Water Governance

According to previous literatures, the act of participation by the public had proven to bring success in producing sustainable water resource management (Jansson, 2005). However the remaining questions were who should participate, when, why and to what extent is public in the context of ‘public participation’. Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development highlighted that public participation is crucial when dealing with environmental related issues (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, 1992; cited in Kakebeeke, Wouters & Bouman, 2000). Anyone who are concerned with the quality of water management should involve themselves enough to bring improvement to the environment, increase liability and transparency of water planning and also able to raise awareness relating to the water management issue. But we should also consider that interpretation of public participation has experienced change over the years. Based on Tokich’s (n.d) claim, in the past, public participation was only concerned with giving the public a chance to voice their opinions on projects and recently, public participation is now known to involve both the stakeholder and the public (Tokich, n.d). Both of the categories of participant are now responsible not only in giving comments but also in preparing the project and decision-making (Tokich, n.d). The association of the two groups can in turn enhance governmental policy and hence the management of water governance altogether (Van Ast et al., 2003). Interaction is illustrated in the above diagram. Moreover, customers know what is their desired formation of water industry but are often restricted to inform environmental managers as they lacked access to giving comments. Thus,...

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...lving stakeholders in integrated river basin planning in England and Wales, Water Resource Management, 21(2007), 331-349.

• Page B. & Bakker K. (2005) Water governance and water users in a privatised water industry: participation in policy-making and in water services provision: a case study of England and Wales, Int. J. Water, 3(1), 38-60.

• Tokich S.H. (n.d.) Public participation under the EU Water Framework Directive - processes and possible outcomes, in; A preparatory paper for the NOLIMP workshop on public participation and cost-effectiveness analysis.

• Van Ast J.A. & Boot S.P. (2003) Participation in European water policy, Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, 28, 555-562.

• Woods D. (2008) Stakeholder involvement and public participation: a critique of Water Framework Directive arrangements in the United Kingdom, Water and Environment Journal, 22, 258-264.