have now obtained considerable insight into the wellspringsof collective and state action in water control. Hence the opportunity for aconference targeted on a broa der ra nge o f water problems and speci ficcontexts in which action and interaction are organised within the political econo-mies of South Asia.

The canvas encompassed large-scale government schemes and small-scale local ones; ancient systems and new ones; surface water and groundwatersources; agricultural and non-agricultural uses; urban and rural environments;and co-operation and conflict ranging from the household and village levels tomunicipal, state and central governments. The arena of investigation and the inter-actions among actual (and potential) users of water sets the boundaries of thepresent inquiry.


In the arid and semi-arid tropics, expansive human demand confronts limited, er-ratic supplies of water that pollution can rapidly poison. Because economic devel-opment, human health, and ecological viability depend on water, the managementof above groundwater is even older than civilisation. But today, water managersface struggles for water in industry and agriculture, cities and villages that pen-etrate deep into the earth and span the globe. Urban sprawl, industrial growth, andGreen Revolutions escalate competition for water and accelerate pollution.

Technology that efficiently controls water in the short run can make water prob-lems worse in the long run. Water tables can now be mined that have no prospectof natural recharge. Industry that makes water more productive can poison thewater that people need to drink. Technologies that supply water for households,irrigation, and industry raise questions as to how to rationalise their effects andpriorities. There is no consensus about how to answer such critical questions asthese.

Should present-day consumers take water away from future generations?Should individuals who have the means to control water privately take priorityover the poor ?What ethical principles and social institutions should preside over the allocationand protection of water ?How do we solve problems of competition for water?

The principles and practice of water management are embedded in social, cul-tural, and political institutions, which are today in flux and transition at the inter-national, national, state, and local level’s. In addition, many innovations in watertechnologies and experiments in water management are underway, at various

REPORT FROM THE CONFRENCE

PREFACE: THE BIG PICTURE

Water Scarcity, Pollution, and Competition

Technology, Ecology, and Equity

Management and Change

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stages of planning, development, and maturation. There is a proliferation of newoptions and a scarcity of opportunities to assess them comparatively in theirevolving institutional settings.

So now more than ever, we need means to assess water technologies and man-agement. We have enough practical experience to assess the options at hand aspotential solutions to the water problems that face policy makers and the public.Commitments that we make today to specific technologies and managerial modeswill effect water conditions for a long time to come; so policy commitments needcareful, continuous evaluation.

In this effort, academic research, policy making, and public debate need to be com-bined. When researchers, policy makers, and workers in the field compare notesand talk openly to one another, the sciences and practices of policy formation andimplementation enter into more creative interaction. Discussions that combine policyanalysis, scholarship, and public debate create a more informed citizenry and buildconsensus that is necessary for effective implementation and evaluation of watermanagement solutions.

Scanning literature on water problems, we seethat from the upheavals associated with the Narmada Dam, to the local conse-quences of canal modernisation, to the micro-effects of tubewells and health con-sequences of pollution, water problems are always embedded in social settings.Water cannot be extricated from social life by technology, and water should notbe treated as separate from society in technical discourse on water management.Social analysis and water research need to be better integrated: for instance, pov-erty and gender issues need to be brought more centrally into studies of waterproblems.

Technologies that control the move-ment of water above and below ground are always deployed in contexts of socialinequality, conflict, cooperation, exchange, and power. The technological design

Assessing Alternative Solutions

Research and Communication

I. The Context of Water Management

A. Water is a social resource.

B. Water management is a social activity.


of water management interacts with social organisation in many ways, from theinternational to the local level. Discussions and planning for the solution of waterproblems are also embedded in society and need to take their own social contextinto account. Assessments of technology and managerial options need to be con-ducted in a way that is sensitive to social and cultural context.

Managing water means intervening inpower relations, so as to deploy social power for managerial purposes. Policy mak-ers need to consider the cultural and political principles that underlie their interven-tions. To assess the effects of institutional interventions through which water re-sources are being managed today, we need to consider dimensions of water realitythat are often left out. These include issues of social hierarchy, leadership, localcliques, cultural and social influences, power networks, inequality, patterns of par-ticipation, and the dynamics of organisations over time.

A recent conference on water issues, held inMadras, began to build a framework for assessing technology and managerial optionsin urban and rural South Asia, using the broad concept of ‘political economy.’ Theparticipants quickly discovered that we need to include cultural, social, and historicalelements to understand water management and technology. Context-sensitive socialscience needs natural and applied science. Likewise, health professionals, hydrolo-gists, and engineers need to be brought into discussions with social scientists.

Creating effective forms of knowledge on waterissues will require a new type of professional training that begins in school and lastsa lifetime. This can begin with adding social sciences into technology training, but weshould strive to create inter-disciplinary theories and intervention practices - socialconstructivist approaches to technology and participatory design procedures, forinstance - to integrate social science and technology at their foundations.

Perspectives from manynational contexts must interact to influence our combined perspectives. We are

C. Power over water is power in society.

A. It must be inter-disciplinary.

B. Technologists and social scientists need to be brought together inside insti-tutions of professional training.

C. We need more effective intellectual connections among countries in SouthAsia, and between South Asia and other world regions.

II. How to create an effective public policy discourse on waterissues


each grounded in our own locations, but we must reach across them. Differentproblems demand different combinations of perspective and there is no single lo-cation - Washington, Geneva, Kathmandu, or any particular village - that has a privi-leged position in the analysis of all water problems. Local, regional, national, inter-national, and global issues need to be brought into the training of water policy pro-fessionals. This will require more dispersed circulation of personnel across inter-national borders than is now accomplished by patterns of communication that aredominated by information flows between South Asia and the West.

Knowledge about water problems en-gages policy-formation, social action, science, the general public, and scholarship,all at once. There is no ivory tower. Scholarly discourse on water issues is neces-sarily public activity, and it needs to be made public to inform social solutions topublic policy problems.

