The need for “sound” and “effective water governance” for achieving the objectives of the international community in the field of water management and essential public services such as WSS and public health is now widely recognized (Asian Development Bank, 1995; Buse et. al., 2000; European Commission, 2000, 2002c; Taylor, 2002; Global Water Partnership, 2003; UNDP, 2003; Camdessus, 2003).
It is also widely acknowledged that achieving success will require coordinated action at different levels (subsidiarity principle), with public participation by all sectors (active citizenship), including women and children (UN et al 1998; UNDP, 2003), and transparency. However, these requirements of “good governance”, which are already difficult to achieve in developed countries, will demand far-reaching and radical changes in the prevailing policy frameworks being implemented in developing countries in order to produce successful outcomes.
In specific reference to the rational management of water, governance has been defined as the “range of political, social, economic and administrative systems that are in place to develop and manage water resources, and the delivery of water services” (Global Water Partnership, 2003). This has important implications at all levels –global, regional, national, and local– and “good governance” is now considered as a prerequisite for the successful implementation of basin-wide IWM programmes, as envisaged for instance in the European Union’s Water Framework Directive (WFD) (European Union, 2000).
Likewise, achieving effective governance at all levels has become a central concern in public health policy, prompting an ongoing international debate whereby environmental health is increasingly salient (UN, 1994, 1995; Buse et. al., 2000; Langer et. al., 2000, McMichael, 2000; Woodward et. al. 2000; McGranahan et. al., 2001; Taylor, 2002). Conversely, lack of good governance is regarded as a major constraint to development, and therefore donors, aid agencies, and international financial entities are increasingly requiring the adoption of “good governance” principles in developing countries as a condition for loans and other aid instruments.
Needless to say, “good governance” in this particular sense implies democratic governance. However, recent experiences have confirmed what social scientists and historians had already demonstrated long ago in relation to the governance of water resources : though water governance is closely linked with issues of overall societal governance, the interrelationship between the two can adopt very different forms as sound and efficient water governance can perfectly be achieved in the context of highly authoritarian and undemocratic political systems while highly democratic and participative models do not guarantee effective water governance (Global Water Partnership, 2003).
By analogy, the problematic interrelation between societal and sectoral governance can also be identified in the governance of essential services such as WWS or public health. Therefore, the increasing consensus around the crucial importance of adopting “good governance” practices such as promoting citizen participation, accountability, and transparency is not the result of an empirically proven model, but is rather derived from a complex array of factors including normative preferences and social struggles for the democratization of decision-making processes.