A Starting Point: Understanding Governance, Good Governance and Water Governance - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 22

2.3 Water Governance: The Rise of New Standards

Water governance refers to the range of political, social, economic and administrative systems
that are in place to develop and manage water resources, and the delivery of water services,
at different levels of society. (GWP 2000 )
At its simplest, water governance systems not only decide who gets how much
water, when and how but also protect resources from pollution, through the imple-
mentation of socially acceptable allocation and regulation of water resources and
services (Rogers and Hall 2003 ). Water governance develops and sets the rules,
roles and responsibilities of all involved stakeholders (local and national govern-
ment, private sector, civil society) regarding ownership, administration and manage-
ment of water resources (Rogers and Hall 2003 ) . Hurlbert et al. ( 2008 ) describes
this as an institutional process that defines the organisation and management of the
interrelationships between society and water resources. It is a process that is consti-
tuted by many different stakeholders, each with their own interests, decision making
processes and instruments including legal rulings, norms and acts. Since the water
sector does not exist in isolation, but is intricately connected to broader political,
economic and social developments, water governance is influenced by issues relat-
ing to the current governing regime and the wider concerns of civil society that may
help or hinder the development of water governance arrangements (Rogers and Hall
2003 ). The external impacts of political power and competing priorities often define
the relationships between different organisations and stakeholders (Hurlbert 2008 ) .
Property and use rights are a central element in water governance due to the
potential role different forms of ownership can play in the internalisation of exter-
nalities, 2 the realisation of efficiencies and the added security for long term investment
(Thobani 1995 ; Demsetz 1967 ). Rights can be land-based or riparian, or use-based
(including market-based or based on historical use) and tend to categorised into dif-
ferent forms of ownership (communal, private, state, open access) (Demsetz 1967 ) .
The link between water law and property rights is important, partly through the role
of formal or informal institutions (state, courts or community) in enforcing, moni-
toring and protecting the relevant property or use rights. Furthermore, clear and
suitable definition of water rights and appropriate accompanying legislative and
regulatory frameworks are seen to assist in the reduction of negative hydrological
effects on third parties when water is transferred to other economic activities
(Thobani 1995 ). There are however, a number of outstanding questions and different
versions of what the appropriate definition, valuation and measurement of water

2 Demsetz 1967 , p 348: Externality is an ambiguous concept. For the purposes of this paper, the
concept includes external costs, external benefits, and pecuniary as well as non-pecuniary exter-
nalities. No harmful or beneficial effect is external to the world. Some person or persons always
suffer or enjoy these effects. That converts a harmful or beneficial effect into an externality is that
the cost of bringing the effect to bear on the decisions of one or more of the interacting persons is
too high to make it worthwhile, and this is what the term shall mean here. “Internalizing” such
effects refers to a process, usually a change in property rights, that enables these effects to bear
(in greater degree) on all interacting persons.