Innovative decision making for a sustainable management of water in developing countries
The many challenges for water management in developing countries are well documented. Integrated water management seems difficult, where conflicting and overlapping institutions exist and where the way in which demand is expressed is very different from the way potential solutions are managed at the local or state level. Although participation and integration are often invoked in the mainstream of world water politics today, in reality such exercises may often be carried out in a superficial way only. DIM-SUM focuses on the very core aspect concerning these issues, which is the decision making process (DMP).
Aims and Objectives
The overall project goal is to develop recommendations for a sustainable DMP, based on several research issues of DIM-SUM (see activities below), and encompassing an adaptive tool box, guidelines and policy recommendations.
Activities:
Focusing on water supply and sanitation (WSS), DIM-SUM will carry out one case study in one river basin in each participating partner country, Indonesia, Maharashtra-India, Malaysia and Nepal.
The activities of the project will encompass:
- a baseline study,
- an analysis of existing decision making frameworks,
- an analysis of decision making strategies (ranging e.g. from fragmented to integrated assessments),
- research in the fields of stakeholder participation,
- scenario development and group decision making,
- evaluation of selected existing and implemented technologies,
- the development of an inventory of state of the art technologies for WSS,
- evaluation of selected implemented technologies,
- development and integrated assessment of various technical scenarios for WSS in the case study sites.
Many of these activities will be based on several related projects and involve a number of stakeholders, such as the general public, NGOs, water service providers (e.g. Indah Water Konsortium), river basin corporations (e.g. Tirta I), governmental and international organisations (e.g. WSSCC, GWP).
Expected results and outcomes:
The project aims at proposing best practice on how to deal with several challenges in water management in developing countries which were identified by an interdisciplinary team in the case study sites.
These challenges encompass e.g. how to assess technologies, how to foster integrated planning at a larger scale in areas characterized by a piecemeal approach owing to various reasons, how to incorporate participation adequately in the decision making processes and what type of participation shall be applied or how to design a DMP facilitating principles of participatory environmental governance processes for sustainable representative decision making.
In a next step dim-sum will elaborate and propose policies which shall facilitate a sustainable water management taking into account a wider context. This context will not only take into account the interest of the concerned people, but also conflicting third interest such as opening the water markets and privatisation (as well as various forms between private and public management). Finally, these proposed policies will be discussed with a wide range of stakeholders.
Partners:
- University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria (Coordinator)
- University of Oxford, Environmental Change Institute, UK
- Stiftelsen Chalmers Industriteknik, MISTRA Program Urban Water, Sweden
- Polytechnic Bari, Department for Architecture and Planning, Italy
- University of Newcastle, School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, UK
- Lettinga Associates Foundation (LeAF), Wageningen, Netherlands
- University of Pune, Pune Institute of Engineering and Technology, India
- Area Water Partnership Upper Bhima Basin, Pune, India
- Development through Resource Organization and Planning (DROP), Pune, India
- University of Technology Malaysia, Institute of Environmental & Water Resources Management, Malaysia
- Institute of Technology, Surabaja, Indonesia
- East Java Bapedal, Surabaja, Indonesia
- Society of Public Health Engineers, Nepal