www.ids.ac.uk Policy BRIEFING ISSUE 77 • OCTOBER 2014 Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) has been promoted by international donors, global water organisations and fnancers as the answer to the water crisis in the Global South. Yet the experiences of countries in southern Africa including Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe suggests that IWRM has failed to adequately address issues of inequality. More needs to be done to ensure that water reforms are informed by a better understanding of specifc political and social country contexts and are driven by the needs of local communities. Learning from Southern Africa on Fair and Effective Integrated Water Resources Management What is IWRM? IWRM is “...a process which promotes the coordinated development and management of water, land and related resources, in order to maximise the resultant economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems” (Global Water Partnership, 2000). While nobody will deny the importance of such a holistic and integrated process, it remains abstract at the theoretical and conceptual level, let alone when unfolded on the ground. Adoption and implementation challenges While IWRM has raised awareness amongst a host of actors about the need to adopt an integrated approach towards water resources and water supply across various scales, emerging evidence suggests that IWRM has: • Obscured the political nature of water resources management • Faced challenges in promoting the management of water along hydrological boundaries. The political, social and historical contexts of river basins and administrative structures have not been fully recognised and as a result factional divisions and confict that shape local contexts are reinforced and replicated • Not prioritised the livelihoods of poor women and men • Failed to take into account wider natural resource management • Often neglected the importance of living customary laws by which poor women and men achieve their food and water security • Placed too great an emphasis on outside expert authority at the expense of local knowledge and management systems • Rolled back the role of the state in water services provision, often to the detriment of poor people’s access to water Lessons from southern Africa Politics matter South Africa’s water reforms have been lauded as some of the most progressive in the world. However the process of implementation has been problematic. Reform plans included establishing 19 Catchment Management Agencies (CMAs) to oversee the management of the country’s water resources. Yet 15 years later, only 2 of these CMAs have been created and 50 per cent of the water still comes from inter-basin transfers. A lack of political will and coordination nationally, regionally and locally has led to poor levels of trust amongst large- and small-scale users. It has also led to continued poor water access for small-scale and emerging farmers. Many of them also lack awareness of and engagement with water reforms. IWRM adoption in the mid-1990s in Zimbabwe was donor-driven and focused on those sectors of the economy that could pay for water and not small-scale farmers who needed water. However, support for Zimbabwe’s water reforms from international donors was withdrawn following ‘fast-track’ land reform in 2000 which saw most white farmers forced from their land. While donor funding has partly returned due to the cholera outbreak in 2008 it remains uncertain what part IWRM will play as government struggles with a