Water sector governance

a return ticket to anarchy

Abstract

A political-science perspective of anarchy holds that anarchy is the absence of a ruler. In the
water sector, especially in terms of irrigated agriculture, emerging deficiencies of public
irrigation systems as well as the budget crisis of governments to sustain irrigated agriculture, resulted
into increased water user participation. Understanding the apparently increasing smidgeon of
anarchy in the water sector includes the appreciation of the complexity of water governance
developments such as the introduction of Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM), Irrigation
Management Transfer (IMT), basin councils, Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM)
and Multi-Stakeholder Platforms (MSP), as well as the limited role of non-governmental organisations
(NGOs) and grassroots organisations (GROs), for decades considered the ‘magic bullet’
in taking over and providing state services to the public. We conclude that governance is anarchy
by other means.