The politics of negotiation and implementation: a reciprocal water access agreement in the Himalayan foothills, India

In this paper, we examine the on-the-ground realities of upstream-downstream negotiations and transactions over ecosystem services. We explore the engagement, negotiation, implementation, and postimplementation phases of a “reciprocal water access” (RWA) agreement between village communities and mun...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecology and society 2016-01, Vol.21 (2), p.37, Article art37
Main Authors: Kovacs, Eszter K., Kumar, Chetan, Agarwal, Chetan, Adams, William M., Hope, Robert A., Vira, Bhaskar
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Communities
Degraded forests
Ecosystem services
Environmental conservation
Forest ecology
Forest management
Forest resources
India
negotiations
payments for ecosystem services
Sustainable water management
Villages
Water management
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Summary:In this paper, we examine the on-the-ground realities of upstream-downstream negotiations and transactions over ecosystem services. We explore the engagement, negotiation, implementation, and postimplementation phases of a “reciprocal water access” (RWA) agreement between village communities and municipal water users at Palampur, Himachal Pradesh, India. We aim to highlight how external actors drove the payments for ecosystem services agenda through a series of facilitation and research engagements, which were pivotal to the RWA’s adoption, and how the agreement fared once external agents withdrew. In the postimplementation period, the RWA agreement continues to be upheld by upstream communities amidst evolving, competing land-use changes and claims. The introduction of cash payments for environmental services for forest-water relationships has given rise to multifaceted difficulties for the upstream hamlets, which has impeded the functionality of their forest management committee. Upstream communities’ formal rights and abilities to control and manage their resources are dynamic and need strengthening and assurance; these developments result in fluctuating transaction and opportunity costs not originally envisaged by the RWA agreement. The paper demonstrates the importance of an explicit understanding of the local politics of negotiation and implementation to determine the effectiveness of compensation-based mechanisms for the supply of ecosystem services.
ISSN:1708-3087
1708-3087
DOI:10.5751/ES-08462-210237