Dr John Butterworth of NRI, Dr Barbara van Koppen of IWMI and Dr Ibrahim Juma of the Faculty of Law of the University of Dar es Salaam are co-organizing a 3-day International Workshop on African Water Laws, hosted by the South African Department of Water Affairs and Forestry at the Willow Park Conference Centre near Johannesburg during the last week of January. The key theme of the Workshop is the issue of plural legislative frameworks for rural water management. Whilst the Workshop's focus is on water legislation in sub-Saharan Africa, with keynote presentations from Eastern and Southern Africa, other international contributors will bring experiences and perspectives from elsewhere, especially from South Asia and South America.
Depleted spring in Tanzania
The Workshop programme includes presentations of papers, with group and plenary discussions of key issues. The outputs of the Workshop will be:
- comparisons of ongoing national policy and legal reforms in Africa, and their impacts on small-scale rural water development;
- case studies on the effects of statutory and customary arrangements on water use by communities, especially for poor women and men;
- recommendations and guidelines for water management and legal pluralism to foster sustainable development for the poor in Africa, informed by experience in Asia and Latin America; and
- a peer-reviewed publication of the papers presented at the Workshop.