Delegating community responsibility for water

This strategy features in the framework of Agenda 21 as formulated at UNCED (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), now coordinated by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development and implemented through national and local authorities. Agenda 21 recommends promoting local initiatives for the integrated development and management of water resources.

The inability of governments to provide adequate water-quality monitoring and feedback to isolated communities is a very common problem in the developing world because of the cost of conventional methods. Since 1983, a network of researchers in-Brazil, Chile, Egypt, Malaysia, Morocco, Peru, Singapore, and Thailand have been experimenting with simpler and cheaper tests. With the assistance of the National Water Research Institute (NWRI), part of Canada's Ministry of the Environment, researchers in these various countries have been developing and testing a number of simple, reliable, and inexpensive water quality tests that can be performed in the field by members of the local community.

1. Any attempt to regenerate the community's relation to water must aim at enlarging the basis of citizen action and citizen control of water sources. Communities must regain some direct forms of control over the water now withdrawn from their sources for agricultural and industrial purposes. The illusions generated by decades of water development have led us to forget that a region's sources of water are by right the commons of the communities cohabiting in that region. Water withdrawn from local sources for distant agro-industrial purposes is in fact a type of state legitimated theft. Water development be with the consent and to the benefit of the community where it is located.

1. Strengthening water management structure
2. Instituting integrated management of water catchments
3. Instigating community resources management
4. Enabling local community management of aquatic resources
5. Adopting sustainable sanitation policy

1. Training in community water resources management
2. Strengthening managerial capabilities of local water user groups
3. Strengthening local authority capabilities on water protection
4. Involving local people in water management
5. Ensuring water programmes use local expertise

1. Sustaining community morale
2. Standardizing local water purity
3. Providing local water sources
4. Managing water resources for sustainable rural development
5. Integrating management of city water supplies
6. Delegating sustainable development to appropriate level
7. Creating comprehensive drainage scheme

1. Increasing community ownership of water supply services
2. Expanding public participation in water resources planning

1. Regulating food processing