Polycentric Governance and Irrigation Reform in Kenya

Abstract

In Kenya, as in many developing countries, centralized control over water resources was implemented to improve agricultural productivity. By the 1980s, however, Kenya's postindependence policies of bureaucratic control were in disarray, and conflicts over water use were common. More recently, Kenya has embarked on a series of reforms that create a polycentric approach to water governance, in which decision making about water resources is shared among multiple, overlapping local, regional, and national authorities. Drawing on archival and field research, we examine these reforms in their historic context and argue that whereas centralized control was poorly adapted to the Kenyan context, polycentric governance is better suited to Kenya's variable social and ecological conditions and the available resources of its administrative agencies.

Why infrastructure still matters: unravelling water reform processes in an uneven waterscape in rural Kenya

“…Moreover, the intake structures with control valves protected with three locks might have benefitted downstream users (see also Baldwin et al 2015), but did little to protect the WUA members from misuse of water within their own network. Especially the decision of the WRMA to grant the WUAs water permits before any storage facilities are in place is questionable: while it has increased the revenue of WRMA, it has weakened the position of the members to demand further infrastructural investments from their leaders.…”

“…Instigated by a perceived increase in the competition of water (Baldwin et al 2015), yet similar to water reforms that took place elsewhere in the world since the 1980s, the Kenyan water reform policies no longer emphasize the role of the government to provide water to the citizens, but focus on creating an enabling environment for other parties to provide water. As such the Kenyan government, technically and financially supported by the World Bank and overseas development agencies, reduced its investments in the development, operation and maintenance of water infrastructure and concentrated its efforts on managing water resources (Sambu 2011).…”

“…In 2001, a process was initiated to establish the overarching Likii water resource users association (WRUA) in line with the legal reforms and in response to perceived imminent conflicts over water between upstream and downstream users (Baldwin et al 2015). This process was initiated by the Laikipia Research Programme funded by the Swiss Development Cooperation together with one of the large-scale flower farmers who had the capability and resources to mobilize the parties involved (Liniger et al 2005).…”

“…They took up primarily an oversight role in the water sector in which they attempt to steer and control institutions that govern decision making over water resources by drafting regulatory frameworks, disseminating organizational blueprints and specifying key principles. As such, rather than directly manipulating the distribution of water resources and steering investments in infrastructural development (Ruigu 1988;Ngigi 2002), the Kenyan bureaucrats became involved in crafting an institutional change process in the hope that it would lead to specific material outcomes aligned with their political ideals and ambitions envisioned in the policy reform process (Liniger et al 2005;Baldwin et al 2015). The central question we aim to answer in this paper is how does this change in policy approach unfold in practice and how does it affect water resource configurations, here defined as the materialized division in control over, access to, and distribution of water between water users sharing the same water resource?…”

Community Water Governance on Mount Kenya: An Assessment Based on Ostrom’s Design Principles of Natural Resource Management

“…An early success of this reform was the mitigation, and in many cases resolution, of conflicts between upstream and downstream users (Baldwin et al 2015).…”