WaterSubject

Many places in the world are experiencing a water crisis. This water crisis is attributed to a governance crisis, whereas often fragmented institutional and physical water structures are used to explain a policy of overexploitation. The Israeli water system, which adopted integrated water resource management (IWRM), is often cited as a model for other countries struggling with fragmented water systems. Yet, despite the exceptional degree of integration, Israel in the past two decades has adopted an unsustainable water policy. The aim of this study is to understand this failure and thereby to postulate on the institutional conditions required for successful implementation of IWRM. The study focuses on the politics of water allocation during the drought of 1999 to 2002. It was found that the failure originates in setting administrative divisions in the decision-making process and in differential checks, with no balances implicitly instituted within the integrated water system. These two factors have resulted in a water system that is physically integrated but is not coupled by a balanced institutional structure. This case study teaches us that when reforming the water sector along IWRM lines, measures must be taken to ensure that the physical integration coincides with a balanced institutional integration—otherwise the results may be worse than if there were no integration at all.

Many places in the world are experiencing a water crisis related to inadequate access to clean water and the inability to sustain ecological . In fact, the Millennium Development Goals set by the UN in 2000 identified that around 1.1 billion people have no access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation; as a result, 1.6 million people die every year from diarrheal diseases. In contrast to the past, when the water crisis was attributed to climatic conditions, currently it is widely acknowledged to be largely a governance crisis. Inadequate governance was used as a variable to explain the water crisis in many places, such as Israel, Mexico, Jordan, Spain, and the western United States. Although widely used, the concept of governance has taken a number of meanings. This article uses this term in the sense of the establishment and operation of institutions that serve to define social practices, assign roles, and guide interaction among the occupants. In the water sector, this can take the form of water authorities that issue water rights, price water, and coordinate between the different regulatory agencies and players.

The governance crisis is attributed to several factors, including the overriding political nature of decisions, a supply-oriented policy that results in the failure of water institutions to address issues of equity and sustainability, a lack of accountability and transparency in the decision-making process, weak water laws to balance competing upstream-downstream uses, and inappropriate scale of water management. Other factors have focused on the high transaction costs of coordinating between the different components of the water system and inflexible allocation systems that are assumed to impair the ability to adapt to climate fluctuation.

One factor that may explain weak governance that results in overexploitation is fragmented physical and institutional structures. Water structures that are narrow in both scope and scale, although found to provide social benefits, stop short of exploiting economies of scale or internalizing externalities. The implications of the fragmentation of the water sector are often used to justify the need for the adoption of integrated water resource management (IWRM). IWRM seeks to replace those isolated practices and create a process that can bring together fragmented water uses and users into an integrated planning, allocation, and management framework It stresses the watershed as the management unit, local-regional partnerships, unified management of both land and water, and even a shift from an inflexible allocation system based on water rights to an adjustable system that can advance demand side management. All this is assumed to increase the adaptability against unforeseen conditions such as droughts or floods. Places like Australia, UK, western United States, and Chile have already adopted some elements of the IWRM in order to improve their water and ecological services; Christensen and Lintner 2007). Thus, not surprisingly, IWRM was endorsed by the 2000 Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg and by the 3rd (2003) World Water Forum. It was also adopted as a prerequisite for compliance with the European Union’s Water Framework Directive of 2000 and has guided many of the subsequent EU water development programs, such as the EU Water Initiative. Consequently, as of the writing of this article, 90 countries have engaged in attempts to implement components of IWRM, including places such as Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam.

Although widely endorsed by international organizations, NGOs, and scientists, IWRM suffers from very limited practical applications. Consequently, researchers began to question the practicality and even the desirability of integrated water management; some even claim that it is a “holy grail” that cannot be implemented at all. The failure of the IWRM was often attributed to its poor conceptualization lack of the information required to coordinate everything from land-use planning to biological systems, and social and administrative constraints The term “social” particularly implies the politics that underlies water management and the constructions of IWRM institutions.