Barriers between the technical and public criteria for policy evaluationneed to be broken down. We need to find way to combine political and technicalcriteria for judging efficacy in water management. We need to take into accountthe full range of principles that are important in social discourse on water issues:cultural identity, popular sovereignty, equality, and freedom need consideration, along-side hydrological efficiency and ecological sustainability.

. Efforts to share disparateforms of knowledge and to consider opposing points of view thrive in social set-tings that are defined by people who engage one another as scholars rather than asdelegates or representatives. Individual interests do not disappear in such settings,but they can be talked and even joked about. The academic quality of discourseprovides room for critical assessments. These are not settings for making policy,but for assessing policies and principles that underlie policy making. They can beutilised to reveal a wealth of data and insight gained over many years of researchthat might can otherwise be left buried in research notes and publications and ef-fectively lost to public discussions of policy issues.

Water problems are both verylocal and very vast in scope; and the organisational framework of water control isboth intimate and global. Water users and managers at the local level need to be

D. Public policy discourse must be public.

E. Science and scholarship need to be articulated with public interests anddebates.

F. Academic interactions play an important role

G. We must include many spatial perspectives.


able to see the regional and larger spatial contexts, in which they live and work.When we consider water problems in South Asia, therefore, we must include inour discussions people who work at various levels of spatial scale and our con-versation must move back and forth among levels rather than fixing any single setof spatial boundaries to define the analytical terrain.

Different places are just different, but wemust be able to move knowledge and action-solutions from one place to another.So we need to seek empirical patterns and diversities to describe and explain wa-ter problems. The logic and habit of universalising about policy problems and so-lutions must come down to earth and confront the particularities of context in whichpeople live and work.

Our constructive activity to-ward pragmatic solutions to water problems needs to include the capacity to for-mulate a critical attitude toward states, societies, political parties, administrative de-partments, and disciplines. Without this capacity, we will not be able to considertechnology or management options whose success would require the alteration ofthe institutional framework within which they are embedded.

Since 1980, policy makers and analysts have focused a lot of attention on the lo-cal organisation and impact of water management in South Asia. Most of this workhas concerned irrigation, though recently, shortages of suitable water for drinkingand other household uses have stimulated research on domestic water problems inmany localities. We have learned important lessons from this work.

Local conditions differdramatically and localities compete with one another for water, so that solving onelocality’s water problem can create problems for another locality. This often is atypical up-stream/down-stream competition, but new technologies have added newvariants to this classical formation. Deep bore wells in one locality can drain waterfrom wells in a wide radius. Local industrial development - as in Tiruppur, TamilNadu - can poison drinking water all around an urban complex. The political andeconomic power of urban centres can drain even upstream supplies by creatingpricing systems that make it profitable for entrepreneurs to bring truckloads ofwater into the city drawn from wells in the hinterland.

H. We need to think comparatively.

I. We need to be critical and also constructive.

A. One local solution can be another local problem.

III. Local Issues


The effort to establish and understand local user groups and local watermanagement organisations has not paid sufficient attention to the local costsof their formation. These costs are lowered dramatically when a small numberof local actors bears the burden of organising effective managerial systems.Such local leaders are typically well-endowed economically and politically,people who already wield significant local influence. Policy-makers normallyassume that the cost of local organisation-formation will be borne locally and thatpower relations already in place locally will be the foundation of new local man-agement schemes. Without local leadership, local organisations may be impossibleto form at all.

Be-cause of their influence, local leaders can effect compliance with rules of localcollective organisations and negotiate effectively with higher level officers in theirrigation bureaucracy and public works department. Political representation in theelectoral system can converge with local leadership in water management whenkey local actors fill both roles, creating a bond between powers allocated by demo-cratic politics and local water management systems. Government officials oftenfind it easier to deal with locally powerful leaders, who can meet targets and in-sure that jobs get done. Local leadership can thus facilitate decentralisation of wa-ter management, lower the cost to the central treasury, and respond to populistpolitical demands, all at once.

.The managerial effe ctive nes s of loc al us er groups le d by loc al ly richand powerful actors may oppose the goal of increasing social equity. Thelegitimacy and power of local user groups, especially when these are basedon electoral procedures, can thus amount to official, collective authorisation ofinequality. In a particular setting, equity may be less important culturally thanother social goals, such as low-cost water or social order. Equity effects needto be brought into the policy decision-making and assessment process atevery step, because social inequalities that get built in to institutions of basicresource allocation are difficult to counteract with other policies, like landreform, co-operative credit, marketing schemes, education, employment schemes,or affirmative action.

B. Loc al wate r manageme nt s ystems res t on local pow er rela tions.

C. Powerful local leaders can make local management more effective.

D. Local water management can reinforce various local inequalities


The institutionalisation of local inequalitiesin local water mana gement s ystems can cre ate loca l networks of powerthat misappropriate water resources. Low levels of participation in localorganisations that lower the cost of their formation can raise the costs ofcompliance in the long run and increase disaffection. Locally powerful leaderswho make starting a local organisation easy can also shorten the life span ofan organisation, because they are the people who are most able to exercise theopt ion of opt ing-ou t in favour of p riva te p rope rty al te rnat ives .Their informal webs of power can effectively substitute for a formalised local sys-tem of proprietary rights and thus constrain the ability of less powerful neighboursto make productivity- and efficiency- enhancing investments. The effectsof inequality on the durability and efficiency of local water managementinstitutions (as distinct from their formation) need more sustained research andpolicy attention.

. Participants can experience the benefits of organi-sations even when their own participation is marginal and when collective actionis organised by a small number of leaders who have the most to benefit from theorganisation. Inequality can coexist with a sense of collective benefit. But increas-ing participation levels also appears to improve the efficiency of local organisa-tions, extend their longevity, and increase their adaptiveness. It also spreads thecosts and benefits of organisation more widely within a user-group.

The existence of a privilegedgroup able to deploy traditional social sanctions can foster internal cohesion. How-ever, the efficacy of traditional sanctions and the interest of privileged groups incollective action can be eroded by new economic opportunities and new ideolo-gies. Over time, therefore, Inequality can become a corrosive force and equity canemerge as a social basis for collective action.

