The Implementation of Integrated Water Resources Management on a Local Level in Burkina Faso

Sammanfattning: This study seeks to investigate how Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) has been implemented on a local level in Burkina Faso, by focusing on 1) how the local context has been considered in the top-down implementation, and 2) what role formal and informal institutions play in the Local Water Committees (CLEs). Burkina Faso is facing issues of water scarcity, and in times of climate change management of water resources has become a topic of great concern. In 1992, the general principles of IWRM were presented at the Dublin conference. Since then, IWRM has been implemented in many countries across the world, and in West Africa, Burkina Faso has been a pioneering country when it comes to the implementation. Previous research on institutional reforms in development has shown that blueprint solutions tend to fail on adaptation to the local context. Furthermore, both formal and informal institutions need to be acknowledged in institutional analyses. In order to answer the research focus in this thesis, a field study has been conducted in Burkina Faso. It is a comparative case study of two Local Water Committees within one Water Agency, where semi-structured informant interviews and an ethnographic approach have been used as methods. It is shown that the implementation, to some extent, has failed to consider the local context. However, the findings indicate that the local context in itself is an ambiguous concept that is highly complex due to history, culture and recent political changes in Burkina Faso. Informal institutions are shown to have some impact on the possibilities to work, however, future research is needed to establish this further.