Overview of national policy, legal and administrative framework for water governance – draft synthesis based on papers produced by the competing for water country research teams: Bolivia, Mali, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Zambia

In 2007 the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) launched the research programme “Competing for Water: Understanding conflict and cooperation in local water governance”. Along with partners in five developing countries (Bolivia, Mali, Nicaragua, Vietnam and Zambia), the programme aims to contribute to “sustainable local water governance in support of the rural poor and otherwise disadvantaged groups in developing countries by improving the knowledge among researchers and practitioners of the nature, extent and intensity of local water conflict and cooperation and their social, economic and political impacts, and how this may change with increased competition for water” (DIIS 2007). The country research teams developed an overview of the national water governance frameworks at an early stage of the Competing for Water programme period (Bustamante and Cossio, 2007; Djiré et al., 2007; Gómez et al, 2007; Nguyen, 2007; Mweemba, C.E. 2007). The purpose of these overviews was to position the research findings on the extent and nature of local-level water-related conflict and cooperation in the context of ongoing efforts to improve the policy, legal and administrative water governance framework in the five countries and discuss its implications. The present paper synthesizes how the national policy, legal and administrative water governance frameworks dealt with local water-related conflictive and cooperative situations. The section also indicates possible ‘blind spots’ in the national policy, legal or administrative water governance frameworks with reference to the identified types of water-related conflictive and cooperative situations identified during the inventories.