Rivers and Wetlands: A Negotiated Approach

At the 4th World Water Forum held in Mexico City, Both ENDS (Netherlands), ECOA/Pantanal Network (Brazil) and AEDES (Peru) organized one of the sessions on March 18th. The main objective of the session was to demonstrate how bottom up, eco-system based approaches are replicable and can be up-scaled to effectively influence decision making on a local, national, basin, and regional level. It presented a Negotiated Approach to water resources management, as a better alternative to mainstream, conventional water development and management approaches. The Negotiated Approach is a bottom-up process and based on the needs of the people. It involves a process of negotiation between potential beneficiaries and decision makers. Local actors have profound knowledge about their natural environment and automatically adopt an eco-systemic and holistic approach to resources management. The Negotiated Approach values social issues over economic aspects only.

Around 100 people attended the session, which was one of the 5 NGO sessions secured by the Freshwater Action Network (FAN). Three examples were presented which illustrated successful negotiation processes in different regions around the world: the transboundary Senegal River Basin, the Ocona Basin in Peru, and the Paraquay-Parana Wetland System in South America.

The panel consisted of a representative of the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the World Bank, the Honduran Ministry of Water, and a professor at a University in Bangladesh. They provided valuable inputs to the recommendations on how to adopt and spread the negotiated approach in national water policies and decision making. Main challenges to implement a negotiated approach which were identified include the lack of appropriate water policies and an appropriate legal and institutional framework, lack of political will and the time frame: Negotiated Approach requires much time. A dialogue between the participants, panelists and case presenters resulted in key recommendations, amongst others to recognize the contributions that local actors can, and do, make to sustainable water management policies, to continue an open dialogue among civil society and policy makers and experts, to create and enabling environment of appropriate water policies and legal and institutional framework, and to create an international network where water-related agencies committed to a Negotiated Approach, including banks and donor agencies, policy experts and practitioners, can come together to understand and strengthen their roles and responsibilities towards replicating and scaling up the concept in as many wetlands systems, river basins and sub-basins as possible.

Click here for a detailed report on the session and some pictures.

For more information on the Negotiated Approach please refer to www.bothends.org
For more information on the three cases presented, please refer to:

1.Paraguay Parana Wetland System: www.ecoa.org.br
2.Gestión de los recursos hídricos en la cuenca Ocoña, Arequipa, Perú: www.aedes.com
3.Water and Environmental Resources Management Project of the Senegal River Basin: www.codesen.org