Capacity for participation and community-driven development

Capacity for participation and community-driven development touches all elements of the frame of reference (Figure 2.1). At individual level it is about human resources development, at WUSC level it is about institutional and organizatorial capacity, and as having an opportunity to participate and move towards community-driven development, it falls within the enabling environment domain. All this is also strongly about action environment.

Water sector has traditionally focused on physical facilities with some interest for the natural environment. Since the community management concept became more widely applied, projects started to pay more attention to the other factors as well, including the institutional, human, social, and financial aspects. Since the Water Decade 1980–1990, participation and community management have been mainstreamed in rural water sector in many countries. At that time, participation and community management – and generally the idea of managing water at the lowest appropriate level – were considered as key to successful project implementation and sustainability. This was articulated already in 1992 by the Dublin Principle No. 2 which stated that “Water development and management should be based on a participatory approach, involving users, planners and policy-makers at all levels” and that the decisions should be taken

“at the lowest appropriate level, with full public consultation and involvement of users in the planning and implementation of water projects” (Dublin Statement on Water and Sustainable Development, 1992). According to Bakalian and Wakenam (2009), the scope has broadened even further since the mid-1990s, and a number of stakeholders have incorporated one or more components of the demand-driven, community management model (p. 4).

Participation and inclusiveness are important aspects of good local water governance. Today, participation is mainstreamed in some form or another in most of the rural water and sanitation projects and programmes either directly or through legitimate intermediate institutions or representatives, such as local governments, user groups, and community-based organizations.

Numerous studies have discussed its merits and challenges (e.g., Marks et al., 2014; Bakalian

& Wakenam Eds., 2009; Cornwall, 2003; Johnson et al., 2001; Seppälä, 2002; Doe & Khan, 2004; Parker & Skyttä, 2000; Prokopy et al., 2008). There are many ways to do this and still call it participation in local decision-making. Gomez and Nakat (2002) identified three types of participation, and considered interactive participation as the most advanced form of community participation. As community members are encouraged to use their own knowledge and abilities, the project benefits from local skills and resources. This has to do with responsiveness, another characteristic of good governance, which relates to institutions and processes capable of serving “all”, and being able to learn and review community-specific needs, priorities, and options (Rogers & Hall, 2003). In this context, participation can be defined as a consultative empowerment process within which communities are established as effective decision-making entities (Harvey & Reed, 2007).

Participation can also be superficial and passive, and not give equal opportunities. It may favour those more knowledgeable about manipulating the process or those who participate over those who do not. Participation is also often discredited as a slow process, even if it is well known to instil a greater sense of ownership of the results and stronger commitment to future sustainability. In early 2000s, according to Doe and Khan (2004), participation and ownership are known to contribute to the sustainability of water services although the linkage between the two was poorly understood. Later on in 2014, Marks, Komives, and Davis (2014) claim that while participatory planning and sustainability of rural water infrastructure is well documented, less attention has been paid to identifying the particular forms of community participation that matter most. The authors list examples of participation: contributing cash and labour toward the capital cost of the water system; attending planning meetings and trainings related to the project;

making key decisions regarding technology choice, service pricing, and management of the infrastructure; financing 100 percent of ongoing operation and maintenance (O&M) costs; and forming a water committee charged with overseeing the project or parts of it, usually assumed to take over the O&M functions. Yet, there is still less understanding on which aspects of these are related to sustainability (p. 277).

Public participation also has legal dimensions. The Berlin Rules on Water Resources as adopted by the International Law Association summarized international law customarily applied in modern times to freshwater resources. Its Article 18 “Public Participation and Access to Information” stated that “in the management of waters, States shall assure that persons subject to the State’s jurisdiction and likely to be affected by water management decisions are able to participate, directly or indirectly, in processes by which those decisions are made and have a reasonable opportunity to express their views on programs, plans, projects, or activities relating to waters” (International Law Association, 2004, p. 24).

In Ghana, a study about the functionality of hand pumps found that project outcomes were better within communities where a greater share of households reported participating in management-related decisions, and worse in communities where more households participated in technical decisions (Marks et al., 2014, p. 285). Various studies made in individual African countries indicate operational failure rates of 30–60 percent. Harvey and Reed (2007) emphasize how there is a strong need to distinguish between “community participation” and “community management”, participation being a prerequisite for sustainability but community management not.

This aspect is further discussed by Harvey and Reed (2007) who further question community management, pointing out how the concept was adopted by most organizations in project-based approaches to shift the responsibility “with a clear conscience” to beneficiaries for on-going operation and maintenance after “the project” had completed constructing the facilities. Hence, sustainability of the facilities and services was left with the communities, often without further post-construction support. Harvey and Reed (2007) further note how the concept of community management was indeed developed predominantly in the West where there has been a tendency to idealize communities in low-income countries. Harvey (2008) in his study of poverty

reduction strategy papers and rural water in sub-Saharan Africa commented that “Community management is based on the well-intentioned principle of empowering communities to take ownership of, and responsibility for, their own water supplies. This is a worthy ideal but the way in which it has been adopted in most countries abrogates responsibility for sustainable service delivery away from Governments and implementing agencies” (p. 126). The author reminds us that because access to safe water is a universal right, it is unacceptable and unethical that communities are left alone to manage and sustain their water supplies (Harvey, 2008, p.126).

Community-driven development (CDD) emerged as a response to top-down supply-driven approaches. It is an approach to local development in which control of decision-making and resources for local infrastructure and service delivery are wholly or partly transferred to community groups (de Regt, Majumdar & Singh, 2013, p. 1). CDD can also be defined as the process of giving control of development decisions and resources to community groups.

Communities can be geographical entities, such as rural villages, or groups with common interests, such as water user associations. In CDD, these groups typically work in partnership with support organizations, service providers, local governments, the private sector, or non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The community group should be the one to develop and implement projects that meet their immediate priorities. The authors suggested four cross-cutting design principles for CDD in fragile countries: 1) always be responsive; 2) think long-term; 3) keep things simple, i.e., do not add many layers of themes and activities; and 4) always think scale, both vertically and horizontally (de Regt et al., 2013, pp. 37–38).

Narayan (2002) divides CDD into four practice areas, all relevant notions to this dissertation (pp.

209–210):

1. Enabling environment: development of policy and institutional reforms oriented toward increased control of decisions and resources by community groups and/or by participatory elected local governments.

2. Participatory elected local governments: elected local governments make decisions on planning, implementation, operation, and maintenance in partnership with community groups.

3. Community control and management of investment funds: community groups make decisions on planning, implementation, operation, and maintenance, and manage investment funds.

4. Community control without direct management of investment funds: community groups make decisions on planning, implementation, operation, and maintenance, without directly managing investment funds.

In this dissertation, the Step-by-Step fits into the practice area 3 above. WUMP as a planning tools fits well for both practice areas 2 and 3, even if in Nepal there has not been an elected local government for over a decade at the time of writing this dissertation.

There is plentiful literature on the community-based and community-driven development, its successes and failures, and practical approaches into its practical implementation and follow-up. This is closely linked to another area of vast literature, namely that which relates to sustainability of CDD, gender equality and social inclusion (GESI), and social capital.

Furthermore, participation alone is not the solution. Cleaver (2005) suggests that “rather than spending more effort reiterating oversimplified mantras about the beneficial effects of participation and association on the generation of social capital, we need to pay far more attention to the effects of the lack of material and physical assets of the poor, and to the socio-structural constraints that impede their exercise of agency” (Cleaver, 2005, p. 904). This is where a water project or programme can have a lot to offer, assuming that there are also investment funds available to address the lack of material and physical assets.