Institutional Issues Raised by the Southern Zone Water Management Project

Abstract

"DFM uses the following analytic framework to guide field investigations of existing institutional design problems and to develop feasible solutions to these problems in collaboration with host country rural producers, officials, and PVO representatives. The analytic framework encompasses:

the economic characteristics of target renewable resources such as irrigation waters, plateau vegetation, and hillside water-harvesting installations, given technology currently available in the Casamance zone for their management, whether they are private goods, public goods, common property resources, or, toll goods;

the institutions at the local, commune, regional, national, and international levels, conceived as sets of rules, which structure decision-making concerning renewable resources, and create positive and negative incentives that channel human behavior into patterns which either encourage or inhibit the appropriate management, maintenance, and enrichment of renewable resources;

the interactions which occur, in light of the above, when individuals adopt strategies to pursue their objectives within the sets of rules that govern human capacity to organize and fund activities, access to renewable natural resources, and use of renewable natural resources; and

the outcomes in terms of the efficiency and possibly the equity of activities which affect the management and maintenance of renewable resources."