INBO'S NEWSLETTER N° 4

INBO'S NEWSLETTER N° 4 - 1996

Table of contents	INBO'S NEWSLETTER - N° 4 - 1996
Masterplans for better managing our rivers Workshop on comparative analysis of administrations, Tulcea 30 August - 2 September 1996

The first INBO workshop on Comparative Analysis of Administrations took place in Tulcea from August 30 to September 2, 1996, at the invitation of both the Romanian authorities and APELE ROMANE, in coordination with the Francophone Network of River and Lake Ecosystem Managers.

The meeting gathered 32 participants from 12 countries and international organizations whom, at the conclusion of their work, proposed the following recommendations in order to improve the management of national and international rivers, by means of Masterplans in particular.

The legal framework

Approaches and procedures should be based on dialogue and a consensus between all interested parties, various governmental administrative departments, local authorities and "users".

The representation of everybody who directly or indirectly needs water for undertaking activities must be ensured and foreseen by legislation. It is important that the participation of the public be recognized in the legal texts and that clear guidelines be defined with respect to its development.

Nevertheless, the legal framework should also provide the mechanisms necessary for solving conflicts which could possibly occur.

Management mechanisms should be established not only for ordinary situations but also to mitigate situations of crisis or emergency and to deal with accidents or water scarcity.

A better coordination of activities with an objective of integrated river basin management, will be achieved by defining priorities and their hierarchical organization.

Finally, the legal framework, as well as masterplans, must allow evolutions to reflect the realities and diversity of "field" situations.

When the choice is made of setting up a specific basin organization, it is then advisable to accurately study the following points:

limits of respective responsibilities between this institution and authorities in charge (after simulating a real situation),
mechanisms to be developed to ensure the preparation and approval of action plans, their control and follow-up and their up-dating.

Users' participation

All users concerned should be officially involved in the decision-making process.
Who is a "User"?
A "user" utilizes water (industrialists, electricity producers, farmers, population). This notion can be extended to people using water for recreational purposes (fishermen, leisure, etc...).

Why consult the users?
Acceptation and thus the feasibility of a long-term project and its successful completion require the following steps:

approval of project objectives by the users,
sharing of the long-term vision,
definition of priorities by the users,
getting the means, financial ones in particular, necessary to achieve the objectives.

In addition, during the debates, it appeared that dialogue with the users was the best means to solve conflicts on water use: "Dialogue is the beginning of wisdom".

A dialogue should take into account the impact of the decisions to be made. The more ambitious the project, or far reaching, the more widespread dialogue should be. On the contrary, a project of local interest will need a more reduced and precise dimension.

Dialogue must be organized in the most decentralized way possible while taking local constraints and specificities into account.

In a general manner:

The extent of public participation in all planning processes must be unanimously approved.
Representatives of local elected officials and of all users must participate in the works regarding Development Schemes, with the help of experts from the Administration and specialized consulting firms.
Information must be clearly distinguished from dialogue. In the first case, the administration shares information with the public, it is a one-way process. Dialogue, implies a two-way process: the administration listens and takes the formulated comments into account.
The public participation process must be accessible to a wide range of people concerned: it is an open process that takes the diversity of the interested parties into account (representativeness).
In some States, it is necessary to change from a merely centralized approach to a decision-making process based on a wider decentralization.
Particular attention should be given to NGOs. Some of them are mere protesters, but others are well established in the field and can become partners in programmes involving an active participation of the population.

International cooperation

Water has no national or administrative boundary. Managing resources shared between several neighbouring States should take this reality into account and be organized on the scale of the catchment area concerned.

Managing a common resource - which can lead to conflicts - implies the participation of all riparian states to define the rights and duties of each of them.

The consistency of national and international programmes is a prerequisite to optimizing results. It requires the harmonization of:

objectives that must be consistent,
actions at sector and multisector levels.

The sectoral and multisectoral interdependence and compatibility are prime notions to be taken into account when preparing national and international programmes.

An informal cooperation can be established between basin organizations of 2 neighbouring countries to efficiently solve a local crisis, but this will never lead to large-scale enterprises nor to the mobilization of important financial means.

Setting up a formal framework can ensure long-term commitments whose constraints will bind the successive local decision-makers.

An international agreement signed by a State might imply a progressive adaptation of national regulations to meet the agreement requirements.

This framework is a prerequisite for mobilizing suitable means at the level of each country. Setting up a structure might be envisaged. The prime condition is that this structure must be given an official status to implement programmes requiring important financial means from various financing agencies.

The setting up of a light structure (secretariat, logistics) is a dynamic and low cost solution.

Setting up a larger international organization implies a predefinition of the delegation of responsibilities accepted by the States.

The mandate of this organization may comprise:

information organization and dissemination,
assistance to operators in a crisis,
contribution to solving specific problems that exceed the national territory,
planning of actions at the level of the international basin that will be consistent with national programmes,
mobilization of national and international financial means.

Funding of projects

A reliable document must be prepared with the earliest possible assistance of all potential funding organizations: States, Regions, Departments, Local Communities, Basin Organizations, the European Union and other international Organizations, or NGOs. Loans can also be requested from institutional and private banks.

A request to banks implies that the developer will provide guarantees as to reimbursement, possibly through a financial participation of the users. This has a direct impact on the living standard of the population and thus requires that people be properly informed of the positive or negative consequences of the project.

In the case of a joint venture, it is necessary to plan a preliminary agreement for its implementation but also for the management and operation of the infrastructure thus set up.

Gentiana Serbu (Apele Romane)
Fax : (40-1) 312 21 74/323 85 21

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