Project “Integrating Governance and Modeling”
Challenge Program on Water and Food
Report on
Analysis of Governance Structures for Water Resources Management
in the White Volta Basin
Ghana
Regina Birner, Eva Schiffer, Felix Asante, Osman Gyasi and Nancy McCarthy
September 2005
Table of Contents
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Background 1
1.2 Objectives of the Project “Integrating Governance and Modeling” 2
1.3 Purpose and Structure of the Report 2
2 Conceptual Framework 3
2.1 Definitions and Concepts 3
2.2 Types of Decisions in Water Resources Management 4
2.3 Coordination Mechanisms 5
2.3.1 Types of coordination 5
2.3.2 Reasons to Establish Coordination Mechanisms for Water Resources Management 5
2.4 Criteria for Assessing Governance Structures 6
3 Profile of the Region and Research Methods 7
3.1 Profile of the Research Region 7
3.1.1 Overview 7
3.1.2 Poverty in the Upper East Region: Current Trends and Future Perspectives 8
3.1.3 Agricultural Production 9
3.1.4 Water Resources 10
3.2 Research Methods 12
3.2.1 Interviews with key informants and stakeholders 12
3.2.2 Assessment of Community-level Water Governance and Needs 12
3.2.3 Workshops and Round Table Discussion 13
3.2.4 Secondary information 13
4 Stakeholders Involved in Water Resources Management 13
4.1 Overview 13
4.2 Government Agencies 13
4.2.1 Overview of the Administrative System 13
4.2.2 District Assemblies 16
4.2.3 Sector-specific Administration / Line Departments 18
4.2.3.1 Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) 18
4.2.3.2 Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA) 18
4.2.3.3 Ministry of Health / Ghana Health Service 19
4.2.3.4 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 19
4.2.3.5 Other Government Agencies 20
4.2.4 Inter-Departmental Commissions 21
4.2.4.1 Water Resources Commission (WRC) 21
4.2.4.2 Other Commissions 22
4.3 Traditional Authorities 23
4.4 Community-level Organizations for Water Resources Management 23
4.5 Donor-funded Projects 25
4.5.1 Village Infrastructure Project (VIP) and Community-Based Rural Development Project (CBRDP) 25
4.5.2 Community Water and Sanitation Project 27
4.5.3 Land Conservation and Smallholder Rehabilitation Project (LACOSREP) 27
4.5.4 District Capacity Building Project (DISCAP) 27
4.5.5 Other Donor-Funded Projects 28
4.6 Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) 28
4.7 Private Sector 28
4.7.1 Technical Assistance Consultancies 28
4.7.2 Hydrological Surveyors 29
4.7.3 Building Contractors 29
4.7.4 Area Mechanics 29
4.7.5 Ghana Water Company Ltd. 29
4.7.6 Irrigation Company of the Upper East Region (ICOUR) 30
5 Potentials and Problems of Water Resources Management and Related Governance Issues 30
5.1 Water for Agricultural Use 30
5.1.1 Small Reservoirs 30
5.1.1.1 Rationale for increasing the number of small reservoirs 30
5.1.1.2 Challenges of increasing the number of small reservoirs 30
5.1.1.3 Problems of management and maintenance 33
5.1.1.4 Land Tenure Issues 33
5.1.1.5 Health Issues 34
5.1.2 Large-scale Irrigation Systems 35
5.1.3 Irrigation along the White Volta Using Pumps 36
5.1.3.1 MOFA’s Three Crops per Year Program 36
5.1.3.2 Existing Practices of Using River Water for Irrigation 38
5.1.4 Irrigation with Shallow Wells in Dry River Beds 38
5.1.5 Irrigation Using Ground Water 38
5.1.6 Soil Conservation and Water Harvesting 38
5.1.7 Water for Livestock Production and Fishery 39
5.2 Domestic Water 39
5.2.1 Problems of Water Quantity 39
5.2.2 Expanding the number of bore holes 39
5.2.3 Problems of Water Quality 40
5.3 Industrial Water Use 41
5.4 Implications for Modeling 41
6 Potentials and Challenges of Multi-Stakeholder Governance in the White Volta Basin 43
6.1 Existing Coordination Mechanisms 43
6.2 Implications for the White Volta Basin Office 44
List of Tables
Table 1: Types of Organizations in the Public, Private and Collective Action Sector 4
Table 2: Projected Regional Poverty Rates for a Growth Scenario Leading to Middle Income Status (Nominal Income of 1,000 US$ per Capita) in 2015 9
Table 3: Availability of Small Reservoirs in the Upper East Region 11
Table 4: Availability of Infrastructure for Domestic Water Supply 11
Table 5: Features of Community Water Systems in the Survey Communities 26
Table 6: Possible Scenarios for Modeling 42
List of Figures
Figure 1: Ghana and the Upper East Region 8
Figure 2: Production of Major Crops in the Upper East Region 9
Figure 3: Schematic Presentation of a Small-Scale Reservoir System 10
Figure 4: Stakeholder Map 14
Figure 5: Structure of the Local Government System 15
Figure 6: Organizational Structure of the Water User Associations 24
Abbreviations
CBRDP Community-Based Rural Development Project
CSIAR Council for Scientific and Industrial Research
CWSA Community Water and Sanitation Agency
(responsible for rural drinking water supply)
DBO District Budget Officer
DCD District Coordinating Director
DCE District Chief Executive
DCPU District Planning Coordinating Unit
DPO District Planning Officer
DISCAP District Capacity Building Project, financed by the Canadian
Development Assistance CIDA
EC Executive Committee of the District Assembly
EPA Environmental Protection Agency
EIA Environmental Impact Assessment
