February 2005
Research and Knowledge Transfer

Water and International Policy Making

Academics at the University of Bradford are challenging the consensus in the international approach to water resource management in Third World countries.

Policy-makers, practitioners, consultants and academics from a variety of disciplines recently participated in the inaugural meeting of an Economic and Social Research Council seminar series on 'Water Governance - Challenging the Consensus'.

The seminar series is hosted by the Bradford Centre for International Development in partnership with the Overseas Development Institute (London) and the World Wide Fund for Nature.

The series is highly topical as water governance features prominently in international development policy making. Improved access to water is seen as critical to achieving the Millennium Development Goals, and in March the UN Decade for Freshwater will be launched.

The seminar series aims to critically address key issues in such policy making with a specific focus on poverty, politics and environmental change.

The variety of participants and wide dissemination from the seminars is aimed at impacting on policy formulation. Frances Cleaver and Tom Franks, who are co-ordinating the series from Bradford, draw on their different backgrounds in water resource management.

Frances Cleaver has worked in Africa and Asia on the local level management of water supplies in relation to land and other livelihood resources. She is particularly interested in pursuing issues of poverty and power and how access to water is shaped through institutions such as water associations, farmer committees and village councils.

At the first meeting she gave a paper which scrutinised poverty-oriented approaches, entitled 'From the Local to the Global: does the micro-level matter in policy making for Millennium Development Goals?'.

Tom Franks combines academic and professional experience in water resource management, with a particular focus on the management of wetlands amongst other competing demands for water.

This has led him to a concern with the institutions and processes which support water governance, and the linkages between water and other forms of governance.

His paper for the seminar 'Water Governance - What is the Consensus?' identified the range of issues which the seminar series is intended to address. The next meeting in the series will be hosted by partners at the Overseas Development Institute in London and will be entitled 'Poverty, access and social exclusion'.

• For a full programme of meetings, papers, contacts and resources logon to www.bradford.ac.uk/acad/bcid/seminar/water

14 February 2005

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