Contribution from Helle Munk Ravnborg, Senior Researcher, Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS), based e.g. on research conducted as part of the programme Competing for Water: Understanding conflict and cooperation in local water governance (www.diis.dk/water).
Thanks for the opportunity to contribute.
I coincide with the observation made by others that this is a very comprehensive outline which may build on but also contribute to advance the state of our knowledge on water and food security. This is even more important now when prospects are that a separate water goal may be developed as part of the global agenda for sustainable development (the so-called post-2015 agenda).
Water quality
I am very happy to see that water quality is stressed as a separate issue. Many countries suffer from inadequate regulation of the production, trade and use of agricultural chemicals with devastating consequences for farm workers, water quality and food quality. Therefore, it is also alarming when UNEP as part of the Global Environment Outlook 5 (2012) observed that “there are no globally-agreed water quality standards, no rigorous water quality index based on long-term data, and data gaps exist for concentrations of contaminants of emerging importance”. Problems of indiscriminate use of harmful pesticides may grow in areas where food crops are grown as biofuel feedstock due to even less strict regulation.
Food and water sovereignty as a policy concern
I am also happy to see that water and food security are dealt with in the context of water and food sovereignty which e.g. due to recent developments in the global food and water markets is becoming an increasingly important political objective to many governments and also to a growing number of social movements around the world.
Water governance reform: legitimizing dispossession?
With respect to water governance, a wave of water governance reform has swept across the developing world during the past two to three decades, in an attempt to establish central administrative guidelines for and control over the assignation of water resources between sectors and users. Water use permits and concessions form a common part of these frameworks and are intended to be allocated on the basis of a politically agreed list of priorities in terms of water uses, commonly ranking domestic use first and food production second, as well as on the basis of hydrological, environmental and socio-economic impact assessments of proposed water use. Moreover, minor uses such as domestic water use and small-scale irrigation are often exempted from the need to obtain a formal water use permit (de minimis exemptions).
As water rights in most developing countries up to now have been obtained on the basis of complex and often contradicting systems of water rights defined on principles of first appropriation, riparian rights, customary rights obtained or justified through a mix of economic, social, cultural and political relations, the recent wave of water governance reform may at the same time be seen as an attempt reduce to authority of the institutions backing these sets of rights. The social, environmental, political and economic impacts of this wave of water governance reform will therefore critically depend upon the extent to which previous water rights holders, including holders of rights to water for de minimis exempted uses, and the concerns that have guided previous water rights authorities are taken into consideration as part of the new system for the assignation of water use permits and concessions. In countries with limited administrative capacity, a low level of legal literacy and with limited access to legal and administrative institutions for significant parts of the population, the net result of the water reform process may very well be the legitimization of the dispossession of water (and water rights) from small-scale, upstream food producers to large-scale, downstream agricultural enterprises who are required to demonstrate legal access to water e.g. in order to obtain access to international credit and markets.
Therefore, I urge that the report shed light on the issue and importance of the actual implementation on the ground (nationally as well as locally) of the recent water governance reforms, which in my experience is key to the actual outcome, including the outcome in terms of water and food security for who.
Helle Munk Ravnborg