Water Coalitions · A Comparative Analysis of Agenda Implementation Strategies in Peru and Brazil through the Study of Basin Councils.

Water Coalitions: A Comparative Analysis of Agenda Implementation Strategies in Peru and Brazil through the Study of Basin Councils.

This project sought to improve our understanding of the dynamics between key actors in water management. Integrated Water Resource Management has been implemented worldwide to try and promote an inclusive and participatory approach to management at the basin level, this is, focusing on water bodies in the territory in which they are embedded. Yet, it has not always achieved its objectives and has been widely criticized for not paying enough attention to contextual differences and power dynamics. The academic and grey literature investigating participatory organizations for water management has tended to adopt a dichotomist perspective in which participation is either presented as the solution to all problems or as a black box that simply serves as a façade for business as usual. In this project, we adopted a more nuanced perspective in trying to understand under which circumstances participatory mechanisms can help to give a say to those previously excluded from management, such as environmentalists or local populations. Investigating these issues is essential if we are to craft truly inclusive institutions for water management. This project specifically focused on dynamics between key actors in participatory basin-based institutions for water management in Peru and Brazil. These institutions bring together representatives from the public sector, the private sector – users of water – and civil society, which might defend diverse types of interests. The project works with concrete cases to produce rich empirics from which a contribution to the theory on water management can be constructed. It seeks to identify the kind of obstacles that actors who have been previously excluded face and the kind of relationships diverse actors enter into. Are these reproducing traditional dynamics of power or do they go beyond? Do participants relate only to those that share the same characteristics as them or do they go beyond that? Can we identify not-so-obvious associations that go beyond what is expected? What conditions might explain that such things happen under certain circumstances and not others?

Data: CORDIS, © European Union