Economy, Environment and Exploitation

Sub programme 3
The political economy of access to natural resources

Researchers: Dick Foeken, Jan Hoorweg, Wijnand Klaver, Samuel O. Owuor, Marcel Rutten

The question of access to natural resources has been one of the major research themes of the ASC, also in the previous research programme. The focus was primarily on access to land. Also in the new programme land will continue to receive attention, the more so because land is increasingly commoditized in Africa and can be an interesting case therefore to understand the intertwining between market and non-market configurations for land allocations and land use and how this affects access to land and accumulation processes.

However, even more crucial for Africa’s economic growth and environmental well-being will be the availability of water. In 2002 the Global Environment Outlook (GEO-3) a grouping of research institutes coordinated by UNEP provided an overview in The State of the Environment 1972-2002 of eight key environmental issues (land, forests, fresh water, biodiversity, atmosphere, coastal and marine, disasters, urban areas) for the seven major regions in the world. The longest list, both compared to other environmental issues as in relation to other continents, is the one on water for Africa. It states under this heading the following key issues: variability of water resources, water stress and scarcity, access to safe water and sanitation, deteriorating water quality, and wetlands loss. In addition it mentions under other captions: floods, drought (disasters, atmosphere), water supply and sanitation (urban areas), climate change and sea level rise (atmosphere, coastal and marine). Indeed data available for the availability of fresh water world wide shows a rapid decrease for all continents, in particular for people in Africa, both in rural and urban settings. By the year 2025, at least 48 countries are expected to face water shortages. Not less than 22 of these countries are in Sub-Saharan Africa. Per capita supply at country level is often low, and continued population growth will constantly reduce that supply as water resources are fixed. However, political, economic and institutional factors can and often do lead to water deprivation even where overall water resources are plentiful.

Still, water will be needed in Africa, for both consumptive as well as productive purposes. Access to clean water (and sanitation) has therefore been earmarked as the most crucial resource for life and productive asset both in agriculture and industry. At the same time water is thought to be both the trigger for new wars (some claim it already is), as well as reason for countries and groups to come together and prevent conflicts.¹ Strong tendencies can be observed in several African countries towards the commoditization of water. In times of scarcity, access to water in relation to market and non-market configurations, and what this means for people’s access and their poverty or wealth status become important questions.

Above developments have triggered the international and national policy arenas. The United Nations declared 2003 as the International Year of Freshwater. The latest Human Development Report is entirely devoted to water (UNDP 2006). All eight Millennium Development Goals are directly or indirectly related to (access to) water (ibid.). The integral role of water in international development has also been recognized over the last two decades with several international agreements specifying targets on water supply and sanitation dating back to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) 1980 International Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (IWSSD). In 1996, the World Bank teamed up with various United Nations agencies, states (Sweden and the Netherlands in particular) and private corporations (Suez-Lyonnaise des Eaux) to organize two major initiatives in this field: the foundation of the World Water Council (WWC), and the launching of the Global Water Partnership (GWP). WWC developed a common world vision on water-related issues and GWP aims to stimulate private-public partnerships on water-saving resource policies.² Policy makers in water issues are also increasingly shifting their attention to Africa. Since September 2001 the Africa Water Task Force has been put in place to help African water stakeholders focus the world’s attention on African water issues. The World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in Johannesburg 2002, created two new fully institutionalized Pan-African entities ‘African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW) and the African Water Facility.

