The promise and perils of water reforms: Perspectives from Northern Ghana

Abstract

"The Ghanaian government, while aiming at the privatisation of the country’s \ndrinking water resources, initiated a wide reaching reform of the water \nsector in 1996. The country’s water resources are now officially under \nthe control of the Water Resources Commission (WRC), which propagates \nintegrated water resource management (IWRM), and has the task of managing \nthe country’s water resources efficiently, sustainably and equitably. Taking an irrigation scheme in Northern Ghana as an example, this article \nshows formal and informal constraints on the implementation of the water \nreform at the local level. Given the local political climate of legal pluralism \nand weak governance, the question arises as to how the WRC, with slender \nresources, is to implement resource management locally. As the WRC has also failed to influence important water sector decisions \non the national level, there is the danger that powerful local and national \ninterest groups use the reforms to legitimize their vested interest, thereby \nexcluding others and ignoring environmental concerns." (author's abstract)

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