 Hello, I'm David Patal, I'm a researcher in the climate change group at IIED. My work focuses on climate resilience and local governance, particularly in the drylands of East Africa and especially Kenya and Tanzania. A lot of what I do involves developing and assessing participatory planning tools. That's activities that allow communities to participate meaningfully in local planning processes. I've worked on toolkits to bring out the specific climate resilience needs of women and youth, but I'm also interested in digital participatory mapping. That's a technique that allows local people to map out their land use patterns and explain them to government. Today's presentation is called Poor Governances Worse Than Drought, and we will discuss issues around water development in the drylands. Thank you for listening and we look forward to the discussion afterwards. Despite billions of dollars of investment in water development over multiple decades, access to clean and reliable water remains a mirage for millions of people, particularly in LDCs. It's been estimated that in 2017, 54.7% of people in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa lacked access to even a basic drinking source. This is a really shocking failure to meet the aspirations of sustainable development goal number six. It's particularly acute during the COVID pandemic when access to soap and water for hand washing is critical to avoid the spread of disease. There is, however, another failing that's less visible and not sufficiently appreciated, that of failing to pay careful attention to the political and power dynamics that surround water development. Ignoring these can undermine local people's livelihood systems, degrade the environment, trigger social tensions and exacerbate poverty. Today's talk will explore how water development interventions intersect with wider complex power dynamics at multiple scales. It will present three case studies of water development in dryland environments in northern Kenya, where the main livelihood system is pastoralism. Now in these areas, the government and development agencies have broadly agreed that water scarcity is the major issue for development. They've also concluded that the solution is to build a lot of water points throughout the territory. Today's talk shows how taking power into account unsettles those simplistic assumptions. The first case study will show how water development has often been used to exercise power over communities. The second shows a more positive view, how water development can involve power with and power between local communities, helping them meet their priorities. Lastly, the third example shows how water development can address issues of unequal power within communities. The talk will conclude with some principles for using water infrastructure planning and governance that explicitly embrace power and show how water governance can serve as an entry point for multiple objectives, addressing marginalization, sustainable livelihoods, gender and social equity, and building climate resilience. To really understand the political and power dimensions of water development in dryland pastoralist areas, one needs to appreciate the pivotal role of water in pastoralist livelihood systems. In fact, water is key to the sustainable use of variable and dispersed resources in the environment. In northern Kenya, there are distinct rainy seasons when fresh nutritious pastures grow and when surface water is temporarily available. You can see that on the left here on the slide. These are followed by dry seasons when the pastures gradually dry up and lose their nutritional value. Surface water disappears and people in livestock rely on underground water, sometimes having to dig deep into the riverbeds of seasonal water courses. Pastoralists in northern Kenya have developed a system of communal management for making the most of this changing availability of resources across the environment. They collectively agree to set aside some areas for grazing their animals in the wet season when surface water is abundant. Other areas are set aside only for dry season grazing or as drought reserves. These are only to be used at times of intense climate stress. Here the grass is left to grow during the rainy season, creating a stock of fodder which is saved for livestock in the driest periods or during droughts. But they've got to be careful to protect these areas to make sure that no grazing takes place in the wet season and these areas can be extensive and very difficult to police. Control of water is the linchpin of this whole system because animals need both water and pasture to survive. Grass without nearby water is useless. So if you can ration or control water near a protected dry season grazing area, you can completely prevent grazing out of season and you can control the number of animals consuming the resource. In practice, what this means is that pastoralists generally have a few strategically placed water points in their dry season grazing areas and drought reserves. These points are carefully managed by local institutions that regulate access as a function of the availability of the surrounding pasture. These institutions also keep the peace with other nearby pastoralist groups that may want to make use of the pasture. But as the case studies will show, unequal power dynamics in the development of water infrastructure can easily disrupt or undermine these traditional land use systems leading to reduced livestock productivity, environmental degradation and social conflict. Our first case study is from Wajir, a vast arid county in the northeast of Kenya bordering Ethiopia and Somalia. It's a nomadic pastoralist economy with cattle, camels, goats, sheep and donkeys. This case study highlights how water infrastructure development can be an expression of power over a community. It shows what happens when water development is based on top-down interventions which are informed by negative policy narratives. These policy narratives that perhaps perceive pastoralism to be inefficient, backwards, and a cause of environmental