Governance

Drawing on a cross-section of 43 case studies prepared specially for this book, WaterWealth explains the challenges to improving water governance and management across Asia and the Pacific region. It illustrates many examples of new approaches and practices already being applied by basin managers to secure water for all. The solutions it presents are local ones—homegrown measures that build on international experience rather than transplants from elsewhere.

There is a real need for all those who are involved in making and implementing decisions –- including central government planners and policymakers, local government administrators, civil society and the private sector –- to understand the basic concepts and principles of governance and be able to apply them in their daily work.

This Manual presents a framework, includes technical material for raising awareness, and provides basic education on governance in the context of natural resources, and is designed to target a wide audience.

Although there is a common agreement on the importance of conservation of Mediterranean submarine canyons amongst international organizations, their governance is complex: the canyons' extension covers waters and seabeds under various types of jurisdictions (territorial waters, Fisheries Protection Zone, Ecological Protection Zone, including delimitation issues).

This publication lays out the basic steps required by a catchment or protected area manager to begin the Strategic Adaptive Management (SAM) process. We provide the series of steps to help deal with the complex task facing the freshwater manager. The guide provides a framework for managing the maintenance of flow regimes and water quality to support healthy ecosystem services desired by stakeholders.

Beginning with a grassroots approach to water management, increased knowledge and information and the improvement of environmental health and livelihoods, the region around the Tacaná volcano on the border of Guatemala and Mexico has shown the way forward in scaling up local level approaches to national level initiatives.

In the Volta basin, WANI and partners have worked with riparian states to improve water governance and water management practices. This has resulted in multi-scale participatory governance frameworks for joint management of water resources and improvement of livelihoods through riverbank protection schemes. This has complemented and helped to facilitate large scale government and donor initiatives that have supported the establishment the Volta Basin Authority.