The need to move from water government to governance: the need for more civil society engagement

With over 780 million people dependent on transboundary rivers in South and Southeast Asia, water governance is vital to regional development. Yet, the current approach to water governance is dominated by state-centric actors (sometimes called the “hydrocracy”) and is not delivering sustainable water management for people or ecosystems.

The so-called “hydrocracy” is a mix of government, bureaucrats, politicians, and national development banks, often aligned with private developers. They have established strong processes for governing transboundary water and are focused on maintaining the cyclical planning-to-construction of large infrastructure projects, e.g. dams, hydropower plants, bridges, etc. These state-centric actors are focused on delivering water allocation, utilisation and management with a clear agenda of ‘the state has a duty to develop its water resources’ for national economic development. For many, the state-centric actors are delivering the governmental agenda. Therefore, it is not governance that is managing transboundary water in Asia, but government.

To be clear, government is just one of the arms of modern society which derives its power from taxes, spending, laws, and regulations. The other two arms are: business (which gains its power from creating jobs and paying taxes), and the civil society sector, which gains its power by serving the public interest without profit motives. Governance is the overall process of integrating and managing using all the arms of society. Water governance requires all parts of society working together to deliver sustainable water management for people and ecosystems, necessarily debating perspectives and sharing responsibility. If only one or two arms of society are engaged in water management, with a single shared perspective, it is not water governance, but water government.

The current Asian water ‘government’ structure is struggling to deliver on the dual priorities of state development and sustainable development goals (e.g. equity, poverty, gender, jobs, clean water, and partnerships).

The changing priorities of transboundary river management in the lower Mekong require an increased role for civil society organizations (CSO). The inclusion of CSOs will move the Mekong transboundary river toward a governance structure that enables more than just governments to be part of the solution.