G&M Integrating Governance and Modeling Project
GIDA Ghana Irrigation Development Authority
GLOWA Research Project on River Basin Hydrology and Management, funded
by the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF)
GoG Government of Ghana
IFAD International Fund for Agricultural Development
IFPRI International Food Policy Research Institute
LACOSREP Upper East Region Land Conservation and Smallholder Rehabilitation
Project, funded by IFAD
MLGRD Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development
MOFA Ministry of Food and Agriculture
NGO Non-governmental organization
SARI Savannah Agricultural Research Institute
SD Sector Department, District level
UER Upper East Region of Ghana
UNDP United Nations Development Program
VIP Village Infrastructure Project
WUA Water User Association (esp. for the management of small reservoirs)
WATSAN Community Water and Sanitation Committee (for boreholes)
WRD Water Resources Commission
i
1 Introduction
1.1 Background
In large parts of Africa, the fight against poverty and the prospects to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) crucially depend on the development and sustainable management of infrastructure for drinking water as well as for irrigated crop farming, livestock production and fisheries. In rural areas, where the majority of the population depends on agriculture, raising the productivity of crop and livestock production remains the most promising strategy to achieve broad-based pro-poor growth, which is required to halve hunger and poverty by 2015, as required by the first MDG. The 7th MDG – to ensure environmental sustainability – calls for integrating the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs, for reversing the loss of environmental resources, and for reducing by half the population without access to safe drinking water. Safe drinking water is also essential to reach the health-related MDGs – reducing child mortality and improving maternal health.
Providing the public investment required for expanding drinking water facilities and irrigation systems, and improving the water supply for livestock and fisheries constitutes a major challenge in Africa. Moreover, managing these systems in an efficient, equitable and sustainable way has proved to be difficult in many African countries. It requires the development of appropriate governance structures for water resources management both at the state and the community level - a challenge that has often been underestimated and accounts for past failures in water resources development. In order to address such governance problems, the last decade has seen a shift towards demand-orientated approaches and towards involving of communities, NGOs and the private sector in financing, providing and managing infrastructure for drinking water and sanitation, irrigation and livestock water supply This development corresponds to a general trend in public infrastructure and service provision in developing countries.
Apart from the general governance problems involved in any type of public infrastructure and service provision, water resources management involves specific challenges due to the fact that water resources are shared within a river basin, which leads to externalities and competition between different water uses and groups of water users. To address these problems, the concept of “Integrated Water Resources Management” (IWRM) has been developed. It aims at a holistic approach of managing water resources at the basin or sub-basin level and envisages a close coordination between different governmental and non-governmental organizations involved in water resources development and water use. Creating a multi-stakeholder governance structure, which facilitates the coordination between these different actors, is a major challenge.
The governance of water resources in river basins is particularly complicated because it has to address three types of complexities: (1) environmental and economic interactions which affect water availability and quality, and concomitantly, household decisions on land and water use, (2) social interactions between stakeholders who are socio-economically and culturally diverse and who often have competing interests and power relations, and (3) a constantly changing macro-environment, including climate change and population pressures. Decision-support tools based on computer-models that capture the hydrological and socio-economic interactions of water resources management at the basin- or sub-basin level offer a promising tool for improving water resources management. While computer-based modeling that integrates hydrological and socio-economic aspects of water resources management has made considerable progress during the last years, there is still a lack of knowledge and experience of using such decision-support tools for practical planning purposes. In particular, the use of such tools in multi-stakeholder governance structures remains largely unexplored. Hence, there is a need to better understand how the organizations that are in charge of integrated water resources management can best make use of such decision-support systems to promote efficient, equitable and sustainable use of water resources.
