Integrated Water Resources Management and Impact at the Community Level in Rwanda
May 17, 2011
By Stephanie Ogden, Special for American Water Resources Association's Water Resources Impact
It has been increasingly observed that ineffective
water management, rather than a lack of water resources,
is the greatest obstacle to sustainable water access
in the developing world. While water is considered a
renewable resource, its ability to renew itself increasingly
depends on how it is managed (Haughn, 2009). Water
for People is a
U.S. based nonprofit organization that envisions a world
in which all people have access to safe drinking water
and sanitation, and centers its work on the support of locally
sustainable water and sanitation systems in developing
countries. If effective water management is indeed
an integral component of sustainable water access, then
Water for People – and the development sector as a whole
– face the strategic necessity to incorporate improved
water resources management into its programmatic activities
in order to ensure the fulfillment of its mission.
As Water For People’s 2010 Fellow in Innovation and Sustainability, I was tasked with helping the organization look more critically at the concept of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), and how it might inform Water For People’s work in communities across its ten country programs. I was specifically assigned to conduct research in Rwanda, where the national government was in the process of formulating a national IWRM strategy, and dialogue with respect to IWRM was just emerging within the political sphere.
The objective of the research was, in essence, to take inventory of IWRM in Rwanda – to better understand the factors that were contributing to or hindering IWRM, at the national, local, and community levels. Essentially, if IWRM was happening in Rwanda, where was it happening, and how was it being initiated? If IWRM wasn’t happening, where were the hiccups? Furthermore, what were the implications for Water For People and its Rwanda program, and the long term sustainability of the water system services the program helped to support?
I conducted dozens of interviews in Rwanda over the course of several months. I interviewed government officials at the national and local government levels, including the smallest subdivision of the local government. I interviewed members of local and international NGOs, as well as attended the sector working group sessions as the IWRM strategy was being discussed at the national level. In addition, I chose two watershed study sites – one rural watershed and one peri-urban watershed near the capital city of Kigali – and interviewed dozens of community members up and down each watershed.
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