Because water resources have beenmanaged historically either by governments or in property systems that focus onland ownership, water rights are poorly institutionalised. One step that local

E. Inequality can be very inefficient.

A. Local water-user organisations prosper when participants experience thebenefits of collective actions

B. The impact of inequalities of wealth and power on collective action is me-diated by other variables that change overtime.

C. Dispersing power among participants can be done by formalising waterrights in local democratic institutions.

IV. Collective Action, Markets, and Water Rights


organisations can make toward increasing participation and equity would be to worktoward formalising rights in user groups. This would have the effect of increasingthe sense of collective benefit from collective action, dispersing rights among par-ticipants, and perhaps raising participation rates. The goal of increasing equity couldbe built into systems of water rights from their inception. This may often requirenot only formally democratic procedures but also strong political commitments tothe rights and entitlements of less-advantaged water users.

Courts and laws need to define and protect water rights. In addi-tion, the water bureaucracy and technical agencies need to be reformed to takeaccount of local systems rights. This will increase the cost of water managementfor the state in the short run, because the savings that accrue from the reliance ona few local leaders will be lost. But long-run gains can be significant.

. There is an increas-ing emphasis today on the formation of water markets, and many experiments areunderway. Effective water markets do not emerge naturally from local systems ofexchange or from individual market behaviour, however. Legally protected waterrights for all water market actors depend on state institutions above the local, level.Informal and traditional systems of rights in local systems of collective manage-ment often rest on traditional power structures, which do not provide solid foun-dations for effective water markets. The costs of water market activity by oneactor can not be determined effectively unless the competition for water is for-malised in a system of rights, in which all actors can know the quantity of assetsunder their ownership. The legal formalisation of property rights in water is thenecessary basis for effective water markets. It is also the basis of market-basedpolicies that strive toward increasing equity.

Marketactivity involving water often entails unrestricted private pumping from wells forprivate profit. This kind of privatisation is often encouraged by state policies. It isjustified by the failure of local collective action and state bureaucracy to managewater effectively. It undermines collective action and state water management, byreducing collective benefits and cost sharing. In the absence of formal systems ofwater rights, such privatisation is merely private appropriation, for which the mar-ket price - let alone the social cost - cannot be determined or charged. The market

D. The state is important in this process. Local systems of rights cannot ex-ist in isolation.

E. Water markets articulate rights in water as property

F. Privatisation does not by itself create an effective water market.


that results is not an effective market, which requires that specifiable units of acommodity be bought and sold under a legal system of rights. Such privatisationmerely results in a system of political power that generates private profit.

Like forest rights, legally defined water rightsfacilitate collective action for natural resource management when they arise withinan open, democratic system of political participation and access to legal sanctions.Water rights defined in this way provide a basis for sustained participation in usergroups and for pursuing security and equity. They put a cost on competitive strug-gles to acquire water and facilitate the more efficient use of scarce resources.

Water rights are predomi-nantly conceived as a rural issue, when water is an economic input in agriculture.How to secure rights to clean drinking and bathing water in urban and rural set-tings remains a pressing policy challenge. Because urban and rural South Asia arebecoming harder to distinguish every day, regional mechanisms for guaranteeingrights to water of appropriate qualities for farming, industry, and domestic use foreveryone in the region are the best solution.

Managers needs to study the social and political formsand the operational dynamics of organisations that affect water management. InIndia, for instance, caste and religious institutions have been involved in real-worldwater control for centuries. International donor agencies and NGOs are also localactors effecting the politics of control. State bureaucracies and local user groupsoperate in an environment of formal and informal organisations that influence wa-ter management, including political parties, factions, and power networks.

It is notadequate to search for the best technology and then simply to assume that it willfind its proper utilisation by the efficient (unstudied) working of (theoretically effi-cient) markets or bureaucracies. Organisational dynamics need to be studied asthey unfold in the process of identifying and solving water problems. Process docu-mentation - that is, the regular reporting and analysis of the social and political

G. The democratic legal definition of water rights both encourages collec-tive action and improves markets.

H. Do urban environments require urban solutions?

A. Water management is an institutional activity organised at changing andinteracting levels of scale.

B. Organisational operations need to be documented as they work.

V. Organisation matters


interactions involved in water management - should be made an institutionalisedfeature of organisations involved in efforts to assess and solve water problems.

The preservation of open landsfor water storage, watersheds, and groundwater recharge is socially necessarybut privately unprofitable. Public land ownership must be supplemented by theability to regulate private land use in the public interest. Democratic accountabilityis needed to ensure that zoning powers do not give rise to rent-seeking andcapricious administration.

There has been a tendency since 1980 to praise the devolution ordeconcentration of control over water. Community management, local control, anduser-group organisations have been proposed as alternative to state bureaucracies.Experiments in this direction need critical evaluation, as do state international agency,and NGO interventions in water management. In some instances, local solutionsto water management institutions sustain old local power structures, and locallyorganised water markets may, ironically, represent the work of international capi-tal. Centralised systems of bureaucratic control can deliver the most benefits tothe most people in many instances. Communities can also be sustained by statepolicies. The terms ‘local’ and ‘community’, when applied to organisations, canrepresent various types of policy initiatives, including those made by centralisedstates; they do not necessarily reflect democratic, popular initiatives ‘from below’.

A great many examples - includinglarge canal systems, local user-group organisations, and plans for regional devel-opment - show that states will have a central role in water management in thefuture. Even local collective action and water markets often depend on state in-volvement. A variety of state institutions are involved in water management andtheir operations need to be open for assessment and reformulation.

State regions and water regions often do notcoincide in practice. Regional systems of water management need to be establishedthat take in to account the actual regions of water distribution and usage, as wellas the diversity of needs within regions. The non-overlap of political regions withregions of water flow and utilisation remains a critical problem.

