Global River Basin Management Research Project

Integrated River Basin Management and the Principle of Managing Water Resources at the Lowest Appropriate Level - When and Why It Does (Not) Work in Practice?

One of the internationally accepted principles of river basin management is decentralization of decision making to the lowest appropriate level. The impetus for this research is the empirical observation, based on experience with World Bank-financed projects all over the world, that while it seems to be comparatively easy to translate the concept of management at the lowest appropriate level into laws and regulations, its actual application often encounters obstacles due to the varying interests of different stakeholder groups, including those that would have to promote the decentralization. Evidently, such a situation may lead to unrealized benefits of projects that contain components based on this principle.Over the past three years, this research project has studied the underlying reasons for (non) achievement of management at the lowest appropriate level.

Institutional and Policy Analysis of River Basin Management Decentralization edited by Karin Kemper, Ariel Dinar and William Blomquist (5,882 kb pdf).

This document presents the results in the form of 11 Notes which are based on the more extensive published Working Papers with the same titles, which can be found in the highlight box under "Research Working Papers". In addition, a series of background papers can also be found in this highlight box under Background Paper".

The research project consists of three main parts:

• A global survey of 83 riverbasin organizations and their performance worldwide
• In-depth case studies of 8 riverbasin organizations
• An extensive literature review

The case studies analyze the decentralization history and performance of basin organizations in the Murray Darling (Australia), Jaguaribe (Brazil), Alto Tietê (Brazil), Fraser (Canada), Tárcoles (Costa Rica), Brantas (Indonesia), Warta (Poland) and Guadalquivir (Spain).

An econometric analysis of the large number of basin organizations included in the global survey in both developed and developing countries has also been carried out. It evaluates a range of factors that affect the outcomes of decentralization processes, including the way such processes are initiated (e.g. by governments or stakeholders), institutional and financing arrangements, climate, history, and basin hydrology.