The Negotiated Approach

Summary of a unique approach to Integrated Water Resources Management1

Tobias Schmitz, Both ENDS, August 2008

1 Introduction

This document describes the ‘Negotiated Approach’ to Integrated Water Resources

Management (IWRM). The Negotiated Approach is a unique approach to Integrated Water
Resources Management that was developed by two civil society organisations - Gomukh
in India and Both ENDS in the Netherlands. Its prime distinctive features in relation to
mainstream approaches to IWRM are its explicitly bottom-up approach and its orientation
towards negotiation amongst actors in civil soiety. Having already proven its merits
(intrinsic worth) in Bangladesh, India, and Peru, its application is spreading and is
gaining recognition.2 This summary explains in brief what the Negotiated Approach is
about and why it has added value as an approach to the management of water
resources.

2 Background: the world water crisis

During the last fifteen years, approaches to water resource management have undergone
profound (intense) changes. These changes are rooted in the unsustainable nature of the
water management practices that were dominant during the last century. These practices
generated a crisis in water management from which the idea of integrated water
resource management (IWRM) evolved (develop). However, although IWRM is an
improvement on previous water management systems, it tends to be implemented in a
centralised manner and often does not take sufficient account of local realities and
practices with regard to water. The Negotiated Approach has evolved from the problems
associated with past and present water management approaches, including IWRM.

As mentioned, the concept of IWRM has its roots in the growing crisis in approaches to
water resources management that dominated the twentieth century. In the wake of the
industrial revolution, water was increasingly captured and harnessed (attach) to the
needs of mankind, replacing natural water systems by man made systems at an ever-
increasing pace’3.

1
And, potentially, to other forms of natural resource management
2
For instance, In February 2008, the World Bank offices in Jakarta approved a pilot project on capacity of local
governments, based on the Negotiated Approach.
3
Fred Pearce (1992): Rivers, Dams and the Coming World Water Crisis. London: the Bodley Head

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Whereas in 1900 World freshwater withdrawals from natural sources increased from
some 580 km³ in 1900 to 5,190 km³ in 20004. This increase in withdrawals is largely
the result of planned technological interventions in water systems. These interventions
have historically been driven by an urban technocratic elite which planned national of
provincial level water supply systems in a top-down, centre-outward, technical way.
Decision making in water resource management has not traditionally been participatory,
and the interventions that took place have had at best a weak relationship with the
desires and aspirations of local actors and civil society in the catchment, overlooking
traditional uses of water or livelihoods that were based on the rivers concerned or the
habitats they sustained. Investments in water resources infrastructure create clearly
identifiable sets of winners and losers, often capturing the resource from one set of users
for the benefit of another5.

The process of re-plumbing the planet gained pace during the 20th century, peaking in
the 1960’s with the average completion of one large dam a day6, bringing the total to
some 36,000 large dams by 2000. As time passed, the most obvious sites for dam
construction became occupied, and the remaining options became more and more risky
in social and environmental terms. Nor did the spectacular rollout of engineering
approaches to water management succeed in averting (prevention) scarcity. Although
millions of people were connected to the public tap, and although irrigation development
provided a very large number of farmers with reliable water supplies, the per capita
availability of freshwater on earth went into rapid decline as a result of both population
growth and economic growth. Currently some 1.2 billion people live in areas of physical
scarcity, lacking even the access to 20 litres of safe water a day considered to be the
minimum for a healthy life7. In addition, some 500 million people are approaching this
situation: water scarcity is therefore a growing problem.

3 Background: Integrated Water Resources Management

In 1992, the first major international response to the growing problem of water scarcity
occurred in the form of the International Conference on Water and the Environment,
which was held in Dublin. The Dublin conference was the first global event marking wide
international concern for the world’s water resources. The delegates produced a

4
McNeill, J. (2000): Something new under the Sun. An environmental history of the twentieth century..
London: Penguin press, pg. 121
5
See Cannon, T. In Blaikie, P, Cannon, T, Davis, I and Wisner, B (2003): At Risk. Natural Hazards, people’s
Vulnerability, and Disasters. London: Taylor & Francis.
6
I.e. a dam with a wall higher than 15 metres
7
United Nations (2007) Coping with water scarcity. Challenge of the 21st century. New York: UN

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statement8 to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED)
in Rio de Janeiro in that same year. The Dublin declaration called for a fundamentally
new approach to the management of water resources based on the recognition of
interdependence between population groups and between humanity and nature with
regard to the utilisation of water resources. As a result, the UNCED declaration, known as
Agenda 21, contained an 18th chapter that called for the integrated management of water
resources, signalling international acceptance of the need to introduce integrated water
resource management into national planning systems as a solution to the problems of
water scarcity. What, then, does integrated water resource management mean?