C. Local governments need zoning powers.

D. Special attention needs to be paid to state-society and state-communityinteractions.

E. State powers water need more attention.

F. Regional systems are critical.


We need more technical refinementin our measurement tools and methods of study. Many aspects of water problemsstill are not adequately measured. Perhaps the most important are.

the efficiency with which water is used by those people who control it,the costs of not providing water to people who have inadequate access, andthe level and effects of pollution, both urban and rural.

Water issues shouldbe included in programs for public education. Public discussion of water pollutionand supply problems needs to be enhanced by public information campaigns onregional and local problems of water access. The supply costs, volume, and pric-ing of water to all users should be public information. In the absence of adequateinformation, water problems are captured as social issues by partisan political com-petitors and they do not get adequately sustained public policy attention.

What kind of organisational prin-ciples, ethics, and priorities have been adopted to solve water problems? What arethe determinants of their formulation? Which are best and why? What are the cri-teria by which people judge their efficacy? What criteria should we use?

The reality of these limits needs to be determined and discussed publicly. Ata certain point it may be necessary to move people rather than to seek more waterfor them in a particular location. People may just have to cope permanently withless water than they want.

The bulk of water research today fo-cuses on physical measures of water availability and access, rather than on theprocess and effects of its utilisation and distribution among people. Putting the so-cial character of water at the centre of water research should have the effect ofstimulating new efforts of measure water problems in society. Urban, industrial,and impoverished regions and populations need special attention.

VI. Technical measures and public information

A. Water is a subject of scientific inquiry.

B. Water is also a subject of public perception and interest.

C. We need open, public, critical evaluation and discussion of institutionalstrategies (as distinct from specific activities).

D. There may be economic and ecological limits to the efficacy of interven-tion.

E. Social measures need more attention.

n

n

n


Lack of attention to the organisational dynamics of water management as they workin practice has enabled some aspects of the actual allocative process to go largelyunexamined. The most critical of these concern the interaction of urban-rural us-ers and of diverse sectors of the water use system. These require much more at-tention by policy makers and analysts.

Relatively wealthy ‘middle class’ urban domestic users appear to have toppriority; industrial users get next priority; irrigation users are next; and rural do-mestic water users and the urban poor are the lowest priority. This hierarchy isarticulated in government policy and organised politics. It is based on the relativecapacity of different groups to buy water and to bend government policy to theirinterests. In the absence of state action to counteract this hierarchy of power overwater, the poorest sectors of the population lose continuously and cumulatively,especially with respect to their health and hygiene.

What effects, for instance, do electricity subsidies for farmers have onthe efficiency of their water use? How do industrial policies effect drinking watersupplies? Above all, we need measures and models of sustainability and of the ef-fectiveness of alternative solutions to supply problems in the long run. Policies con-cerning urban and industrial water supplies will effect irrigation and rural domesticusers. There are serious questions as to the sustainability of current trends in theurban concentration of population and industry in South Asia.

Thecurrent vogue of anti-state and decentralisation rhetoric needs to be consideredas a potentially long-term intervention in water and natural resources management.Atte ntion to the implicat ions of institu tional change outside the domainconventionally defined by ‘water management’ needs to be part of policy thinkingabout water issues.

Almost all water man-agement work is focused on single-sector issues - agriculture, industry, drinking

VII. Urban-Rural and Multi-Sector Problems

A. There is a hierarchy of water users in the allocative system as it workstoday.

B. Multi-sector outcomes of policy interventions and interactions need moreattention.

C. ‘Rolling back the state’ is an intervention in water management.

D. Regional analysis and planning needs to advance.


water - and either urban or rural locations. In reality, however, urban-rural andmulti-sector water problems are the norm; and zero-sum competitions among lo-calities likewise operate within water regions. A survey of work on water issueshas revealed a great paucity of work on regional problems and potential solutions.Collaborative teams composed of technologists and social scientists, covering arange of disciplines, will be able to do more effective regional research than singleresearchers and disciplines.

There is a surprisingshortage of work on urban water problems. Local solutions to urban problems needto be studied and publicised much more widely. For instance, the municipal waterboard in Madras imposed stiff prices on the Madras Refineries that stimulated amassive industrial investment in efficient sewage treatment facilities that save wa-ter and in effect subsidise the cost of providing water to urban consumers. Thenew problems of water quality posed by increasing pollution make water recy-cling a more complex matter, which needs to be studied closely.

1. Effective collective action and market allocation systems can both benefit froma democratic formalisation of water rights in law and administrative practice.

2. Local forms of organisation cannot supplant regional and state institutions: theymust be conceived and planned in relation to one another.

3. Because of its many adverse consequences, the current hierarchy of water usersshould be counteracted by making the provision of clean drinking water for allthe top priority.

4. Water pricing for irrigation and industry needs to reflect the real social costof water.

5. Water technology specialists - particularly engineers - and social scientists needmore opportunities for interaction and training across their disciplines.

6. Water management activities need to be studied, documented, and modelled asinstitutional practices that are open for scholarly and journalistic evaluation.

Public education and discussion of water problems and solutions should beconsidered essential components of effective water management.

E. Urban pollution and scarcity are pressing concerns.

CONCLUSION: GENERAL RECOMMENDATIONS


1 For an overview of irrigation history in South India, for example, see the Ludden, 1979, 1982,1985.

2 See, for example, Coward (1990).3 This growth has been accompanied by diverse institutional innovations, including the devel-

opment of water markets (Shah, 1991) and, in Bangladesh, the advent of landless pump co-operatives (Wood and Palmer-Jones, 1992).

4 This has been termed the ‘bargaining problem’ (Nash, 1950) or ‘ co-operative conflict’ (Sen,1984).

5 Wittfogel hypothesised that such ‘oriental despotism’ arose in response to the imperatives ofirrigation in Asia. Although of dubious historical accuracy, his thesis illustrates the use ofwater control to address broader issues of collective action.

6 See, for example, Berkes (1989), Ostrom (1990), and National Academy of Sciences (1985).

Appasamy, P., 1989: , Madras Institute of Development Studies, Working Paper No. 88.

