Water infrastructure projects are vital for life, as they provide the basic needs for human survival (food and clean water), and are crucial for socio-economic development and improvement of the general standard of living in any country. In most Sub-Saharan African countries, there exists a complex problem of poorly managed and inefficient water services, inadequate in terms of both quantity and quality. The problem is compounded by exponential population growth, especially in the urban areas, and lack of sufficient funding of water-related infrastructure. These problems, when combined with the prevailing poverty, are stifling economic growth and reducing an already low standard of living in most countries in the region. There is an urgent need and great demand for water infrastructure development projects to meet the requirements of the rising population throughout the region. This demand can only be fulfilled by well-conceived and managed water utility projects with the active participation of both public and private sectors. Public financing of water infrastructure projects in SSA has not only failed to meet the rising demand for water services but has also contributed to the existing debt burden in most countries in the region. There is a need for active 'private sector participation in financing and managing water infrastructure projects in SSA; however, this is only possible for projects with potential for revenue generation. A mechanism is proposed combining Integrated Water Catchment Management (IWCM) with private sector involvement in the financing, construction, operation and management of water infrastructure projects. Combining these strategies will form the basis of a Public-Private Partnership (PPP). The promotion of combining strategies is supported by a case study on the River Niger Catchment Area (RNCA) using a BOOT contract. A survey was conducted to evaluate consumers' willingness to pay and acceptance of privatised water supply services. The fact that an informal but extensive network of private water vendors already exists in virtually all Nigerian cities is also acknowledged. A further case study is based on management contract for some of the existing water utilities in RNCA.

The thesis investigates the long history of the drainage of the Lake Copais in Boeotia, Greece in the 19th and 20th century and examines the social, political and mainly the economic implications of the exploitation of the revealed lands in the wider area of Boeotia. The study begins with a geographical portrayal of the area concerned prior to the drainage which, together with its geological description and the climatic conditions in the past, provide the reader with vital introductory information. At the same time, the area's demographic structure after the drainage, presented in the second part, attempts to show not only the dynamics and capacities of the local population but also the possible effects of the drainage itself on the population changes. The survey is concentrated on the time period after 1900 and especially in the inter-war years. However, a historical account of the economic situation of the regions surrounding Lake Copais in the years before and immediately after the drainage is essential to comprehend the social and economic reasons that rendered the necessity of the project.After a brief reference to early unsuccessful efforts to drain Lake Copais, the thesis examines the nature of the foreign Company which finally undertook the operation, considering its investment strategies over the years. The frequent political and institutional obstacles raised by the Greek State, the long-standing conflicts between the Company and the Boeotian villagers and the difficult reclamation works are all important parameters of the Copais question which reveal the complex political, social and technical problems that were encountered. The attention is then focused on the exploitation of the Copais lands and its repercussions on the local economy. A comparative analysis, over a long period of time, of the organisation of the Copais estate, the characteristics of the land tenure system and the structure of land holdings reveal the main reasons for the relatively low productivity in the Copais lands and the belied expectations that had initially been entrusted both at local and national level. Research will also show the positive results obtained in the Copais estate in the later part of the inter-war period following radical changes in investment and land tenure policy.

Tourism is a highly important and diverse economic sector. All tourism activity relies directly and indirectly on water resources. While direct water use in hotels, golf courses and other tourism establishments is relatively well researched, the more substantial volumes of water used indirectly to produce goods which cater for tourism demand are poorly understood. The thesis develops and tests three innovative approaches as part of its overall aim of comprehensively quantifying total (direct and indirect) water demand and water productivity (water use in relation to economic output) across different tourism products. The first approach is based on the water footprint concept and uses readily available data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the Water Footprint Network. The second approach uses statistical segmentation and secondary tourism expenditure data, along with Environmental Input-Output (EIO) analysis, to create distinct tourist groups whose water use and productivity is subsequently compared. The third approach employs primary survey data along with a novel EIO model, in order to quantify the specific impacts of tourist dietary choices. The water scarce island of Cyprus, a popular tourism destination, serves as the central case study. The contribution of the thesis is primarily methodological, producing three methods of differing complexity thus offering a previously unavailable choice to academics and policy makers. Additionally, the approaches generate results with important theoretical and policy implications. Firstly, when both indirect and direct water use is taken into account, cheaper mass tourism is shown to have a higher water productivity compared to higher-spending tourists. With many destinations currently investing in attracting the latter group, this finding is of immediate relevance. Secondly, the findings highlight the importance of obtaining accurate information on dietary preferences in order to better manage the supply chain of key products which account for a significant amount of water consumption.