So, all in all, it is rather recent that water has been put prominently on the international policy agenda. In (academic) research water in Africa has been an important topic for decades, but was mainly concentrating on issues related to water management and engineering (irrigation, dams, and so on). In development studies research on water is still in an infant stage. Many research gaps exist. For instance, relatively little is known about a number of key aspects of (domestic) water use. In particular, knowledge is scarce about the long-term trends and changes in household water use in any part of the world, as most studies have been limited to one season or one year. Because of the lack of good baseline information, there are few longitudinal or repeat studies to be found.³ Moreover, where studies have attempted to examine changes over time, they have tended to be limited in their geographic scope. There is also a lack of quality information about water use in rural areas. Among the regions of the world, both of these research gaps are most acute for Sub-Saharan Africa- the region whose population is the most rural and has the least access to improved water supply (Thompson 2001).⁴

The ASC intends to play a role in filling in these gaps. Based on research projects carried out in the last five years or so, the EEE theme group has built some expertise on water, both in a rural context (“shallow wells”) and in an urban context (Nakuru Urban Agriculture Project). For the coming period, the intention is to partly continue with existing research and to develop new research. EEE researchers will concentrate on three major issues with respect to water in Africa: water markets (both urban and rural), affordable water sources (shallow wells), and systems of allocation of water rights. Questions to be posed are: Is water under new privatization schemes provided in a sustainable and reliable way? Are people willing to pay more to get a safe and continuous water supply? Can the poor afford to purchase water or are they reverting to poor water supplies (roof, pond etc.)? Are alternatives put in place (boreholes, shallow wells) a reliable alternative? Do water alternatives improve agricultural productivity and subsequently nutrition for poor people? Has this changed the role of women in society? How do various activities and user groups claim water rights?

The themes of water markets and allocation systems for water rights will be addressed in a newly to develop EEE project entitled Poverty and sustainable use of urban water resources. The research project focuses especially on the (urban) poor. The project builds on an earlier EEE research project on urban agriculture in Nakuru in Kenya (see Foeken 2006), both in terms of findings (water was shown to be a major input for urban agriculture) and in terms of approach (different aspects or perspectives combined in one research project). To explore and investigate the relevant issues at stake in such a study, the so-called ‘water chain’ approach will be applied: by following water from its source to its ‘end’, issues like water storage, water management, water distribution, water consumption (by households, institutions, industries, agriculture), waste water disposal, water rights, legislation related to water, and so on, will be investigated. Because of its scale, the intention is to develop this programme in close collaboration with one or more local academic partners and with local water-sector stakeholders. Ideally, the programme should not only be pioneering from an academic point of view but problem-solving as well.

Like in all other EEE research projects the prevailing analytical framework will be the political economy approach. Issues like water distribution, water management, water rights, and so on, are all about political decision-making. Water in urban settings is also increasingly becoming a commodity (e.g. privatization of public water providers, provision of water by private sellers); hence, water markets play an increasingly important role in the distribution and consumption of water in African cities and towns. This process of commoditization should be analyzed within the broader context of and brought into relation to changing social relations of production, as will be done in the other ‘market studies’ as well. Besides political economy, the livelihood approach remains important, particularly where it concerns questions of access to water resources among households and individuals.

The theme of affordable water sources will be picked up by revisiting the “improved shallow wells” project, which was an action-oriented research project conducted by one of the EEE-affiliated researchers from Africa in the late 1980s to early 1990s. The intention is to use this unique data set, and revisit a considerable number of improved shallow wells in semi-arid Kajiado District, Kenya, and test some of the claims made that these wells have created a cheap and sustainable alternative to boreholes and as such have been responsible for a significant improvement in the well-being of settled pastoralists. Collaboration has been sought with the same African researcher in preparation of this longitudinal survey project.

1. According to the United Nations Third World Water Forum held in Japan from 17 – 21 March 2003, the future flash points for conflict could be the river basins upon which millions of people depend for drinking water, irrigation and energy, unless countries take action to implement sustainable water resource-sharing strategies.
2. In January 1999 the WWC created the World Commission on Water in the 21st Century (see WWC 1999).
3. An exception is the Drawers of Water research programme, conducted in 1966-68 and 1997-2001 (see J. Thompson et al. (eds.) (2001).
4. See, for example, A. Dinar’s The political economy of water pricing reforms (World Bank, 2000) that only addresses these issues for Europe, Latin America and Asia.

