Poverty, Water and Local Development

WORKSHOP: This cross-continental and interdisciplinary workshop was jointly organised by the CLACSO-CROP Programme, Makerere University, The Nile Basin Programme (NBRP) and The Nordic Africa Institute (NAI).

Workshop programme

Over the last decades, the multilateral institutions and the development  agencies have promoted and strengthened a particular view of the relationship(s) between poverty, water, and development. In this conventional perspective, the fight against poverty is assumed to be a task that is essentially fulfilled by just providing water to the poor in order to meet their nutritional needs, cleaning and sanitation. In the 21st century, however, such an approach does not prevent the production, and reproduction of poverty through generations. 
 

Scholars from Africa and Latin America engaged in a fruitful exchange of views where common interests contrasted with different approaches and realities surrounding water allocation practices which were in general viewed as inequitable, inefficient, and unsustainable. The right to water emerged as an issue conditioned by quite different political and geographical situations on the two continents.

It was affirmed that since water is increasingly perceived as a scarce natural asset, “More Value per Drop" has become the new credo for achieving the same old goals. As a result, water governance institutions were seen as tacitly discriminating against poor households and economies. In order to create a socially equitable and sustainable development, the orthodox view of the water-poverty-development nexus was consistently questioned by participants who are critically questioning the status quo and seeking to accelerate the pace towards a paradigmatic change in the study of the multiple links among poverty, water, and development.

Seventeen academics from Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Mauritius, Morocco, Tanzania and Uganda) and Latin America (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru) were selected from 40 abstracts submitted. The results of these discussions and presentations will be edited by David Barkin (Autonomous Metropolitan University of Xochimilco, Mexico), Elma Montaña (National University of Cuyo, Argentina) and Edward K. Kirumira (Makerere University, Uganda) and published in the CROP International Studies in Poverty Research Series.

Call for papers - Kampala 2011