In this new post, I will try to comment a paper not focused on an African region, but interesting in its contents.
Liu Jingling, Luan Yun, Su Liya, Cao Zhiguo, Zeng Baoqiang (2010) conducted a research about public participation in the upper and middle reaches of Haihe river basin.
They have divided the area in three parts: Anyang and Baoding city as urban modules, Qingfeng and Laishui county as rural modules, Boai and Anxin county as eco-sensitive area.
By measuring public participation in terms of water environment satisfaction, willingness and actual participation rate, they have been able to rank the three areas in this order: eco-sensitive >urban>rural modules.
According to their analysis, the most relevant drivers of participation level (and, therefore, the explanatory causes of differences between the studied areas) are:
-Importance of river basin environment as income source (such as fishery and tourism) and significance of benefits derived by environmental protection.
-Past environmental incidents, which raised environmental awareness. The authors report the case of the "Dead Fish Incident" in 2000 and 2006, which brought to the attention of locals the damages of water pollution and stimulated their demand for environmental protection.
-Inadequacy of channels for public participation:
Governmental initiatives are limited, mainly aimed at enhancing the public's environmental awareness, but not at involving them into the WRM process, in particular in policy-making. Specialised laws are usually not stipulated and procedures for public participation are not clearly defined.
In many cases media take on the government's duty to inform the river basin inhabitants, who passively receive information.
School education has a minor contribution in providing environmental knowledge and education.
The first two points seem to be more related to the public willingness to participate, while the third point on their actual possibility to participate granted by institutions.
The research also shows a high correlation between the environmental awareness and the willingness to participate. Citizens with a good knowledge of water pollution risks are more prone to take on water resources management responsibilities, as they are aware of water pollution damages. Therefore, it could be argued that, in this case, participation in water management, whose environmental awareness is one of the preconditions, can reinforce environmental sustainability, one of the three principles of IWRM.
At the same time, the authors highlight the lack of a 'commonly-recognized river basin value' and integration of activities between upper and middle reaches' inhabitants. Moreover, they also stress that publicity, education and participation arrangements were not adjusted to the specific features and needs of the urban and rural areas.
Therefore, it seems that the following scheme for public participation improvement in WRM could be drawn, by recapping the main results and suggestions of this paper.
Furthermore, increases in willingness to participate and in possibility to participate could also be considered mutually-reinforcing: governmental initiatives for public participation are likely to raise in response to a higher demand by well informed stakeholders, and the existence of opportunities to participate in WRM stimulates interest among locals who are informed about them.
Again, I am always grateful to anybody interested in suggesting/correcting/criticising, even more now that I am trying to develop more personal and critical recaps of my readings!
Sources:
Jingling, Liu, et al. "Public participation in water resources management of Haihe river basin, China: the analysis and evaluation of status quo." Procedia Environmental Sciences 2 (2010): 1750-1758.
Very interesting study! I think in the case of China, increasing the possibility to participate is more important than the other because they are socio-economically and politically very centralized by the government. For example, we have seen a number of water resources development has been forcefully introduced by the central government e.g. large Three Gorge Dam, without much consideration into communities where it'd be flooded after the construction. Such dominant top-down cases clearly illustrate the fact that the central government is still very strong in decision-making in many sectors. I guess if a local community in China wants to act for conservation or improvement of water quality in their local area, they really have to put as much efforts as possible on gaining financial help/legal permission from the government (increase 'possibility to participate') rather than further improving 'willingness to participate'. In this sense, I think IWRM's framework for integrated work between different stakeholders (locals+gov) will be very effective in such countries as in China, but it still seems very difficult to do it in reality.
ReplyDeleteHi Satomi!
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for the interesting input about a region I don't have knowledge of.
Yes, I really do agree with you that the key issue is to promote integrated resources management by involving local communities. I was just commenting that one of the reasons of different levels of participation reported by the authors is also the knowledge of environmental issues: the more people are informed about the importance of natural resources, the more they are determined to claim for a wider participation in their management. But, of course, as you said, I think that in many cases this willingness already exists and the problem is just the lack of channels for participation offered by governments.
It would be interesting to explore the different instruments with which communities can claim for a wider participation: identify the existing ones, related to the specific features of communities, and try to enhance them.