Browsing by Author "Van Der Zaag, Pieter"

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The Last will be First: Water Transfers from Agriculture to Cities in the Pangani River Basin, Tanzania
(2012) Komakech, Hans C.; Van Der Zaag, Pieter; Van Koppen, Barbara
"Water transfers to growing cities in sub-Sahara Africa, as elsewhere, seem inevitable. But absolute water entitlements in basins with variable supply may seriously affect many water users in times of water scarcity. This paper is based on research conducted in the Pangani river basin, Tanzania. Using a framework drawing from a theory of water right administration and transfer, the paper describes and analyses the appropriation of water from smallholder irrigators by cities. Here, farmers have over time created flexible allocation rules that are negotiated on a seasonal basis. More recently the basin water authority has been issuing formal water use rights that are based on average water availability. But actual flows are more often than not less than average. The issuing of state-based water use rights has been motivated on grounds of achieving economic efficiency and social equity. The emerging water conflicts between farmers and cities described in this paper have been driven by the fact that domestic use by city residents has, by law, priority over other types of use. The two cities described in this paper take the lion’s share of the available water during the low-flow season, and at times over and above the permitted amounts, creating extreme water stress among the farmers. Rural communities try to defend their prior use claims through involving local leaders, prominent politicians and district and regional commissioners. Power inequality between the different actors (city authorities, basin water office, and smallholder farmers) played a critical role in the reallocation and hence the dynamics of water conflict. The paper proposes proportional allocation, whereby permitted abstractions are reduced in proportion to the expected shortfall in river flow, as an alternative by which limited water resources can be fairly allocated. The exact amounts (quantity or duration of use) by which individual user allocations are reduced would be negotiated by the users at the river level."
Roman Water Law in Rural Africa: Dispossession, Discrimination and Weakening State Regulation?
(2011) Van Koppen, Barbara; Van Der Zaag, Pieter; Manzungu, Emmanuel; Tapela, Barbara; Mapedza, Everisto
"The recent water law reforms in Africa, Latin America and elsewhere strengthen permit systems. This water rights regime is rooted in Roman water law. The European colonial powers introduced this law in their colonies, especially in Latin America and later also in Sub-Saharan Africa. By declaring most waters as being public waters, they vested ownership of water resources in their overseas kings. This dispossessed indigenous peoples from their prior claims to water, while the new formal water rights (or permits) were reserved for colonial allies. At independence, ownership of water resources shifted to the new governments but the nature of the water laws, including the formal cancellation of indigenous water rights regimes as one of the plural water rights regimes, remained uncontested. This colonial legacy remained equally hidden in the recent reforms strengthening permit system. Based on research on the new permit systems in a context of legal pluralism in Tanzania, Mexico, South Africa, Ghana, Mozambique and elsewhere, this paper addresses two dilemmas. The first is: how can the dispossession and discrimination be reverted by recognizing and even encouraging informal water self-supply since time immemorial to meet basic livelihood needs by millions of small-scale water users? The second dilemma, which prevails in Sub- Saharan Africa, but less in Latin America, is: can permit systems become effective regulatory tools to combat water over-use and pollution, collect revenue, and, where historical justice warrants, to re-allocate water from the haves to the have-nots, as South Africa’s water law aims? The paper provides evidence and best practices on, first, how the state can recognize legal pluralism and informal water rights regimes, and, second, how state regulation can only become effective through lean and targeted measures, so without nation-wide permits."
Understanding the Emergence and Functioning of River Committees in a Catchment of the Pangani Basin, Tanzania
(2011) Komakech, Hans C.; Van Der Zaag, Pieter
We find that the emergence of the RCs can be understood by using the concept of institutional bricolage. We then assess their effective functioning with the help of the eight design principles proposed by Ostrom and find that the best performing RC largely complied with five of them, which indicates that not all principles are necessary for a water institution to be effective and to endure over time. The other two studied RCs complied with only three of these principles. All RCs leave the resource boundary open to negotiation, which lowers the transaction cost of controlling the boundaries and also allows future demands to be met in the face of increasing resource variability. All RCs do not fully comply with the principle that all affected must take part in rule creation and modification. In all three cases, finally, the 'nesting' of lower-level institutional arrangements within higher-level ones is inconsistent. To explain the difference in the performance of the three RCs we need to consider factors related to heterogeneity. We find that the functioning of RCs is strongly influenced by group size, spatial distance, heterogeneity of users and uses, and market forces."
Users, Operators and Hydraulic Structures: A Case of Irrigation Management in Western Mexico
(1992) Van Der Zaag, Pieter
"This paper analyses how physical structures in irrigation systems influence the social practice of water management. It argues that irrigation design is less of a determinant for particular water management patterns than is sometimes assumed by engineers, and that it may not be necessary to change the design of canal structures fundamentally for new management practices to emerge. This has implications for interventions in the management of irrigation systems."
Water Variability, Soil Nutrient Heterogeneity and Market Volatility: Why Sub-Saharan Africa's Green Revolution Will Be Location-Specific and Knowledge-Intensive
(2010) Van Der Zaag, Pieter
"In his interesting Viewpoint article in Water Alternatives, Bruce Lankford suggests that an African Green Revolution cannot come about without irrigation. But he does not convincingly explain why irrigated areas expand only very slowly. This viewpoint article argues that grain yields have remained stagnant in Africa because of high temporal rainfall variability, significant spatial soil nutrient heterogeneity, and weak and volatile markets. This combination calls for location-specific interventions that are aimed at enhancing farmers’ capacity to buffer water variations and address nutrient deficits. This finding is consistent with what Lankford dismisses as an "atomised" approach, but which would preferably be called a farmer-centred approach. Thus a massive investment in African agriculture is indeed required, primarily focused on the creation of knowledge that does justice to the local variation in water and nutrient availability. It should aim to empower farmers to experiment and be innovative, and remake agricultural extension and agricultural engineering exciting with cutting-edge disciplines. Irrigation may then emerge as the right thing to do."