degradation. In the late 1960s in Wajir, a livestock development project funded by USAID and CEDA tried to end traditional land use systems of wet and dry season grazing. They wanted to introduce the ranching model of livestock production instead of mobile pastoralism. They tried to partition the range lands into standard grazing blocks. Now water development was an integral part of this project of wholesale transformation. Four holes were drilled to provide water for each of the new grazing blocks created. The whole system was regulated by project technicians who would limit livestock numbers with regular offtake and destocking. By the mid-1990s, the ranching schemes had failed and they had been abandoned. The drivers of water development then changed. The location of water infrastructure was determined by the ambitions of politicians from outside the county working together with local clan-based elites. There were clear electoral benefits in establishing new settlements to concentrate votes and many new water points were built to serve these new settlements. They were built regardless of local existing patterns of land use. It was political manipulation that drove the siting of water. So what are the consequences of this type of top-down or politically motivated water development, this power over local pastoralists? What's been happening in Wajir is that too much water is being supplied in the wrong places. It's being supplied without concern for the delicate ecological balance between water and grazing. That means that the distinction between wet season, dry season and drought reserve areas has largely broken down over the decades. The map on this slide shows the location of the most important water points in Wajir in 2019. It's taken from a recent project undertaken by IIED in collaboration with the county of Wajir. The blue lozenges indicate the location of boreholes and the bigger the lozage, the more water the borehole can dispense. These can be particularly disruptive for traditional land use systems. More water means more animals will use the surrounding pastures, and many of the boreholes will be operational throughout the year. Then there's the sheer number of water points. Back in the 1940s, there were only four water points located in dry season grazing reserves, which is almost certainly too few. But by the early 2000s, with various rounds of water investments, this had increased to well over 75. And this enthusiasm for spending on new water points continues to this day. Between 2013 and 2018, the number of boreholes in Wajir rose from 98 to 272. As a result of unplanned water provision, the rangeland hardly gets any periods to recover, resulting in overgrazing, degradation and loss of valuable biodiversity. This decreases the productivity of pastures livelihoods and increases climate vulnerability. So what if we do water development differently? What if we use water development as power with communities, allowing local people at the village level to decide their own priorities? Our next case study comes from the nearby Kenyon County of Visiollo. From one of IED's key initiatives in the drylands, the County Climate Change Fund, or CCCF. The approach involves setting up and building the capacity of climate change committees elected by villages. The committee members work with their own communities to choose, plan and implement climate change investments that meet local priorities and needs. They work to known budgets and receive comprehensive training that allows them to act as real partners with local government in the formal planning system. So the community is in the saddle and it's thinking about development and resilience. What do they decide to prioritize knowing they have a limited budget? Unsurprisingly, water is a key priority, but among the various investments in the first wave of CCCF investments, one stands out. Take a look at this land use map of Visiollo. Notice the areas in green and in pink. Greener areas set aside for dry season grazing, and pink, their critical reserves set aside for periods of drought. The grey bits are not controlled so carefully, but mostly used in the wet season. Where you see the star, that's the Yamiche water pan. It was built by an external development agency several decades ago, but it was built without consulting the local community. Now, when the local community was given a budget and asked to decide on climate change investments, what do you think they decided to do? They asked to fill in the water pan, to close it, to stop up the supply of water. And the rationale was critical. The Yamiche water pan, they said, was in the wrong place and was not under their control. It's bang in the middle of an emergency drought reserve, a place where no grazing should be permitted during normal times. The Yamiche water pan was making the area open access, like leaving an open door to a storeroom. It was also causing conflict with neighbouring Somali pastoralists who were hopping across the border, helping themselves to the drought pasture whenever they wanted, and you can see that with the green arrow. So the community wanted the Yamiche water pan closed. At the same time, they wanted a nearby borehole rehabilitated. The borehole was a water source they could control. They could close it completely and deny access to the area until an extreme dry season or drought event occurred. That's a clear demonstration of how control over water confers power in the drylands and how it's the key to sustainable range land management. How about the Somalis who were coming over the border? They lost out by losing the water pan. But in the drylands, neighbouring communities usually have traditions of negotiable and reciprocal rights of access to water in times of distress. So the Somali elders could formally request access to the Yamiche borehole at times of distress, and most likely this would be granted, but in a controlled fashion, so that it would be a managed commons, not a free-for-all. Planned access would reduce the potential for conflict, and that's an example of water developed as power between