Doing things differently: Stories about Local Water Governance in Egypt, Jordan and Palestine

Abu-Elseoud, May; Al-Zoubi, Rania; Mizyed, Buthaina; Abd-Alhadi, Firas T.; Barghout, Mona; de la Harpe,Jean; Schouten, Ton (2007)

It is increasingly recognised that sharing responsibilities with users is a vital part of addressing water scarity, unequal distribution, and pollution problems. Sharing responsibilities with the different users is vital so that there is joint identification of local water problems, shared decision making, concerted action and empowerment of users and decentralised agencies.

These concepts sit easily in documents and reports, but putting them into practice is much more difficult. It challenges the traditional way that things have been done, it challenges attitudes, it challenges how people communicate and cooperate and it challenges existing institutions and networks. These are things that do not change easily. They have been there forever, for a reason.

Local water governance is about new policies, platforms, networks and institutions. But making these work is about people. When it works, it is about people challenging the traditional way of how things ‘ought to be’. These are people who do things differently; people with a bit of courage.

Some of the stories in this book are success stories that describe how interacting with the EMPOWERS project and using its tools, resulted in better development in many of the villages.

But EMPOWERS is not a magic formula, and some of the stories also show that local tradition and stubborn patterns of dependency and favouritism also hamper development, no matter how well the participatory planning is done.

The complete storybook or parts of it can be downloaded from the links below at the end of the page.

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Table of Contents

- Introduction

- EMPOWERS

- Background

• The EMPOWERS project
• The EMPOWERS approach
• Process documentation in EMPOWERS

- Stories from Egypt

• It depends on the people themselves
• Governmental official Eman’s empowerment
• Overcoming bureaucracy within bureaucracy
• From governmental planning to participatory planning
• Community speaks out for safe project construction
• Nagah on the road to success
• I am nothing

- Stories from Jordan

• Balqa Governorate
• Changing dreams, changing perspectives
• Ekhlas Al Balawneh and the changes in Rweiha
• Struggling with decentralisation
• Thinking strategically
• Trusting that ordinary people can understand and find the best solutions
• Will the water problems in Jordan be solved by Omm Ameen?
• You cannot tell your sister that she is ugly

- Stories from Palestine

• Jalboun community decides who gets what
• Omm Hamzeh’s daily quest for water
• Water under occupation
• Women solving their water problems
• The rights and responsibilities of water users
• No longer an area only for men
• Fatima from silence to a voice
• Personal interests to a joint decision

NB: A related publication to this storybook is the guide to process documentation, "The Inside Story: Process Documentation, Experiences from EMPOWERS" (2007).

This storybook is also available in Arabic

Copyright © 2007 The EMPOWERS Partnership.
Extracts of this publication may be reproduced in any non-advertising, non-profit making context provided the source is acknowledged as follows:

Abu-Elseoud, May; Al-Zoubi, Rania; Mizyed, Buthaina; Abd-Alhadi, Firas T.; Barghout, Mona; de la Harpe,Jean; Schouten, Ton (2007).

Doing Things Differently: Stories about Local Water Governance in Egypt, Jordan and Palestine

Publisher: INWRDAM on behalf of the EMPOWERS Partnership

ISBN 978-9957-8624-7-3

To order hard-copies of this publication, please contact:

INWRDAM

P.O. Box 1460, Amman 11941, Jordan
Phone: 962 6 5332993
Fax: 962 6 5332969
E-mail: inwrdam@nic.net.jo

Disclaimer: EMPOWERS was co-funded by the European Union MEDA Water Programme. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of the authors and cannot be taken to reflect the views of the European Union.

- Download:

EMPOWERS_Storybook_Eng.pdf  (1.90 MB)