Finding lasting solutions to contemporary water challenges can only be achieved through good governance. This entails process-oriented approaches that build capacity, secure proper representation and involvement of stakeholders, share information transparently, coordinate across many development agendas and sectors, and prioritize investments for the common good. Water governance is sub-ordinate to more general governance, but they are intricately linked. You cannot have good water governance without good general governance. Governance cuts across scales and levels and making the levels ‘speak’ to each other in coherent, effective ways is key to good governance.

This Focus Area supports work to enhance more integrated and ‘Whole of the Water Cycle’ approaches in managing and developing water resources for water security and resilience, whether in urban, rural, peri-urban or transboundary contexts. It does so by working with institutions and stakeholders mandated with water management directly or indirectly and supporting and informing necessary processes to enhance integrated solutions, which will support in particular lower-income communities. It looks at taking a systemic governance perspective while advancing most equitable, accessible and environment- and climate-friendly solutions commensurate with the capacities for self-management of systems.

Expertise and experience in Water Governance

WCI works with farmers, local and national authorities, governments, and transboundary organizations in advancing concrete water solutions, in the process supporting better overall governance. Examples of this include building farmers’ capacity for water, energy, and chemical-saving approaches while also advancing the capacity of the countries sharing the aquifer in question in terms of understanding and managing their water resources.

Another example is supporting continental processes around strengthening a resource-to-source paradigm for water management and water supply, another example of the ‘Whole of the Water Cycle’ paradigm.

Finally, WCI uses its groundwater expertise in promoting critical conservation efforts across Southern Africa as part of larger initiatives around Transfrontier Conservation Areas.