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How to secure sustainable access to water is an increasingly acute problem that is global in scope. "From Resource Management to Political Activism: Civil Society Participation in Nicaragua's Rural Water Governance" demonstrates that this problem is also one that intersects in crucial ways with democratic political processes. Based upon thirteen months of field research in Nicaragua, this dissertation examines how community-based resource managers and water service providers transcend their rural localities and roles in order to engage in fundamentally new forms of political engagement, advocacy, and networking. After thirty years of constituting a legally-unrecognized resource management scheme in the country's rural areas, Potable Water and Sanitation Committees (CAPS) have formed dozens of new transcommunity, multi-sectoral "CAPS networks." These networks are serving as platforms for the participation of rural social actors in formal politics and their integration into policy processes. Notably, these dynamics are unfolding in an unlikely context: one of extreme political polarization and state attempts at cooptation via new mechanisms of direct democracy at the subnational level. This dissertation is motivated by the puzzle of how CAPS collectively assert themselves across political scales while maintaining autonomy and pluralism--even as the state seeks to incorporate expressions of civil society into partisan channels of citizen participation from above. I argue that this outcome of autonomy and pluralism is explained by three interrelated and mutually-dependent factors: 1) the CAPS' empowerment, capacities, and legitimacy as local resource managers; 2) their alliances with domestic and international NGOs and multilateral organizations; and 3) their strategic discourses of water use, access, and distribution. Principal research methods include semi-structured interviews; participant observation; and review and analysis of government and nongovernmental reports and documents, newspaper articles, and national legislation. Guided by an explicitly interdisciplinary orientation, this dissertation generates more robust theoretical arguments about two important trends in Latin America: democratization and decentralization.

Presented at Ground water and surface water under stress: competition, interaction, solutions: a USCID water management conference on October 25-28, 2006 in Boise, Idaho. ; Includes bibliographical references. ; The Indus Basin Irrigation System (IBIS), commanding an area of 15.08 million hectares (ha), is Pakistan's century old and largest contiguous irrigation system in the world. The main problem facing the system is lack of equitable and reliable delivery of water in the tails of the channels to almost 1.4 million small farmers (landowners of less than 2 hectares). Its mismanagement occurs due to pressure of influential big land owners and head reach farmers and rent seeking by the irrigation officials. Consequently, small farmers and tail enders of the irrigation system are unable to cultivate their lands and suffer from extreme poverty. To address this issue, institutional reforms have been introduced aiming to improve the water management. Through these reforms, irrigation management has been transferred to farmers groups called Farmer's Organizations (FOs) initially introduced by the Nara canal area water board (AWB) in Sindh . The paper describes the involvement of empowered and organized members of 3,217 watercourse associations (WCAs) and 166 farmer organizations (FOs) at Nara canal system for the social and economic justice to the suffering farming community. About 55% is water equitably distributed trough FO managed chancels and 15% of irrigation water is saved to irrigate land to combat the poverty. In all 762 issues relevant to water distribution have been resolved through the conflict resolution committees in their respective distributaries. Interestingly, 30% new chairmen of FOs have been inducted in the organizations through democratic process of election after the completion of first tenure of the elected board of management of Farmers Organizations. This has been possible as 16,557 pertinent members of these organizations have been imparted relevant trainings. In addition the crop assessment and water charges recovery has been increased sufficiently to operate and maintain the farmer managed irrigation system to support institutional reforms process. In order to create effective linkages and coordination among organizations and with other line agencies and national and international organizations, farmer organizations council (FOC) has been established by these organizations. This paper also suggests policymakers to support institutional reforms on other canals to replicate the model of Nara Canal area water board.

This entry has been realised in the framework of the H2020-MSCA-RISE-2018 project "LoGov - Local Government and the Changing Urban-Rural Interplay". LoGov aims to provide solutions for local governments that address the fundamental challenges resulting from urbanisation. To address this complex issue, 18 partners from 17 countries and six continents share their expertise and knowledge in the realms of public law, political science, and public administration. LoGov identifies, evaluates, compares, and shares innovative practices that cope with the impact of changing urban-rural relations in five major local government areas: (1) local responsibilities and public services, (2) local financial arrangements, (3) structure of local government, (4) intergovernmental relations of local governments, and (5) people's participation in local decision-making. The present entry addresses people's participation in local decision-making in Ethiopia. The entry forms part of the LoGov Report on Ethiopia. To access the full version of the report on Ethiopia, other practices regarding people's participation in local decision-making and to receive more information about the project, please visit: https://www.logov-rise.eu/. This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 823961.