Research Projects:

a. Popular land struggles, elites and nature conservation in Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TCFAs) in Southern Africa
Marja Spierenburg, Harry Wels, Steven Robins, Kees van de Waal, Maano Ramutsindela and Sarah Bologna

The project consists of two components that are linked to each other. The first component investigates the role, motivations and interests of South African and transnational business elites, NGOs and donor and development agencies involved in the TFCA initiatives. It analyses the ideological and practical impacts of the involvement of these actors on community conservation initiatives linked to TFCAs. The second component is concerned with understanding the politics of trust and distrust within communities involved in TFCA initiatives, in particular those communities situated adjacent to the Kruger National Park (South Africa) and inside Limpopo National Park (Mozambique). It is specifically concerned with community responses to land struggles and conservation interventions. The project includes studies by researchers involved in other TFCAs as well.
The project investigates the following issues: (1) the impact of the increasing role of the private sector in nature conservation in southern Africa; (2) the changing nature of the relationships between the private sector, donors, governments and communities involved in the TFCAs; (3) the current political and economic environment in southern Africa and how this is influencing the establishment of TFCAs; (4) the impact of TFCAs on relations between conservation experts, government officials and rural communities; (5) the role of socio-economic differentiation and identity formation in terms of mediating access to natural resources within the TFCAs.

b. School farming and school feeding in Nakuru town, Kenya: Practice and potential
Dick Foeken, Wijnand Klaver, Samuel Owuor and Alice M. Mwangi

Although urban agriculture has become an increasingly important topic among researchers and policy-makers, urban school farming has been largely neglected so far. This is the more surprising as school farming, in combination with a school feeding programme, has great potential to alleviate hunger, increase the attendance rate of children in school and help to develop sound food habits among them. Moreover, by practicing organic farming, school farming also has the potential of creating an environmental awareness among both pupils and teachers. The study aims to combine the three elements of school farming, school feeding and environmental awareness in an urban setting. Its main objectives are (1) to describe the practice of school farming, (2) to assess the awareness concerning environmentally-friendly farming, (3) to establish the contribution of school farming to school feeding programmes, (4) to determine to what extent the pupils benefit from school farming and school feeding programmes in terms of food security and school attendance, and (5) to assess the potential for school farming in combination with school feeding.

c. Farm dwellers, the Forgotten People? Consequences of Conversions to Private Wildlife Production in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape
Marja Spierenburg, Shirley Brooks, Harry Wels, Lungisile Ntsebeza, Malcolm Draper, Mike Murphree and LEEG VELD voor alias

This project addresses the role of the private sector in conservation and development. In South Africa, especially in the provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, a growing trend to convert commercial farms to wildlife-based forms of land-use is noticeable. The project to explores the impacts of these conversions on farm dwellers; i.e. farm labourers, (former) labour and rent-paying tenants and their families. This aspect of farm conversions has received only scant attention from scholars.
Research is conducted to determine the driving forces behind the conversions, the scale and extent of the trend in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, and the economics of the different forms of wildlife production - including private game reserves, hunting operations, and venison production. Research is conducted among wildlife producers, their representatives, and the relevant - local and national - government departments to gain insights into the driving forces and the policy environment in which wildlife producers operate. It is expected that different forms of wildlife production will have differential social and livelihood impacts on farm dwellers. A number of researchers in the project engage with affected farm-based communities in two case study areas in each of the provinces. Farm dwellers' responses are a key focus and the researchers work closely with AFRA and ECARP, two rural advocacy NGOs, to identify conflict resolution processes and initiatives through which the interests of different stakeholders could be reconciled and negative effects mitigated. Research findings will be disseminated to and discussed with all relevant stakeholders, including farm dwellers and their representatives, rural advocacy NGOs, wildlife producers and their representatives (e.g. ECGMA, KZNHCA), and policy-makers in government and donor organisations.