This thesis aims to assess the effects of climate change mediated through the watersheds of global dams on water resources delivered to those dams. Dams and reservoirs play an important role in social and economic development contributing water for 12-16% of global food production and providing around 20% of the world's energy supply through hydropower. The first part of this research has been dedicated to the further development of the first global geo-referenced database of dams (KCL GOOD2) that allows for modelling the impacts of land use and climate changes on water supplies. More than 36,000 dams were identified in a collaborative effort using an open source database (GEOWIKI) and Google Earth. This database was then used to extract all individual dam watersheds. These watersheds combined make up around 18% of global land mass which means that impacts of climate change can have profound impacts on the water resources delivered to dams. By combining the calculated watersheds of dams with climate model projections from the IPCC AR4, changes in the water balance in the catchments of these dams were calculated and changes in reservoir water level were estimated for a range of large dams. The AguaAndes/WaterWorld spatial hydrological model using a multi-GCM scenario was then applied to three case study dams in different climate regions around the world to evaluate directional changes in water and sediment supply. Sensitivity to climate and land cover changes of the basins containing the dams was assessed by running the model for a range of scenarios. The final part of this thesis describes the application of the AguaAndes/WaterWorld model to the Santa basin in Peru to assess the impacts of climate change on a small hydroelectric plant using several multi-GCM scenarios to address uncertainty in the projections.

The thesis analyses the development of negotiations for the management of the LoSinj Dolphin Reserve in Croatia. Interviews, meetings and observations were undertaken at all levels and stages of the negotiation process in order to provide a clear narrative of the development of the process. An actor orientated approach was taken to provide empirical material that could contribute to the convergence of two academic debates, common pool resource management and marine protected area policy. The LoSinj Dolphin Reserve provides a complex contextual case study with international, national, regional and local changes confusing the production of social capital to promote collective action. Development of the Croatian nation-state and its transition from State controlled to market system, coupled with conflicting issues of regional identity and local island context, and has significant impact on levels of trust and social integration. Finally a local non-government organisation provides the motivation for the designation of the Reserve and facilitation between the varying stakeholders and relevant authorities. The new paradigm of participation and co-management in protected areas for participative conservation provides for the overlaps within both commons and protected area literature. It is suggested that common pool resource scholarship can provide a framework for the development of marine protected areas, with certain contextual caveats. In turn marine protected area case studies can provide insights into other fields of commons research, particularly complex common pool resource theory.

This dissertation presents a case study of the evolution of water supply policy in Zambia, applying Rhodes and Marsh's 'policy network theoretical approach. Since this approach was developed in northern, industrialized countries, and has not been tested through application in developing countries, my research question is: can the policy network approach explain the policy process for peri-urban water supply in Lusaka, Zambia during the period 1991 to 2008? To answer this question and characterize the governance of the water sector, I undertook in-depth interviews with almost 50 respondents and reviewed relevant documents. After years of policy stagnation, the newly-elected Zambian government in 1991 embarked on a series of reforms, which divided responsibility for water supply between several ministries and levels of government, an inter-ministerial policy agency and commercial utilities. International actors brought in new funding and policy ideas, and the period of the 1990s was marked by a multiplication of models of water supply. Learning was adapted from both international and national experiences of peri-urban water supply. Two main policy experiments emerged, the commercial model and the community participation model, which developed relatively independently. In the latter years of the study period, due to the growing resource capacity of the Zambian government and the donors' agenda of aid harmonization, these two models became more integrated. The policy network approach did foresee this type of shift, from a phase of change with a diversity of actors and models, to a phase of policy consolidation and coordination. The network framework draws attention to an important set of policy dynamics. In its application to a developing country setting, however, the approach doesn't prepare the researcher for the marked differential between a weak state and strong donors, and generally hasn't worked out the complexities of relationships between international, local and community based organizations.