Bardhan, P.K., 1984: Essays in Development Economic. NewYork: Columbia University Press.

Berkes, F. (ed.), 1989: , London: Belhaven.Boyce J., 1987: Agrarian Impasse in Bengal: Ins titutional constraints to technological change.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.Boyce J., 1988: Technological and Institutional Alternatives in Asian Rice Irrigation.

23 (13): A6-22.Coward, E.W. (Jr.), 1990: Property Rights and Network Order: The Cae of Irrigation Works in

the Western Himalayas’ 49 (1): 78-88.Harriss, J., 1977: , in Green Revolution?

Technology and Change in Rice-Growing Areas of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. Editor:B.H. Farmer. Boulder: Westview.

Herring, R.J., 1990: , Items (New York:Social Science Research Council) 44 (4): 64-8.

Ludden, D., 1979: Patronage and Irrigation in Tamil Nadu: A long-term View, , 16, 3, pp. 347-65.

Ludden, D., 1982: , in the History and Sociology ofTechnology Editor: Donald Hoak, Milwaukee Public Library, pp. 202-220.

Ludden, D., 1985: Colonialism and Public Technologies: Transportation and Irrigation in TamilNadu Under British Rule, (ed) Peter Gaeffke andDavid Utz. Department of South Asia Regional Studies, University of Pennsylvania, pp.133-44.

NOTES

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Managing Pollution in the Waterways of Madras City: An Initial Assess-ment

Land, Labour, and Rural Poverty:

Common Property Resources

Economicand Political Weekly

Human organisation Problems of Water Management in Hambantota District

Resurrecting the Commons: Collective action and ecology

Indian Economicand Social History Review

Eras of Tamil Nadu Irrigation, 1500 to 1980

Science and Technology in South Asia


Meinzen-Dick, R., and Svendsen, M., 1991: . Washington:International Food Policy Research Institute.

Moench, M. and Matzger, H., 1992: , Ahmedabad: VIKSAT/Pacific Institute Collaborative

Groundwater Project.Nash, J.F., 1950: The Bargaining Problem, 18.National Academy of Sciences, 1985: Proceedings of the Conference on Common Property Re-

source Management, Washington, D.C., April 21-26.Olson, M., 1965: The Logic of Collective Action. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Ostrom, E., 1990: Governing the Commons: The evolution of Institutions for collective action.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Palanisami, K. and Easter, K.W., 1986: Management Production, and Rehabilitation in South In-

dian Irrigation Tanks. In Irrigation Investment Technology, and Management Strategiesfor Development. Editor: K. William Easter. Boulder: Westview.

Pant, N. (ed.), 1984: , New Delhi: Ashish PublishingHouse.

Popkin, S.L., 1979: : University of California Press.Ramamurthy, P., 1984: Rapporteur’s Report of the Conference on Community Responses to

Irrigation, Bangalore, 4-7 January 1984.Scott, J.C., 1976: , New Haven: Yale University Press.Sen, A.K., 1984: , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Shah, T., 1991: Water Markets and Irrigation Development in India,

46 (3): 335-48.Vaidyanathan, A., 1991: Critical Issues Facing Indian Irrigation, in R. Meinzen-Dick and M.

Svendsen, (eds.): 8-26.Wade, R., 1988: Village Republics: Economic conditions for collective action in South India. Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press.Wood, G.D. and Palmer-Jones, R., 1992: The Water Sellers: A Co-operative Venture by the Lan-

dless in Bangladesh. West Hartford: Kumarian Press.Wittfogel, K.A., 1957: Oriental Despotism. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Future Directions for Indian Irrigation

Groundwater Availability for Drinking in Gujarat: Quality,Quantity and Health Dimensions

Econometrica

Productivity and Equity in Irrigation System

The Rational Peasant. Berkeley

The Moral Economy of the PeasantResources, Values and Development

Indian Journal of Agricul-tural Economics


BO OK REVIEW

is a path-breaking exercise approved by the market, which has el-evated it to a best-seller for a book of its type. It has been translated into Hindiwith support from CIDA and from the Government of Madhya Pradesh, whichhas ordered that the book be distributed to all village water management commit-tees in the state. In reviewing such a success story, if one is to avoid the banalityof the hagiographic route, one is forced onto a critical path that must examine theproduct, the producer and the user in one composite frame encompassing per-spectives that emerge from different rationalities.

In their book , Madhav Gadgil and Ramchandra Guha(1995) categorise India’s massive population – not by language, class, religion orcaste, but by the people’s relation to the environment – into ecosystem people,ecological refugees and, omnivores. The latter category is at the top of the food-chain pyramid and consumes a variety of local and global resources. It is the In-dia that has a standard of living equivalent to that of Western Europe and the elitethat has ruled the vast country in the name of the other two groups for the lasthalf a century. , the book under review, is about India’s ecosystempeople written by India’s mostly urban omnivores for other such omnivores. Aswith any book written by this group for itself, it has a number of weaknesses whenseen from other perspectives. Omnivores may have the same skin colour and speakthe same language, but are as ‘foreign’ to the ecosystem people as the Europeancolonialists they so eloquently decry. At the same time, however, in stark contrastto Marxian class categories that are supposed to be in inevitable and perpetual con-flict, the effort that went into producing this book demonstrates that omnivores of

DYING WISDOM: RISE, FALL AND POTENTIAL OF INDIA’STRADITIONAL WATER HARVESTING SYSTEMS

By Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain, EditorsState of India’s Environment 4: A Citizens’ ReportPages 404PU BLISH ED BY CENTRE FO R S CIENC E AND ENVIRON MENT(CS E), 4 1 TU GH LAKABAD IN STI-

TUTIONAL AREA, NEW DELHI 11006 2, 1 997

Reviewed by

Dying Wisdom

Ecology and Equity

Dying Wisdom

Dipak Gyawali

118 GYAWALI, D.

the environmentalist ilk do have a conscience that is not solipsistic. The book alsoshows that they do care about the other categories and can work against their im-mediate self-interest for the larger and longer-term good.

