Water Rights and Intersectoral Transfers

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Water Rights and Intersectoral Transfers

• Ruth Meinzen-Dick
• Senior Research Fellow
• International Food Policy Research Institute

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Reasons for Attention to Property Rights

• Rights determine distribution of benefits
• Clear rights give authority to manage
• Secure rights give incentives to invest

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Images of Property Rights
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Rigid, unchanging Divides people Ownership State
title Single user
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Fluid, dynamic Connects plots, people
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Multiple sources
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Connects people
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Multiple uses, users
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Images of Rights

• Stone fence
• Rigid, unchanging
• Divides people
• State title
• Ownership
• Single user

• Water images
• Fluid, dynamic
• Connects people
• Multiple sources
• Bundles of rights
• Multiple uses, users

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Water Rights

• Definition
• Claims to use or control water by an individual
  or group
• Recognized as legitimate by a larger collectivity
  than the claimants and
• Protected through law.
• The state may not recognize or accept all claims
  as being legitimate
• Other claimants may not recognize state's claims

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Legal Pluralism

• Law broadly defined cognitive and normative
  orders generated in a social field (e.g. village,
  ethnic community, association, state)
• Legal pluralism coexistence, interaction of
  multiple legal orders
• Each is only as strong as the institution that
  stands behind it

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Sources of Water Rights

• State law
• Customary law
• Project rules and regulations
• Religious law
• Local norms

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Beyond Ownership

• Bundles of rights
• Use rights
• access,
• withdrawal
• Control rights
• manage,
• exclude,
• transfer
• Usufruct rights to derive benefits (income)

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Actualizing Rights

• Can people actually get the water they have a
  right to?
• Affected by
• Physical location
• Social relations
• Relations with government
• Secure rights are those that can be secured,
  actualized

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Whose Water Is It, Anyway?

• Start with peoples experience with access and
  control of resources
• Status quo not always clear
• Multiple claims
• Respecting existing rights vs. expanding access
  to water?

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Characteristics of Water Rights

• Dynamic, flexible, negotiated
• Embedded in social, political, economic
  relationships
• Often closely tied to other rights
• Changes in any of these relationships affect
  property rights

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Fluid Water Rights

• Situations change
• Drought
• Projects, infrastructure changes
• Socioeconomic development
• Need for flexibility
• To local conditions
• To change over time
• Need for negotiations

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Water Pricing

• Water charges service delivery cost economic
  rent on water
• Who should receive the economic rent component?
• Analogy to condos and apartments

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Intersectoral Water Transfers

• Demand for municipal and industrial (MI) water
  use growing rapidly
• Irrigation perceived as low value water use
• Cost of new dams, water development rise
• Therefore meet MI demands by taking water out of
  agriculture
• Trend spreads from industrialized to developing
  countries, esp. Asia

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Implications

• Water valuable asset in rural areas, livelihoods
  of farmers and other rural households
• Water transfer transfer of property rights
  (water rights)
• More than efficiency at stake implications for
  equity, livelihoods, identity

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Stakeholder Analysis

• Identify multiple users of water, interest groups
• By occupational
• By gender
• By generation within the household
• Inside and outside the irrigation system
• Look for marginalized groups

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Stakeholder Analysis

• Multiple uses of water
• Field crop irrigation
• Household gardens
• Livestock
• Fishing
• Harvesting other plants (lotus, reeds)
• Other enterprises
• Domestic use drinking, bathing, washing
• Recreation
• Religion

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Multiple Water Uses in Kirindi Oya, Sri Lanka
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Range of Outcomes from Water Transfers

• Win-lose
• Win-win
• In between
• some win, some lose
• but who wins, who loses?

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Outcomes Depend on

• Overall economic context
• Process by which transfers take place
• Recognition of water rights
• Relative power of the different parties.

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Economic Context

• Extent rural populations depend on irrigation or
  other water-related enterprises for their
  livelihoods
• Other sources of income
• Profitability/gains available from transfers

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Transfer Process

• Options
• Government reallocation
• Market purchase
• Collective negotiation
• Which stakeholders are involved in decisions
• Who receives compensation

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What Rights are Recognized

• Many different types of water rights
• Government law
• Customary law
• Religious, cultural law and norms
• What rights are recognized are key to equity of
  outcomes
• Determines who can participate in decisions
• Who is eligible for compensation
• Perceptions of rights and fairness

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Power of Different Stakeholders

• Economic processes affect economic and political
  power
• Powerful may be able to shape the transfer
  mechanisms to suit their interests
• Powerful likely to be able to secure and defend
  their water rights, those with recognized water
  rights have some bargaining power, even if they
  are otherwise less economically or politically
  powerful
• Negotiation processes can provide leverage for
  marginalized groups by ensuring they have a seat
  at the table

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Water Rights and Water Transfers
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Why This Framework for Water Transfers?

• Making visible the uses, rights of women,
  marginal ethnic or occupational groups,
  livelihood needs for water
•     Preventing loss of water assets
•     Ensuring a seat at the table in negotiations
•     More equity in sharing of benefits
• Better water policiesensuring that value of
  water in rural areas not undervalued, or costs of
  pollution not underestimated
• Strengthening capacity of government agencies to
  regulate water transfers
• More sustainable transfers because more
  acceptable

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Experience of Dams

• Old policy
• Only recognize those with state title to land
• No recognition of common property, livelihood or
  cultural values of land
• Little or no negotiation
• Compensation at externally-determined rates, in
  cash
• Result massive protests
• New policy elements
• Recognize all affected residents
• Compensate for loss of all assets
• Negotiate over benefit sharing
• Rehabilitate to equivalent livelihood, with
  streams of benefits

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Conclusions

• Pluralistic perspective in water transfer
  processes can lead to more equitable, and hence
  acceptable, water transfers.
• Fairness and equity are about acknowledgement of
  rights
• Recognizing broader set of users and claims
  strengthens bargaining power of the poor, seat at
  the table
• Otherwise can reduce assets, cause protests
• From admin. to negotiated transfers
• Sharing of benefits
• Increase acceptability when people take part in
  decisions