Whose Waters : large-scale agricultural development in the Wami-Ruvu River Basin, Tanzania

Abstract

This thesis explores how the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) framework deals and manages the competing interest of water users in a river basin. With a focus on the Tanzanian governments’ development policies on the one hand, and the recent upsurge in large-scale commercial agricultural investments that lay claim to massive amounts of water resources on the other, I argue that the IWRM framework allows the phenomenon of water grabbing to take place. This study builds on the current literature concerned with the ‘water grab’ phenomenon, through specifically focusing on IWRM as the water governance framework, which may in turn facilitate or impede this phenomenon. My research findings suggest that the IWRM framework is unable to efficiently and equitably allocate water amongst water users in the midst of government driven development policies that promote large-scale agricultural development. Rather, powerful actors that seek to meet their own agenda are able to ‘highjack’ and manipulate the IWRM framework. As this study points out, the manner in which water grabbing is then made possible, and which implicates the IWRM framework, is through undue influence, the creation of new alliances by the stakeholders involved in water governance, as well as through acts of dispossession. By investigating how the IWRM framework is implemented in the Wami-Ruvu River Basin, I illustrate how the IWRM framework contributes to the water grab phenomenon: firstly, the institutional shortcomings of the IWRM setup in the basin; secondly, the contestations around the water permit application process; and thirdly, the lack of human and financial capacity of the Wami-Ruvu River Basin Office. I conclude that through its various aspects and the various stakeholders involved in water resource management, IWRM has failed to effectively and fairly manage the conflicting priorities of water users in the basin. This has meant that some water users are excluded from gaining access and rights to water recourses, which ultimately give rise to instances of water grabbing.