is a mixture of a scientific encyclopaedia and an environ-mentalist manifesto. Sixty per cent of the 404-page book is the second chapterwith 15 sub-sections. It comprises its encyclopaedic core that details traditionalwater harvesting systems in India’s fifteen ecological regions.1 A personal intro-duction describes how ten years earlier the directors of CSE stumbled upon tradi-tional Rajasthani water harvesting structures, how the event incited their interestand how the research project that culminated in this book was born. The first chap-ter, taking a detour of ancient Indian history from Harappan and Zoroastrian timesto medieval Kashmir and Bhopal, describes some of the archaeological excavationsthat unearthed water tanks from these periods. The third chapter discusses thereasons why these systems deteriorated (the blame being put mostly on British co-lonialism) and the final fourth chapter makes a strong case for reviving the wis-dom of the ancients through village-level water harvesting systems. The last eightpercent of the book consists of notes and valuable references, Government of In-dia statistics regarding irrigation and drinking water, a glossary of vernacular andSanskrit names associated with water and water harvesting, and a statement ofshared concerns – in effect a well laid out manifesto – by those working withissues related to local water management.

The book begins with a strong introduction that summarises in one sen-tence the omnivore : ‘For us personally, this report is the result of adecade-long journey and in many ways it constitutes the determining idea of a life-time. It was one thing to say in our first report in 1982 that India has a majorenvironmental problem looming ahead, it is quite another thing now to say thatsome of the answers to this crisis may lie in our own traditions, in the hands ofour communities, and at a pretty low cost.’ Environmental activists, by virtue oftheir egalitarian sociology, often operate within a critical rationality that rants andraves against an unjust order. As a result, they are often faulted by those of thehierarchic (bureaucratic) solidarity for ‘only criticising and not providing solutions’,forgetting that the criticism has only followed because the hierarchs who had overallresponsibility failed to provide solutions in the first place (Gyawali, 1998). The re-discovery of ancient traditional water harvesting systems, ignored and indeed of-ten destroyed by the hubris of modern hierarchs, now allows the critical activiststo turn the tables and play the avuncular elder statesmen.

Dying Wisdom

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DYING WISDOM 119

The first chapter attempts a demonstration of ancient India’swater management structures based on some archaeological evidence, but floun-ders due to several weaknesses. Spatially it moves across regions with no particu-lar logic to match the book’s subsequent categorisation of India’s ecological zones.Chronologically it skips back and forth from Kautilya in the third century B.C. toBhopal Lake in the eleventh century A.D. back to Harappan and Chalcolithic agesof antiquity. Many of the things mentioned here could easily have been better in-corporated in the main text of the second chapter, which discusses water man-agement within ecological contexts. With brash confidence this chapter states thatKautilya wrote the in Pataliputra (today’s Bihar) when he, in all prob-ability, did so back in his home university of Taxila (now in Pakistani Punjab) afterretiring from active politics.

If the objective of this chapter was to legitimise modern water harvestingby drawing on the aura of the ancients, it does not succeed because many of thestructures that are described, whether Kautiliyan or Harappan, were not the cheer-ful, village-level, eco-friendly water harvesting structures that are currently impliedby this term. They were mostly artifacts of hydraulic despotism described byWittfogel (1959) and were sustained by very undemocratic systems. Chapter 3 triesto refute Wittfogel but rather unsuccessfully, and his thesis applied to South Asiamight be better understood through Mendis’s (1999) description of violence sur-rounding the destruction of tanks in southern Sri Lanka. The first chapter talks ofwater management in the all-inclusive ‘Indian Subcontinent’, a politically incorrectterm for South Asia, and includes a reference to R. L. Brohier’s work on Sri Lankantanks as well as on Baluchistan’s . However, chapter two and much ofwhat follows in the concluding sections revert back to modern Bharat’s solipsismthat limits environmentalists with global vision to the current political boundariesof India, a narrowness that wins them no accolades.

The second chapter is actually sixteen chapters written as sub-chapters, onefor each of the fifteen ecological zones and an introduction. It constitutes the fun-damental uniqueness of the book that has won for it well-deserved praise. Catego-rising India’s local water management by ecological zones, as has been done inthis book, is far superior to the conventional and official practice of following po-litical and administrative delineations in describing water that refuses to abide bysuch diktats of human hubris.2

However, even lets slip, perhaps unwittingly, an administra-tive bias. For example, barring the one good case study of the Aptanis of ArunachalPradesh, the entire section on the Eastern Himalaya is devoid of any ‘dying wis-

tour de force

Arthashastra

gabarbands

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dom’ for harvesting water. Also, Darjeeling and Sikkim are one ecological seg-ment of the Central Himalaya and hardly necessitate two vacuous sections merelyfor the sake of having ‘covered’ the Indian Subcontinent as it is currently admin-istered. Treating the entire Himalaya from K2 in Kashmir to Namcha Barwa inArunachal as a fundamental ecological unit of the South Asian Subcontinent wouldhave been a more intelligent coverage of the subject. From a water managementperspective, one can also dispute the bundling of the Indus and the Ganga plainsinto a single Indo-Gangetic ecology, as is conventionally done. In reality, thehydro-ecology of the Indus and western Ganga plains have little in commonwith that of the lower Ganga plains except for their flatness, a fact that themuch-maligned British colonial masters appreciated much better than theirbrown successors.3

The introductory portion of the second chapter two has a very strong sec-tion on the potential of water harvesting in India. Back-of-the-envelope calcula-tions indicate that almost all of India’s domestic water requirements for drinkingand sanitation purposes can be met by harvesting the annual rainfall – using ponds,tanks and underground structures – on just two percent of India’s land. This strongargument should have been placed in the last chapter on ‘recovering the wisdom’,and should have included a research agenda for each of the ecological zones todetermine what exactly can be done locally, in villages and municipal areas, to re-alise this currently wasted potential. The second chapter ends with an intriguingnote that one wishes family historians in India would enlarge upon. Mention is madeof how many modern Indian surnames originate from names of irrigation canalssuch as , , and . So when Niranjan Gulati (1972) writes abook on water laws, Jawaharlal Nehru embarks on a ‘temple building’ with Bakhradam, or Medha Patkar opposes the Narmada project, is it their genes speaking?

