Abstract
Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is a popular approach to decentralising the management of water resources. At its heart, IWRM uses the river basin as the scale of water management to enhance participation in decision-making. It further attempts to manage water and land-related issues in an integrated manner, considering social, economic, political, and
ecological outcomes. In 1998 South Africa adopted IWRM in its water laws and policies, and given its history, calls its approach ‘developmental water management’, which promotes equity
as its core principle. The thesis answers the following question: What types of interventions (including related to the enabling environment, institutional arrangements, and management instruments) can be implemented to achieve developmental water management (DWM) in South Africa? I utilised sequential mixed methods of evidence mapping, systematic review and in-depth interviews
to: a) identify existing evidence on the reported outcomes of specific IWRM interventions in
South Africa; b) the reported challenges in the implementation of specific IWRM interventions
in South Africa; and c) the policy implications of the review findings about the implementation
of enabling environment IWRM interventions in South Africa, to answer the overall question of the thesis.
This research used the typology of IWRM interventions that the Global Water Partnership (GWP) identified, to generate an evidence map. The GWP framework covers three broad areas of IWRM interventions: an enabling environment, institutional arrangements and
management instruments. The intervention categories cover water governance, address adequate institutional arrangements, and encourage broad stakeholder participation in water planning and operating decisions. The evidence map revealed that interventions such as policy, legal framework and understanding of water endowment yield numerous but different results that cover the issue of social equity, socio-economic development, and the
establishment of organisations for the full realisation of decentralising IWRM. I then used the evidence map to inform the systematic review, which showed that IWRM is a complex paradigm that has faced many challenges in its implementation in South Africa. The interview
with DWS officials agreed with the review's findings that IWRM is a complex paradigm. The interview findings provided a compelling rationale for adopting DWM as an alternative paradigm in water resources management in developing countries for its foregrounding of
equity.
Using a feminist political ecology framing, my analysis of findings from the map, review and interviews revealed three considerations for the successfully implementation of DWM, namely
Jalisa PhD iii
the issues of participation, power, and equity. The first one is the issue of participation, where we should see participation in IWRM by different stakeholders. The second one is the issue of power, especially the intersection of race and gender which has to be accounted for in
DWM. The last one is the issue of equity. The thesis shows these three issues as crucial in implementing successful DWM. The thesis then contributes to the conceptualisation of DWM through the evidence of implementing IWRM interventions in South Africa.
Keywords: IWRM; DWM; Evidence map; Systematic review; Participation; Power; Equity;
South Africa.