communities. So we have seen the positive benefits of empowering local people to take the lead in planning water resources. For a third and final case study, we return to Wajir County and explore how water governance and planning needs to consider power within the community too. Although pastoralist customer institutions are great for sustainable range land management, it is elder men who dominate them, and their primary focus is the well-being of the herd and their animals. Women in pastoralist communities are responsible for domestic water collection, but they are largely excluded from decision-making about natural resources under traditional systems. Their access rights to water are secondary, meaning that port livestock get watered first, and women may have long waiting times before they can draw water from a dirty, muddied water pan, dam or trough. As with any development intervention, water investments are embedded in local power dynamics at the village level too. We need to consider power within the community. Once again, it is attention to governance, attendance to who participates in decision-making that is key to climate-resilient, equitable, socially inclusive outcomes. When designing local community planning institutions through the CCCF approach, IIED has engaged with these unequal gender dynamics in a number of ways. For example, individuals did not need to be literate to qualify for election to community planning committees, something that often bars women from participating. And prior to each election, the community was sensitized to the importance and relevance of having women on the committees. Once elected, members received special training and capacity building to build their skills. That's essential for pastoralist women who lack the confidence and skills for public engagement. The measures weren't perfect. As we all know, representation does not guarantee voice, and inequitable gender norms are still deeply entrenched in local pastoralist culture and traditions. But in communities in Wajir, the inclusion of women in planning processes led to very simple yet visible and effective changes in the design of the investments they selected. Changes that meant the needs of domestic water were also considered in addition to livestock's needs. The initial investment proposals that planning committees put together, they featured the usual fencing and protection of waterpans to prevent unregulated use of the source. You can see the problems that they were having in the before pictures at the left. They also included, these plans also included a pumping system and tanks to channel water outside the fence to troughs. And these troughs were originally intended primarily for livestock. But the inclusion of women's perspectives in the design phase led to alterations of the original plans. As you can see in these photos from Vargadot and the lagbok called waterpans, the piping systems were also made to serve a dedicated water kiosk with taps for women collecting domestic water. This one innovation addressed both gender and health issues in one go. The point is not that the design was completely new. This has been done elsewhere in many different places. But to point out how we can use water investment planning and governance as an entry point for addressing issues of power within the community and we can achieve very real results. The case studies we have seen from the drylands show how deeply embedded water investments are in local power dynamics and political contexts. Investments that ignore these local contexts can undermine local people livelihood systems, degrade the environment, trigger social tensions and exacerbate poverty. But the case studies also show the potential for using water governance and planning as an entry point for challenging structural inequalities and power imbalances. It can be used to address historic and ongoing marginalization. It can help to build sustainable livelihoods and it can strengthen the climate resilience of the most exposed social groups. This brings us to some fundamental principles that have informed IID's work on governance and local government planning in the drylands in Kenya and elsewhere. Firstly, there's a basic need to understand and respect the logic of existing land use and systems of resource governance, recognizing how critical they are to sustainable livelihoods and climate resilience. Relatedly, there's a need to take a systemic and holistic approach rather than a sectoral one. The planners need to appreciate the complex interlinkages between the resources in the environment, the livelihood systems that depend on them and the institutions that mediate access to these resources. This implies, thirdly, that there needs to be a landscape approach to planning. We should consider the full geographical area within which pastoralism is being practiced, the migration shed, if you will. Administrative and national boundaries often do not match the pastoralist patterns of resource use and seasonal mobility, so planning cannot stop at an artificial boundary. Fourthly, subsidiarity. In rural areas, local people depend heavily on natural resources such as water. They understand their environment intimately and they experience the impacts of climate change most directly. Decision making about water resources should be locally led, taken at the lowest feasible level by the communities that depend on those resources. Fifthly, the formal planning system should work hand in hand with informal traditional systems and institutions to determine and understand the priorities of local people and to encourage solutions that go with the grain of local context and conditions. This is easiest to achieve in countries where devolution has been implemented. And lastly, we need to remember power dynamics at the community level. East African pastoralist societies are gerontocratic. Women and young people have distinctive development and climate resilience priorities, but they are often excluded from decision making. Socially just and climate resilient outcomes can only be achieved by addressing this power imbalance.