While there are several studies that acknowledge difficulties in implementing IWRM, the question of why IWRM, once actually adopted, often still fails to provide its expected outcome is relatively unexplored. In particular, there is a need to examine the institutional conditions necessary for IWRM to deliver sustainable water allocations. Since Israel has developed an extraordinarily comprehensive water management structure that is cited as a model for IWRM for other countries examining its successes and failures can highlight the conditions required for successful implementation of IWRM.

There is a widespread agreement that higher degrees of integration allow for more optimal water management. It is also assumed that IWRM can alleviate water poverty and contribute to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Lack of IWRM, it is assumed, is characterized by fragmented water systems dominated by the strong and inflexible water rights, which results in unsustainable and inequitable water policy. Indeed, many places in which water systems yield suboptimal results are now engaged in attempts to implement IWRM, including developing an adjustable allocation system (often in the form of water trading). Against these assumptions stand the limited practical experience with IWRM and some early warnings that IWRM is likely to produce some undesired and even detrimental outcomes. To examine why IWRM may fail to deliver its expected outcomes, the Israeli system was examined, a system that is characterized by a high degree of integration that also includes an allocation process that can be adjusted in the face of droughts.

The Israeli case study indicates that despite the high degree of integration in its water sector, the system failed to protect its water resources, as was clearly seen in the drought events of 1999 to 2002. The analysis of decision making during the drought of 1999 to 2002 reveals that water in Israel is governed by a political process in which private interests, power considerations, and a representative government set the allocation of the resource. These agents often include in the allocation process factors outside strictly professional water management considerations. However, the problem is not the politicization of the water system since water allocation is inherently a value-laden judgment. Rather, the problem is with the lack of what John calls “policy science” that is based upon both democracy and rationality in the allocation policy. The lack of democracy is due to the fact that not all groups affected by the allocation process are represented. The lack of rationality is because the cost of overexploitation to the general public outweighs the local short-term benefits for some privileged groups.

It is the institutional structure of the water system in Israel that tends to ignore policy science at the expense of rationality and democracy. It was both the differential checks (with no balances) implicitly instituted in the process and the administrative division of the water system that empowered agricultural interest groups while eroding the ability of other groups to influence that same process. This institutional structure has created a situation of unbalanced institutional integration and politics: in not granting all those affected by the allocation process equal opportunity to influence water allocations, it prevents an objective evaluation of the benefits of agricultural activities against their cost to other sectors. The many assumptions concerning the positive externalities of agriculture further block the ability to conduct this cost/benefit evaluation. It is important to note that the validity and extent of many of the positive externalities attributed to agriculture have never been tested empirically.

Many of the detrimental implications of the Israeli water policy could have been avoided had the physical integration of the water system been coupled with a balanced institutional integration. This discrepancy between the physical and the balanced institutional integration empowered agricultural interest groups in the south to exploit water resources in the north (Lake Kinneret), while not establishing mechanisms to counter their rent-seeking behavior. The unwelcome and unsustainable outcome of this unbalanced institutional integration triggered the establishment of a new Water Authority with a wider range of responsibilities and representation. To better reflect a system with checks and balances, the new authority now includes an oversight committee that is composed of representatives of six sectors that are affected by the authority’s actions.

The results of this study teach us that successful implementation of IWRM should be considered an exercise in social problem solving and not only a technological or a physical issue. Thus, researchers and practitioners need to understand how collaborative processes may be applied to the implementation of IWRM. An administrative division that is deliberately used to halt any collaborative processes that come to adjust the allocation should be avoided. This implies that while reforming the water sector along the IWRM lines, measures must be taken to ensure that physical integration coincides with an institutional integration—otherwise the results may be worse than if there were no integration at all. Effective institutional integration that allows adjusting allocations in the face of unforeseen events requires having one single entity or collaboration between entities to address all aspects of water. Considering all elements of the hydrological cycle concurrently will allow trade-offs to be weighed concerning the quantity, quality, and pricing of water. Effective integration also requires checks and balances in the decision-making process of water allocation. Checks are necessary to ensure that there are tools available for players to affect the allocation process and balances to ensure that the tools are distributed equally so that all legitimate players are represented. Unless these institutional conditions are met, even a system based on IWRM elements is not likely to be able to absorb climate fluctuations in a sustainable manner.