Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
out of Tajikistan, there have been no capacities for seminars, conferences or scientific work.
There are water experts engaged in international donor programs, but their number is relatively
small and until recently there were not so many projects with a regional focus going on in
Tajikistan itself as in Kyrgyzstan. One has to see whether there will be in Tajikistan as well a
turn to foreign water relations in the future as donor involvement changes. The Institute of
Water Problems, Hydro Power and Ecology of the National Academy of Sciences in 2003
already set up a new department on transboundary water usage. In both countries, national
experts complained about an ignorance of their knowledge and expertise by donors, who
would use the respective country as an “experimental field” for their concepts they would
transfer from Africa or South Asia neglecting the water management history of thousands of
years in Central Asia.
Especially in decision making, donors are more influential than part of the national actors.
As a result, laws lack ownership and are partly not feasible. The WUA reform is in both coun
tries almost exclusively implemented by donors. Their interest in WUAs is not in assisting
national reforms decided on before, but in the need for counterparts for rehabilitation projects
in order to achieve sustainability. Thus, these activities reflect the donors' interest rather than
problem perception of national policy actors. However, it became also apparent that even
different donor approaches, such as to WUA development, do not necessarily lead to different
outcomes. This shows the significance of the existing context, which limits the activities of
international actors as well as their impact.
As was shown, the four variables and the interfering variable shape the politics of water institu
tional reform, and their analysis allows for a better understanding of the processes. In all va
riables, formal and informal rules of the legal rational as well as the patrimonial dimensions
that constitute neopatrimonialism interact with each other and together define the institutional
corridor. Concerning the patrimonial features, the impact of personalistic leadership and pa
tronage could be widely observed. Corruption, however, turned not out to be a decisive factor
in water politics. This was also noticed by Bichsel (2006: 98) and Thurman (2002: 22). Con
cerning the formal democratic structure, it proved to have also an impact as its higher value in
Kyrgyzstan in all variables broadened the options for actors and therefore for politcs.
The impact of each variable differs according to the respective reform issue. Therefore,
the next section will discuss the politics of water institutional reform specifically for certain
institutions: first, the introduction of ISF (8.3); following, the administrative reforms (8.4); and
finally, the participation of water users (8.5). The three foci can also be seen as representing
three aspects of reform: ISF as the economic aspect with the aim to achieve efficient and sus
tainable usage patterns, administrative reforms as the organizational aspect with the aim to
reach equity and coherency among sectors (and thereby ultimately also improving efficiency),
and participation as political aspect aiming to achieve democratic and equitable water gover
nance. Undoubtedly, all three are closely interrelated (best seen in WUAs that merge all three
aspects); however, for analytical purposes we will now look at them individually.
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