1.2 Objectives of the Project “Integrating Governance and Modeling”
Against the background described above, the goal of the research project “Integrating Governance and Modeling” is to research the use of decision-support tools based on computer-models by organizations involved in integrated water resources management (multi-stakeholder governance structures). By using integrated simulation models as decision-tools to support integrated water resources management, the project aims to contribute to the overall goal of managing land and water resources in the White Volta Basin in a manner that is economically efficient, environmentally sustainable and socially acceptable. It is expected that the use of simulation models will help to identify and quantify trade-offs that may arise in the short run, between the goals of economic growth, reduced vulnerability and food insecurity, environmental sustainability and equity. Simulation modeling can also be used to examine long run impacts of predicted changes in climate and to evaluate alternative policies under different climate scenarios.
Though simulation models can help to identify technical, economic and institutional options that increase water productivity and reduce vulnerability to shocks, dealing with the remaining trade-offs involves value judgments that have to be politically negotiated within appropriate governance structures. Therefore, the proposed project also aims at contributing to the design and implementation of governance structures that improve the prospects that such negotiation processes lead to equitable and socially desirable outcomes. Of critical importance to the success of these processes is bridging the gap between scientific information and stakeholders’ knowledge and perceptions. The project is financed by the international Challenge Program on Water and Food (www.waterforfood.org) and has two project areas: a sub-basin of the White Volta Basin in Northern Ghana, and the Melado Basin in the Andes of Chile. This report deals with the White Volta component of the project.
1.3 Purpose and Structure of the Report
An important condition for the use of a decision-support tool is an analysis of the existing governance structures for water resource management. This analysis is important for two reasons:
1) To inform the development of the decision-support tool so that the underlying simulation model can capture different types of actors involved in water use and water management, and the way in which they interact;
2) To identify knowledge flows and decision-structures in order to assess how the decision-support tool can be used in order to improve water governance.
This report presents the major findings of a first analysis of governance structures for water resources management in a sub-basin of the White Volta Basin, which has been identified by the Ghanaian Water Resources Commission as a pilot area to establish a Basin Management Board. This area, which covers five administrative districts in the Upper East Region and one District in the Northern Region of Ghana is the project area of the Ghana component of the “Integrating Governance and Modeling” project
The report is structured as follows: Chapter 2 presents a conceptual framework for the analysis of governance structures. Chapter 3 describes the research region and the research methods. Chapter 4 characterizes the major stakeholders and the organizational structure of the water sector in the research region. In Chapter 5, the major problems related to water resources development and management are analyzed, and their governance dimension is discussed. Chapter 6 draws some conclusions regarding the challenges and opportunities of establishing a multi-stakeholder governance structure in the White Volta Basin.
2 Conceptual Framework
2.1 Definitions and Concepts
Governance
According to a widely used definition, governance can be understood as the “... the exercise of economic, political, and administrative authority to manage a country’s affairs at all levels. It comprises mechanisms, processes, and institutions through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their legal rights, meet their obligations, and mediate their differences” (UNDP, 1997). This definition is applied here to a specific subject area - the use and management of water resources, and to a specific geographical area - a river sub-basin.
Institutions and organizations
The term “governance structures” is used here to refer to the institutional and organizational dimensions of governance. Governance structures can be considered as the frame conditions that shape policy processes and govern the formulation, adoption and implementation of decisions, in this case related to water resources management. The term “institutions” can be defined as the humanly devised constraints that structure human interaction. They are made up of formal constraints (rules, laws, constitutions), informal constraints (norms of behavior, conventions and self-imposed codes of conduct), and their enforcement characteristics (North, 1990, 1991). The term “formal” implies a basis in formal modern law. Informal institutions may be based on customary law. For the purpose of analysis, it is useful to distinguish institutions from organizations. As North put it, institutions can be considered to be the rules of the game, and organizations the players. Organizations are characterized by membership and roles assigned to the members. Like institutions, organizations may be formal or customary. The concept of legal pluralism describes the situation typically found in developing countries that different legal systems overlap: – customary law, modern law, regulations introduced by development projects.