The Fluid Mosaic : Water Governance in the Context of Variability, Uncertainty and Change: A Synthesis Paper

Contents: I. Introduction: 1. The challenge. 2. The intellectual context. 3. Our research. 4. Core arguments resulting from the research. II. Highlights from the case studies: 1. The basins: a. Tinau. b. Shekhawati basin. c. Banganga basin. d. Palar and Noyyal basins, Tamil Nadu. e. Sabarmati. 2. The cities: a. Chennai. b. Ahmedabad. c. Kathmandu. III. Return to wider perspectives: 1. Immediate. 2. Governance. Bibliography.

From the introduction: "The winter ice in streams fractures along razor sharp lines but when it melts, such lines lose meaning. The banks of the stream, the directions of flow and the fundamental processes governing that flow are far more important over the long term. So it is with most debates over water management. Debates fracture along lines of ideology or philosophy, casting local approaches in opposition to centralised ones, supply-side in contrast to demand-side, and regulatory in contrast to market. Far less concern focuses on the core questions of governance—how, by whom, and under what conditions different approaches are enabled or selected. These questions of governance are, however, central to addressing water problems in the current context where climatic, hydrologic and socio-economic conditions are subject to extreme variability and potentially fundamental change.

This report summarises five years of collaborative investigation by Indian and Nepali researchers on water management needs and options in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and parts of Nepal. Our initial goal was to define the boundaries of ‘local management’ in a way that enabled substantive comparisons to be made between local, community-based approaches and larger-scale, government led initiatives. As often happens in such research, as investigations proceeded, the starting questions seemed less and less relevant and our focus shifted. This summary presents the result of our collaboration. The sections focus on the specific water management issues and challenges in case study areas. The core messages, however, relate to the fluid mosaic of water governance—how society may be able to address the sharp edged, immediate constraints present at local levels and shaped by local conditions but ordered within a larger, changing, fluid and poorly understood picture."