Today in Africa, water resources must be managed in an integrated manner. This is the message put forward by donors and governments in the last decades. Under Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM), water managers are requested to recognise the value of water as a social and economic development factor without threatening natural ecosystems and to take decisions with full public consultation. Much effort has gone into developing computer-based Decision Aids (DAs) with the aim to support agencies in implementing IWRM. But their design is challenging and there are still few examples of practical applications. The present thesis assessed the development and application of a DA model as a tool for water resources management in Africa, through a case study in the Upper Great Ruaha River Catchment, Tanzania. DA‟s ability to fit IWRM‟s requirements was examined and software engineering approaches were used with the aim to contribute to DA development sciences. Methods combined end-user participatory appraisal with the development of a DA in an iterative fashion and the testing of two successive versions. Results show that water managers needed a DA which could help narrowing down the knowledge gap that exists between water availability on the one hand, and water use and allocation on the other hand. This key result justified to streamline research on an “Exploratory DA” (user-oriented), as opposed to a “Research DA”. Exploratory DAs were found to enable users to explore potential solutions and increase their understanding of the water resource management system. Software engineering methods were useful in adapting to users‟ demand. Yet, exploratory DAs are not management tools in the sense of performance improvement, but rather “companion tools” aiming at improving the understanding of users before assisting them to take informed decisions. Unless this is achieved, results show that African water resources are at risk.

This thesis examines the effectiveness of transboundary water regimes. Water is the only scarce resource for which there is no known substitute. However, ecological sustainability of shared water resources is being lost in many countries as current international frameworks suffer from differences that exist between institutional functions, practices, objectives, and bio-physical properties. To address this gap, this thesis starts from the premise that analyses of the effectiveness of transboundary water regimes are capable of shedding light to prescribe transboundary water governance. This thesis explores effectiveness of a transboundary water regime in Africa, principally the Lake Victoria Basin, home to largest freshwater lake in Africa, and second largest lake in the world. It is an important source of local and international freshwater fisheries, benefiting about 35 million people locally. As such, the basin provides a globally significant but surprisingly under-researched venue for testing theoretical interpretations of transboundary water regime effectiveness using state of the art methodological approaches. By employing a Regime Analytic Levels Process model, never used before, data were collected through elite interviews and documentary analysis, analyzed, and then synthesized. The results are as follows. The regime creation process (inputs) was dominated by process factors mainly in implementing the operational directives of donors and development partners, rather than understanding the underlying problem factors. The regime architecture analysis (outputs) suggests that procedural (rather than substantive) characteristics formed the basis of the regime’s architecture. The regime impacts analysis shows the regime underperformed in relation to those components that addressed substantive concerns. The global effectiveness of the regime was 41.6 per cent, basically procedural in character. This suggests it failed to establish a ‘duty of care’ with insufficient ‘programme of measures’ that governed the conduct of actors in the long term. These findings suggest the regime is not sustainable. The following recommendations are suggested: to focus donor effort on substantive characteristics to socialize actors via a ‘duty of care’; to establish secure sources of funding to support long-term efforts; to merge the regime with wider national-level activities in the basin; and to establish a sufficient programme of measures, inform and prevent.

No description available.

Whilst the development of irrigation infrastructure has been proposed as a vehicle for poverty reduction in many developing countries, the distributional aspects of irrigation interventions, particularly households' level of access to irrigation water have rarely been explored. Furthermore, previous empirical studies on irrigation performance have been overtly objective and technical with little regard to farmers' needs and concerns. The premise of this is that 'objectivity' is a necessary but insufficient measure of access to irrigation water. In addition to this, whilst irrigation interventions have had some success in ensuring access to water for crop cultivation, the impact of such interventions have been varied amongst irrigation governed by different property right regimes. In response to these concerns, this multidisciplinary study uses mixed methodologies of data collection and analysis to explore a subjective measure of households' access to water from irrigation systems managed by different property right regimes. Using a case study approach, an in-depth institutional analysis of the three irrigation systems has been carried out to identify institutional factors which contributed to unequal level of access to irrigation water. The findings demonstrate that households' level of access to water is influenced by socio-economic status, the physical nature of the canal systems and institutional characteristics of the management regimes. The results from the quantitative analysis reveal a clear pattern of differentiated access to water in irrigation systems under different property right regimes. The results indicate that the tail-enders, female-headed households, dalits and small farmers appear to have weak access to water from the canals. However, farmers along these heterogeneities have different levels of access to water in irrigation systems governed by different property right regimes with farmers in the farmers managed irrigation system performing significantly better than the agency managed and jointly managed irrigation systems. The thesis concludes that institutional dimensions should be taken into consideration by policymakers in order to ensure better access to water in irrigation interventions.