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Strengthening citizens’ involvement in water
and sanitation management
Benjamin Noury, Associate Director, Oxyo Water; Emeline Hassenforder, Researcher, National Research Institute
of Science and Technology for Environment and Agriculture, France
I
n the development of public policies for water resources
management, there is a growing recognition among
experts on the importance of participation. Participatory
management and stakeholder engagement practices are
therefore widely implemented. Governance literature and
several international institutions, including the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development, Global Water
Partnership, and the Stockholm International Water
Institute, recognise participation as a key criterion in defin-
ing good water governance principles. The Sustainable
Development Goal 6 acknowledges the added value of stake-
holder engagement at local level by setting a specific target to
“Support and strengthen the participation of local communi-
ties in improving water and sanitation management”.
These participatory approaches have been strengthened over
the years by a more refined legislation at local, national and
international level, setting requirements for the dissemina-
tion of information, stakeholders’ consultation and public
participation. According to the UN-Water Global Analysis and
Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water report
1
, 80% of
74 responding countries had clearly defined procedures for
engaging service users in water and sanitation management.
However, implementation modalities remain unclear.
Policies and procedures for participation of local communities
in water and sanitation management are necessary but don’t
guarantee the level of participation quality. Concrete experi-
ences of public participation that effectively engage citizens
and end-users in co-designing water plans or projects through
a bottom-up approach are rare. The challenge to improve water
and sanitation management towards 2030 is not only to set
new stakeholder requirements but also to go beyond traditional
approaches with the ambition of a decentralised and participa-
tory management of water resources in polycentric contexts.
There are many economic, environmental and social bene-
fits to be gained from effectively engaging stakeholders in
water policies and projects: creating ownership, developing
activities that are fit for local needs and contexts, building
trust, resolving conflicts among users, strengthening the
sustainability of the interventions’ impacts, collecting local
data, and supporting institutional emergence. However, this
ambition raises specific issues. Challenges occur in citizens’
mobilisation, in the choice of procedures and impact assess-
ment methods and in the integration of citizen contributions
to water policies at different scales.
How do we engage citizens?
A participatory process needs participants. This observa-
tion is trivial but its application is a frequent challenge for
practitioners and researchers who implement the processes.
Citizens are usually easier to engage when confronted with
a specific issue – for instance, water pollution, lack of sanita-
tion, construction of a dam – than for preserving a pristine
river basin. Citizens’ involvement tends to be more sponta-
neous in crisis contexts. Examples of local struggles against
the Sivens dam in France or the Coca-Cola plant in Kerala,
India, symbolise the collective ability of a group to organize
itself to face a common concern.
It is difficult to engage citizens to preserve natural resources
or to discuss less tangible issues such as hygiene or climate
change. In these contexts specifically, communication and
the raising of awareness are required to stimulate activity.
Mass communication campaigns with radio announce-
ments or the distribution of flyers in mailboxes reach a large
number of people but with lower engagement rates than the
use of real social networks with local structures or of moti-
vated citizens who co-opt other participants. A pilot group or
a core group of citizens may facilitate these communication
structures in the implementation of participatory schemes.
Another challenge in mobilizing and engaging citizens lies
in attracting those who are not yet sensitised to the impor-
tance of water and sanitation issues. Innovative tools must be
deployed in order to reach the attention of these unconcerned
citizens. When it comes to engagement, the attractiveness of
the process is often as important as its substance. To that
aim, role-playing games or artistic activities such as drawing,
forum theatre and movie contests can be useful. Aligning a
water-related participation plan with a political, cultural or
religious agenda may also trigger the participation of uncon-
cerned citizens, especially workers who are more available in
the evening or on weekends.
How can citizens be involved?
Citizens’ participation is not a means to strengthen their
acceptance to established ideas. Some flexibility must be left
within the process in order to allow participants the room to
manoeuvre in water-related decision-making. When partici-
pation takes place within institutionalised procedures, the
instigator of participation, be it an NGO, a donor or a local
water management organisation, needs to define this margin
of manoeuvre.