The concept of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) could be summarised as

the attempt to integrate all aspects of interventions in water resources into a
management framework at the level of the catchment. As a first step, it means that
politically determined water management areas should be replaced by naturally
determined water management areas. It is at the level of the catchment that
atmospheric water, surface water, groundwater, estuaries and coastlines are connected.
The water flowing through a catchment can flow through and across land that has many
uses. Therefore, any impact on water use in one location can be passed on to water use
in another area. As a result , the catchment is a natural unit for water resources planning
under conditions of scarcity as it integrates all localised impacts on water resources in a
catchment into a catchment management plan.

Secondly, IWRM attempts to take account of all aspects of the complex physical and
ecological system within a catchment, including human effects, in planning. Catchments
have varied habitats, each of which has its own localised ecosystem. Also, catchments
harbour different kinds of human activity, from farming to mining and urban
development. The attempt to integrate all these systems into a plan at catchment level
requires many kinds of knowledge: biology, geography, chemistry, town planning, etc.
Therefore, ideally, IWRM planning must be interdisciplinary so that decisions relevant to
the environment are based on considerations that are as comprehensive as possible.

Thirdly, planning should be participatory and planning teams should be accountable so

that detailed information about the environment and grassroots activities or impacts are
accounted for in plans at higher levels. Typically, catchment management authorities
function as a small core of specialists interacting with stakeholder forums which allow
input from a wide variety of sources. Catchment management plans are (theoretically)
established on the basis of consensus among stakeholders and within government.

8
Known as the ‘Dublin declaration’

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Lastly, catchment management plans need to be flexible and adaptive to take account of
continuous changes in the human and natural environments. Economies change,
settlement patterns change, and as a result, water use patterns change. IWRM systems
need to take account of these changing dynamics and evolve in step with changes in
society. Also, peak environmental events may take place, deforestation and urbanisation
may lead to higher instability of water courses, pollution may increase, and again, the
institution in charge needs to adapt to each set of challenges it faces.9

4 The Negotiated Approach: a response to problems with IWRM

Despite the rhetoric surrounding integration and participation that embodied in IWRM, in
practice water resource management continues to be a top-down process. Even if state
water resource planning makes the attempt to be both participatory and integrated, the
planning that emerges tends to be centralised and top down in character. Rarely are the
interests and capacities of those living in the sub-basin or micro-catchment fully taken
into account. Integrated Water Resource Management tends to take a macro-level
master plan as the starting point for management interventions. By doing so, the
methods used tend to become reductionist and based on a range of assumptions about
local needs, water availability and flow characteristics, economic development projections
and so forth. Because such master plans depend on the use of assumptions, they almost
by definition tend to be in conflict with local realities. It is precisely the lack of attention
to local needs and local environmental realities that leads to a lack of a truly ‘integrated’
plan for water management.

A plan that is formulated through bottom-up negotiation on the other hand, is the result
of a much more inclusive (comprehensive, complete), just process featuring a host of
detailed arrangements amongst stakeholders on the shared usage (practice, habit) of
water resources. Bottom-up negotiation means that local realities are the starting point,
and that these realities are gradually integrated into plans at higher administrative or
institutional levels through a process of negotiation and mutual adjustment. In essence,
the negotiated approach is not in disagreement with the principles of integrated water
resource management. In fact, it is a reaffirmation of the basic principles underlying
IWRM. However, it differs with classical IWRM with respect to the process by which the
management plan or end result is achieved. By explicitly emphasising the role of local
players, it raises inclusiveness to the level of a key organising principle. By raising the

9
See for instance Mitchell (1990): Integrated Water Management: International Experiences and Perspectives.
New York: Belhaven Press.

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importance of inclusiveness, it calls for an explicit respect of the voice of local actors and
civil society, bringing those normally excluded from consultations into the process. As a
result, this approach promotes equity to a greater degree than classical IWRM and
therefore it is a better tool in poverty alleviation. Furthermore, it privileges specific local
knowledge of the environment over generalised, aggregate, average statistics which are
gained from a distance through techniques such as remote sensing. It therefore contains
more relevant and accurate social and environmental data than that generated by other
approaches. Because each catchment is different in terms of its water resources, its
physical infrastructure, its climate and its economy, it follows that no one size fits all
policy can be applied to water management and that local realities should be the basis of
decision making.