Multi-Stakeholder Platforms are a currently popular concept in the international water world. It is however not a very well defined phenomenon. The present article unpacks the concept, proposes to see platforms as networks, and identifies two ´schools of thought´: social learning and negotiation. It attempts a preliminary typology of platforms encountered in real life, in which the Comités de Bacia in Brazil, for all their shortcomings, come out as a relatively influential type. In closing, the article then identifies reasons for non-participation, suggesting that it is an inevitable corollary of organised participation.

Community participation is one of the most essential principles in development cooperation. What is meant by this term is that people have a say in the conception of projects and accept it as their own effort. An example for successful participation comes from Zimbabwe. (D+C/DÜI)

Nowadays society water represents both, an opportunity and a threat, the greatest strength and the greatest wealth of society. Water is the key for conservation and environmental management. Different tools support sustainable management and conservation of natural resources. A possible way is to implement active and collaborative public participation, a key mechanism that effectively makes possible the implementation of what legislation requires. This paper intends to illustrate two processes developed in Portugal that have contributed to the management of "water", with the integration of the participatory dimension: (1) the analysis of an active public participation process that took place within the scope of the MARGov Project-Collaborative Governance of Marine Protected Areas. This will contribute to bring up better knowledge of such processes while guaranteeing the articulation among stakeholders in a collaborative way with increasing gains for long-term co-management. Results indicate that active public participation contributes to societal change that passes through the valorization of the knowledge of each citizen, a relevant contribution for governance models design providing added value for the natural systems; (2) Ardila river basin searching for definition of rehabilitation proposals for water quality improvement from a cross-sectional perspective. Results revealed the lack of institutionalized tradition of participation and the need to reinforce the information and qualification of stakeholders, through the adoption of participative methodologies in the processes. Both cases will allow the authors to reflect the role of active participation to the societal transformation and its contribution to better forms of water governance.

The literature shows that degrading water resources is partly due to the lack of stakeholder participation in its management. It also underscores that intensive stakeholder participation is vital for democracy, good governance, and sustainable development in water resources management. However, the gradation of stakeholder participation in water resources management has not been widely studied. I applied the extended ladder of participation in water resource management in the Densu Basin in Ghana. I collected data through 123 interviews and 26 focus group discussions in addition to an examination of policy and legal documents on water resource management. My findings show that the activities that affect the lives of the communities influence the intensity of their participation in the Densu Basin. I therefore recommend that for local people to manage their water resources sustainably and intensively, government and non-governmental agencies must link management activities with local livelihoods and create awareness of the importance of the ecosystem to community sustenance. My findings again show that inducing communities through economic incentives is only appropriate for short term water resource management needs as such incentives cannot be sustained. However, an approach that stimulates communities to participate through their own initiatives after being helped to identify their needs is likely to lead to intensive and sustainable participation in water resource management.

"Social participation in water management and governance recently became a reality in many economies and societies. Yet the dimensions in which power regulation, social equity and democracy-building are connected with participation have been only tangentially analyzed for the water sector. Understanding the growing interest in social participation involves appreciating the specificity of the contemporary period within its historic and geographic contexts as well as uncovering larger political, economic and cultural trends of recent decades which frame participatory actions. Within a wide variety of cases presented from around the world, the reader will find critical analyses of participation and an array of political ecological processes that influence water governance. Sixteen chapters from a diverse group of scholars and practitioners examine water rights definition, hydropower dam construction, urban river renewal, irrigation organizations, water development NGOs, river basin management, water policy implementation and judicial decision-making in water conflicts. Yet there are commonalities in participatory experiences across this spectrum of water issues. The book's five sections highlight key dimensions of contemporary water management that influence, and in turn are influenced by, social participation. These sections are: participation and indigenous water governance; participation and the dynamics of gender in water management; participation and river basin governance; participation and implementation of water management and participation and the politics of water governance"--Provided by publisher.

The 1998 South African water reform is a good example of an attempt to democratize water resource management. It created new decentralised water management bodies and openly called for the participation of all individual water users. Yet, if the reform and discourses of the time unequivocally declared the intentions of the South African water law, the conditions surrounding the implementation of the reform left many grey areas in the materialisation of active user participation objectives, almost fifteen years after their adoption . The case of the small-scale irrigation schemes developed in the country's former Bantustans is particularly worrying .

The 1998 South African water reform is a good example of an attempt to democratize water resource management. It created new decentralised water management bodies and openly called for the participation of all individual water users. Yet, if the reform and discourses of the time unequivocally declared the intentions of the South African water law, the conditions surrounding the implementation of the reform left many grey areas in the materialisation of active user participation objectives, almost fifteen years after their adoption . The case of the small-scale irrigation schemes developed in the country's former Bantustans is particularly worrying .