Background and Justification INTRODUCTION

I. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background and Justification

Water has been linked with livelihoods since the earliest civilisation along the Nile. This could be attributed to the fact that water governance has profound impacts on people‟s livelihoods and their ability to break out of poverty. Water management is a key factor in the battle to remove the scourge of extreme poverty and to build secure and prosperous lives for people in the developing world. It is clear from news headlines and daily life in Zimbabwe that a water crisis is looming in the country. Those most affected by the water crisis are the poor and women who constitute 60 of the poor. The Millennium Development Goals MDG on water set by the United Nations, target halving, by 2015, the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water. Achieving this goal would increase the possibility to reach the seven other MDGs since they are very much dependant on strengthened water governance. Consequently, failure to achieve the water targets is likely to provide no hope of reaching the MDGs for women participation and poverty reduction among other goals UNDP 2010. However, with only four years to the MDGs achievement deadline there has not been a clear understanding of the existing policies on access to water, and the consideration of the poor in the framework. The government of Zimbabwe has made efforts to address historical imbalances in access to water, which may be dated back to the colonial era, through national water reforms designed to decentralize water management; increase stakeholder participation in water management institutions; and create a more efficient and sustainable water sector in light of climate change. This attempt has been in course since 1995 through the integrated water resource management strategy IWRMS. In so doing the government adopted a national water policy that is mainly embedded in the Water Act of 1998 Chapter 20:24 and implemented through the Zimbabwe National Water Authority ZINWA Act of 2002 to replace the 1976 water act based on Dublin Principles. These form the legal basis for water management in the country. However currently, 13 years later a 39 of households still lack access to improved sources of water though right to livelihood in terms of water for basic needs is given high priority in the new water act Hellum 2001. According to UNDP 2010, 65 of all water points in rural areas are non-functional; the percentage of the population with access to safe water in rural areas decreased from 70 in 1999 to 61 in 2009. Dry taps are persistent in urban areas. In 2008 an unprecedented cholera outbreak affected all ten provinces in both rural and urban areas. An important aspect of this Water Act is the division of water into “primary” and “productive” categories ZINWA 2001. The primary category refers to water used for household purposes, while the productive category is for commercial uses like industry and agriculture. The previous concept of water rights was replaced with water permits and all water is now vested in the state. The new water management institution of ZINWA, Catchment Councils and Sub-catchment Councils are to be financially autonomous Latham 2001; Swatuk 2001; ZINWA 2002. This policy shift has had different impacts on different groups of people. Research targeting how various reticulationusage policies have impacted on the well being of the community as a whole is scarce with most researchers focusing on agriculture and industry.

1.2 Statement of the problem