Paper short abstract:

The paper explores community-driven appropriation of Water User Associations as a form of local civic innovation in the field of natural resource management. Using two case studies from Morocco, this paper aims to show how local collective action can produce effective institutional change.

Paper long abstract:

During the last decades, Community-Based Natural Resource Management programs have been an important attempt to involve local communities in the governance of natural resources. In particular the establishment of Water User Associations (WUAs) has been considered as a means to promote more inclusive and participatory local forms of irrigation management. These institutions have had mixed results. Therefore, recently it has been questioned to what extent these institutions have enabled communities to gain voice and decision-making power and, more broadly, whether WUAs are adequate institutions to represent and address local needs. Going beyond the debate about success or failure of WUAs as donor-funded water management institutions, the paper discusses two case studies from Morocco and analyzes how forms of local collective (community-driven) action have transformed and re-configured WUAs institutional arrangements. In both cases, the community-driven action led to innovation in the institutional domain, producing hybrid modes of governance through an institutional bricolage that combines administrative norms with local socio-cultural rules and practices.

This paper explores the local appropriation of WUAs as a form of civic innovation in the field of water governance with effects on local participation and deliberation. In certain cases this appropriation opens the possibility for co-production of knowledge and for the introduction of technical innovations, such as the adoption of drip irrigation. The paper concludes by showing how local collective agency reshapes externally imposed governance models.