Session report Rivers and Wetlands: A Negotiated Approach

This session demonstrates how bottom up, ecosystem-based approaches address local poverty and environment issues and simultaneously contribute to sustainable and equitable water management policy frameworks.

The Negotiated Approach builds on initiatives to influence and change national and basin management policies. The Approach is based on the premise that local people’s water management strategies contribute directly to achieving MDG7, and provide practical responses to ongoing challenges of sustainability and equity faced by today’s water management. The Negotiated Approach allows local actors to develop basin management strategies specific to their local context. These strategies are then scaled up and negotiated through basin and wetlands management processes. Thus, local knowledge influences regional and national decisions.

Recognition of the value of this approach implies the creation of space for negotiation for local actors in basin level and national policy processes that recognize the diversity of ecosystems and livelihoods.

Document: Word. 54 kb