Modern Indians have been conditioned to blame the British for everythingwrong in India today. The British have been gone for fifty years, but the ills of theland and its waters have gotten worse. There is more soil salinisation, more waterlogging, more poisoned groundwater and more flood-prone cities and settlementsnow than ever before. The introduction to the second chapter ends by saying thatthe entire heritage of traditional water management lies in tatters for which ‘noagency can be blamed more than the wretched Indian state’, especially the post-Independence Indian political leadership (pp. 29). This message is, however, for-gotten in chapter three, which discusses the rise of state supremacy that led to thefall of water harvesting and which starts by blaming the British for the looting of

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India and the destruction of its water systems.There are several aspects wrong with this line of thinking. First, the British

were no more rapacious than the despotic and of India whom theyreplaced much to the relief of local farmers and merchants of those times. Indeed,compared with Shiraj-ud-Daula’s debauchery, Clive was a Protestant prude and anempire-builder enforcing the laws, which, in his case, were closer to those of modernbusiness schools than traditions. Second, the British interest in increasingprofits and revenue matched by their creation of infrastructure from railways andother means of transport to irrigation canals that facilitated agriculture production.Where they saw that public welfare could be had by public works, they promul-gated the ‘protective irrigation’ enterprise just as the Nawab of Awadh ordered thebuilding of Lucknow’s magnificent palace Imam Bara (or Bhul Bhulaiya) in the late18th century as part of drought relief. Third, on the question of repatriation ofcapital by multinationals such as the East India Company (the so-called loot), theBritish have followed a policy that is not much different from that of the ‘liberal-ised’ modern Indian state: Mehta (1999) describes how both the Congress and theBJP governments decided to sacrifice the interests of Maharashtra’s State Elec-tricity Board and its consumers in favour of the Texas multinational Enron.

The last chapters of fail to enlighten when they present thedestruction of ancient water management systems as a white versus brown issue.It does not say much of the browns of those days if they allowed a handful ofwhite merchants, not even avowed warriors, to eventually take over all their as-sets! If these new masters then defined the value of those assets in cognisancewith the interests of their shareholders, a definition that did not include the long-term or future generations tied to land or alien traditions, they can be faulted nomore than can the new rulers all across South Asia that do so with impunity todayor have done so in the past. Indeed, Mendis (1999) describes how the destructionof Sri Lanka’s ancient tank systems started not with the advent of Dutch and Brit-ish capitalism but with King Parakrama Bahu’s centralising rule in 12th century A.D.,and how the process has accelerated considerably with modern engineering in thepost-colonial period.

How the European vanguards of capitalism could overwhelm much largerand, in those days, more advanced civilisations such as the Indic or Sinic, is bet-ter understood in the arguments of Stavrianos (1981). Capitalism derives it formi-dable social power from the historical processes that democratised capital into jointstock companies. This was only possible because of the Protestant work ethics

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that encouraged savings and glorified labour (preventing slavery in Europe). Itthereby led to the precocious growth of science and technology. The separationof church and state prevented empire-building and the rapacity associated with it.With this new social institution of the joint stock company, major enterprises didnot need financing from the very rich, whether Borgias, Medicis or Moghuls: gar-nering the small savings of the many ordinary people could do the job even moreeffectively. It is the joint stock companies of capitalism that conquered India andbrought China to its lowest historical ebb. They could easily buy an army, westernor native, to do their bidding for them.

is weakest in its analysis of the institutional processes thatled to the current failure of (in its words) ‘the wretched Indian state’. Why big isbetter in the current structure of the Indian political economy must be looked at interms of the relationship between the state, the market and civil society. Themodern Indian bureaucracy, and for that matter the bureaucracies of other SouthAsian countries as well, has pursued a monistic path of control over everything,not allowing the operation of egalitarian institutions at the local level or sufficientspace for the market to flourish. It has made itself the social carrier of technolo-gies that further such a monistic mission, technologies that are large-scale withlong lead times that require esoteric expertise that they alone are entitled to have.Small-scale technologies that are even more effective would be a social threat tosuch a mission.4

Within such a milieu, an effective environmental strategy would be to de-velop a strong countervailing institutional momentum behind egalitarian activismand, where conducive, alliances with local entrepreneurs. It cannot be achievedby the type of authoritarian thinking attributed to M. A. Chitale, the former waterresources secretary of India (pp. 313): ‘one of the main hurdles in the develop-ment of India’s irrigation system in general is that its management has been piece-meal due to the compartmentalisation of the country’s administrative structure’.Given Pisharoty’s observation on the nature of South Asian rainfall (much of itsprecipitation falls in not more than 50 days out of 365), the need is to capture thatrainfall where it falls rather than where it collects, which in turn means giving powerto people in places where rain falls rather than to ‘centralised authorities’ in distantcapitals to do the collecting. However, many of the best and brightest among In-dia’s environmentalists cannot seem to move away from the state-centric bias in-herent in the ‘authority’ concept, and end up promoting it to the detriment of thevery ethos of rainwater harvesting.5

The observations described above are some of the epistemic weaknesses

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of with , but there are some practical problems as well. In resur-recting ancient wisdom, where will the reproduction of this knowledge take place?In their current state of enthrallment with concrete technologies and the fact thatthe state needs them for large-scale cement structures and earthworks, engineer-ing colleges and institutes of South Asia are not of much help. How will

help change the curriculum under which future engineers are trained? Thelast chapter and the annexes begin to question the wisdom of state-generated sta-tistics that lump some of the best and most widespread traditional techniques ofirrigation under an invitation-to-ignore miscellaneous heading of ‘other sources’.To make an effective dent in this practice of systematic marginalisation, will notenvironmental activists have to begin generating alternative water data on a long-term and sustained basis, perhaps using local and high schools inthe different ecological zones as their allies?6 The glossary of local and Sanskritterms provided in ’s annex is a very useful reference that would havebeen more so had the sections where they are dealt with also been indicated incross-indexing. While there are mistakes in the glossary (e.g., is millet andnot ‘agriculture crop’ and in Sikkim is a river and not a tank), how will theresearch to find the wisdom behind each such word be done by interdisciplinaryteams of linguists, engineers, classical scholars, social scientists and archaeolo-gists? How will it reach the non-omnivores more effectively and become part ofthe discourse at their level that will be able to rise up and challenge the current‘concrete mindsets’ of faraway bureaucracies?

