Govern and regulate the sector

It is vital that the key actors in the water sector work across boundaries to place water at the centre of the future growth and well-being of South Africa. Dr Inga Jacobs-Mata from the WISA 2020 Technical Committee unpacks the theme ‘govern and regulate the sector’.

What are the existing governancechallenges within the sector?

IJ-M The South African water sector faces a myriad of challenges and governance is at the centre of them all. It is only through well-governed institutions that we will achieve the necessary improved performance to recover the sector. There are a great deal of inefficiencies and a lack of accountability and transparency linked to the governance and oversight of the water sector.

However, we must remember that governance does not equal government. Achieving the SDGs is not only a government responsibility; we need a multifaceted approach across all sectors of society. In the public sector, we need to improve financial management and technical capacity at both the local and national level. In the private sector, we need greater corporate accountability around water use and water security. In civil society, communities need to play their part in understanding the economic and social value of water.

Water scarcity, exacerbated by climatic change, has not made governance measures any easier, and we’ve ended up with a very reactive response to these challenges. Duplicated roles and responsibilities have resulted in inefficiencies, as well as competing interests and demands. We need a clearer understanding of power and functions across the entire water cycle, as well as clearer institutional arrangements to advance good governance.

How can the various role playersbetter collaborate?

There is a dire need for cross-sector, multi-stakeholder partnerships that bring in the public sector, private sector and civil society. Where possible, we need to break down silos; where not, we must learn to work within and across silos to achieve the desired outcome.

Water stewardship is a good way to strengthen collaboration, as it calls on all stakeholders to not only understand their own usage, challenges and constraints, but also consider contextual factors beyond the fence line. This requires us to look at shared water security challenges and collaborate to achieve them. The private sector can and has been leading in this space, and we need to focus on bringing public institutions and civil society on board as equal partners.

What can we look forward to at theWISA 2020 Conference?

One of the interesting topics in this stream is the idea of supported selfsupply. This involves empowering communities to become contractors, financiers and managers of their own small-scale infrastructure developments. We must explore this from a governance perspective in order to uplift communities and augment water supply in remote areas. Another topic is that of hybrid water law and how we operationalise it.

This idea behind hybrid water law comes from the notion that our statutory water law, including the National Water Act (No. 10 of 1998), is based on fundamentally colonial systems. While useful, the implementation of the Act has almost criminalised some of the most vulnerable in our community, namely smallholder farmers who cannot pay for water-use licences.

Hybrid water law seeks to create a system that regulates big users while providing more flexible systems based on customary water law for smaller users. We will also explore the waterenergy-food nexus and the governance challenges preventing us from achieving it.

I would also like to encourage all speakers and attendees to explore the topic of governance through the lens of Covid-19 and how we enable good water governance in a post-Covid-19 society. Ultimately, it is the roles of our sector leader that are crucial in getting #AllHandsOnDeck for an integrated approach towards a secure water future.