Instead of relying on the formulaic approach that sets uniform standards such as effluent
standards or basic needs requirements throughout the catchment and then stumbles
across local obstacles in the achievement of these standards, needs are defined in a
flexible, bottom-up, negotiated approach which takes local factors into account from the
start. Ascertaining demand by negotiation from the bottom up is a more practical and
holistic process than top-down, technocratic inference. The technology-driven approach
that has traditionally been the domain of engineers in the water management field has a
tendency to rely on centralised and highly capital intensive water supply schemes. Such
schemes, by their sheer cost, build financial risks concerning cost recovery into water
supply schemes which would normally not be acceptable to a poor rural peasantry or low
income urban dwellers. By building high costs into he schemes, cost recovery becomes a
major issue that could be averted simply by adapting the scale and cost of the schemes
to the priorities and risk levels acceptable to local populations. Instead of being driven by
technology and the resultant need to recover costs through the sale of services – which
by definition excludes the poor – the negotiated approach departs from basic needs and
reflects local priorities.

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 5 Basic principles underlying the Negotiated Approach

What then, one could ask, are the basic principles that underlie the negotiated
approach?10

Firstly, the negotiated approach is emphatically (definetely) not a road map, a module
or some other form of externally imposed social experiment carrying the flag of
‘development’. The intention of the negotiated approach is precisely to avoid imposing
(memaksakan) the preconceptions of outsiders on the very real problems faced by poor
people throughout the world. This kind of ‘model’ approach legitimises external
interventions, that do not necessarily give priority to reducing poverty and equitable and
sustainable development. By contrast, the negotiated approach simply embodies
(represent, memasukkan) a set of principles of policy making which can in fact be applied
in any setting where there is a felt need for some form of linking of local realities into a
broader plan covering a wider area.

Secondly, a key element of the negotiated approach is the subsidiarity principle. This
principle states that decisions - in this case decisions with regard to water management –
should be taken at the lowest possible level in order to dovetail (fit together) with local
realities. According to the subsidiarity principle, central authorities should only perform
those tasks which cannot be effectively performed at the local level. This means that the
local level should be the focal point of decisions, rather than the end-point. In terms of
the principle, decisions should only be deferred (menunda) to higher administrative levels
when this is absolutely necessary. This ensures that management plans that evolve are
context specific.

Thirdly, another key aspect of the negotiated approach is the act of negotiation which is
contained in the concept itself. This starts with the idea that local practices of integrated
land and water use should be the foundation of higher level decisions. The next step is to
realise that participating in water management structures is not about passively
endorsing decisions taken by others but about proactively taking a stance and debating
this stance with others until it is possible to come to an agreement to which all parties
can commit themselves. This may for instance mean protesting against certain decisions

10
Before considering the content of the negotiated approach it is important to realise that
actors need to be empowered to recognise their own capacity to intervene in their own
interests. This process of empowerment is an important prerequisite for actors to be able
to develop intervention strategies and manage their own level of participation in public
processes.

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– i.e. protest is an active form of participation on the way to negotiation. The negotiation
starts when other parties are willing to take local concerns into account.

Fourthly, the negotiated approach, by emphasising local input, makes the statement
that local knowledge matters. Many development interventions, however well
intentioned, are based on the idea that experts from outside are needed to ‘solve’ a
complex local development problem. The assumption that is made is that local actors do
not have sufficient knowledge to intervene appropriately in the running of their own
affairs and that therefore the advice and intervention of outsiders is needed. This is the
basic format by which ‘development’ interventions are legitimised - an outsider declares
a group to be ‘underdeveloped ‘and then sets out a plan for ‘development’ that fits into
the outsider’s interpretation of reality. In actual fact, development practice is what
Norman Long calls a ‘battlefield of knowledge’ between the interpretations of outside
experts and the interpretation of those who are the subject of ‘development’
interventions11. By accepting the value of local knowledge, even if it does not fit the
classical format of ‘western ‘scientific inquiry, one is making a decision to empower
actors to take their future into their own hands.

11
See for instance Long, N (2001): Development Sociology. Actor Perspectives. London: Routledge.