Perhaps one will wait for these and other answers in a new and revisededition that, being free of a nationalistic straitjacket, is truly South Asian in its scope.The editors of and their very able team of experts, being environ-mentalists of global stature and repute, owe this much to the subject matter and tofuture generations. Meanwhile, this edition, even with its epistemic and practicaldifficulties, does deserve a place in every water researcher’s shelf, not only forrediscovering local knowledge but also for inducing reverberations within the om-nivore circles of South Asia that have so far remained smugly complacent as faras socially and ecologically sensible water management is concerned.

1 The fifteen regions are: 1. Trans-Himalaya, 2. Wes tern Himalaya, 3. Eastern Himalaya, 4.Northeastern Hill Ranges, 5. Brahmaputra Valley, 6. Indo-Gangatic Plains, 7. Thar Desert, 8.

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Central Highlands, 9. Eastern Highlands, 10. Deccan Plateau, 11. Western Ghats, 12. WesternCoastal Plains, 13. Eastern Ghats, 14. Eastern Coastal Plains, and 15. The Islands

2 See, for example, the (NA&TMO,1996), whereIndian water is described state-wise: Ganga stops at Ballia in east Uttar Pradesh before re-surfacing several pages later in west Bihar, with little indication that it is one river with com-mon problems across this particular stretch.

3 In terms of flooding and sedimentation and the lateral shifting of channels Ganga and its plainshave a very different character in the downstream reaches of eastern UP and Bihar than in itsupstream. Official thinking on the wisdom of expanding large-scale surface irrigation had be-gun to shift by 1901 in the Irrigation Commission: ‘Though large rivers offering similar sites[as in the Panjab] were available further east along the Gangetic plain, serious doubts wereexpressed about expansion in that direction because of expected canal management difficultiesin higher rainfall, higher water table areas vulnerable to waterlogging: and the safe easterlylimit was reckoned to have bee reached (and in some views, exceeded) with the constructionof the Sarda canal in central UP in the 1920’s.’ See Bottrall (1992) quoting Stone (1984).

4 In a Himalaya-Ganga meeting in Patna, an Indian scholar presented an effective argument forconsidering multiple small reservoirs instead of one large one. He was berated by his col-leagues: ‘Here we are trying to convince Nepalis to build Kosi High Dam and you are askingthem to build ?!!’ See Synghal (1994).

5 Mr. Chitale spoke at the 1990 CSE rainwater harvesting seminar. The ghost of that line ofthinking, which glorifies an authority to integrate everything, could not be exorcised even byCSE’s 1998 conference on rainwater harvesting that made a contradicting plea for ‘rationalisedplanning and administration under a unified authority at central, state and local levels’. SeeCSE (1998).

6 A recent example of such ‘alternative data generating’ was in the small Rohini river that flowsfrom Nepal’s Churia hills to the West Rapti near Gorakhpur, where seven rain gauges in Ne-pal and three in India were installed through a collaboration between NGOs and grassrootsacademics in Nepal and India. The scientific data on the 1998 cloudbursts and floods in thisbasin (460 mm of rain in 24 hours on August 3) is with this group and not with the bureauc-racies of Nepal and India. See NWCF (2000).

Bottrall, A., 1992: Fits and Misfits over Time and Space: technologies and institutions of waterdevelopment for South Asian Agriculture, , Vol. 1, No. 2: pp.227-247, Carfax Publishing Company, Oxford.

CSE, 1998: , Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) October 3-5,

New Delhi.Gadgil, M. and Guha, R., 1995:

; Routledge and Penguin Books India (P) Ltd.Gulati, N. D., 1972: , Allied Pub-

Water Resources Development Atlas of India

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Contemporary South Asia

Recommendations – CSE Conference on Potential of Water Harvesting: Traditions,Policies and Social Mobilisation

Ecology and Equity – The Use and Abuse of Nature in Contem-porary India

Development of Inter-State Rivers – Law and Practice in India

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DYING WISDOM 125

lishers, New Delhi.Gyawali, D., 1998: Patna, Delhi and Environmental Activism: Institutional Forces Behind Water

Conflict in Bihar; Vol. 6, No. 1 January-July, Kathmandu. This article is alsopublished in summarised version as

, GeoJournal Vol. 47, No. 3, October 1999, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Amster-dam.

Mehta, A., 1999: , Orient Longman, Delhi.Mendis, D.L.O., 1999: Hydraulic Engineering versus Water and Soil Conservation Ecosystems:

Lessons from the History of the Rise and Fall of Sri Lanka’s Ancient Irrigation Systems, Vol. 7, No. 2, Kathmandu.

NA & TMO, 1996: , National Atlas and ThematicMapping Organization (NA&TMO), Department of Science and Technology, CGO Build-ing, DF Block, Salt Lake, Calcutta.

NWCF, 2000: , Nepal Water Conservation Foundation (NWCF), August, Kathmandu.

Synghal, S. B., 1994: Smaller is Better, , Vol. 4, No. 1, Kathmandu.Stavrianos, L. S., 1981:

, Inc., New York.Stone, I., 1984: , Cambridge University Press.Wittfogel, K. A., 1959 (third reprint): ;

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Power Play – A Study of the Enron Project

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Water NepalGlobal Rift – The Third World Comes of Age, William Morrow and Com-

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Oriental Despotism – A Comparative Study of Total Power

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