How Conflict-Sensitive Water Management Builds Peace: Lessons from CGIAR’s Training with Egypt’s NWRC 

Climate change is straining water supplies and heightening community tensions. Evidence shows that when water scarcity rises within certain contexts, the risk of conflict increases. The Pacific Institute’s Water Conflict Chronology has, for example, identified 184 recorded instances of water-based conflict in north and sub-Saharan Africa since 2020, primarily occurring at the local level within and between communities.   

The possibility of conflict increases as the rate of change within a basin or water source exceeds local institutional capacity to absorb said changes. For example, population growth, market shifts and reforms, or extreme weather events like floods and droughts that affect people’s livelihoods, can overwhelm existing water management systems. When institutions can’t adapt, tensions may emerge as communities compete over water rights and resources.    

However, sustainable water management arrangements that are attuned to these dynamics, can offer important co-benefits for social cohesion and the emergence of a climate-resilient peace. These benefits include: 

• Improved communication and transparency: Participative planning and management processes facilitate open decision-making and support the development of solution options that account for different stakeholder needs, risks, and trade-offs between these.  

• Enhanced accountability and community buy-in: Embedding local expert knowledge into monitoring and planning systems can promote vertical accountability and community engagement.  

• Inclusivity and considerations of intersectional vulnerabilities: rights-based approaches ensure the most vulnerable population groups are included in any planning and decision-making process and their specific needs are addressed.    

As climate change increasingly impacts water availability and quality, the need for conflict sensitive water management approaches is therefore more critical than ever. To help equip those working in the field of water management prepare for and manage these risks, members of the CGIAR FOCUS Climate Security team delivered a multi-module training session on conflict-sensitive water management frameworks to over 35 water engineers from across Africa as part of the NWRC’s 29th Regional Annual Diploma Course on Hydraulic Engineering in River Basins. Those participating represented a wide range of African countries – including Kenya, Uganda, Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda, and others – as well as an array of professional backgrounds, such as engineering, academia and research, and government ministries. 

This training, supported by CGIAR’s Climate Action Science Programme (CASP), introduced participants to the various ways through which natural resources – including water – may become sources of competition as well as cooperation under future climatic scenarios. Participants learned that climate change itself does not act as a driver of conflict, but rather worsens underlying sources of tension and grievances in complex and indirect ways. This, in turn, demands the deployment of (conflict) risk management approaches, but also creates opportunities for water management strategies that actively address divisions and contribute to sustainable peacebuilding.  

The second and more practice-oriented module provided participants with practical tools they could deploy when designing or implementing a water management project:   

• Integrated stakeholder engagement: project planning should be based on a comprehensive engagement process that involves local communities, government agencies, civil society, as well as engineers. Such approaches can lead to increased efficacy and bridge the knowledge gap between experts and local residents.       
• Comprehensive vulnerability assessments: comprehensive vulnerability assessments should account for climate-related risks, the structural integrity of water management infrastructure, but also socio-economic factors such as community access to resources and dynamics affecting the equitable distribution of services.   
• Conflict sensitivity and risk management mechanisms: conflict sensitivity in water management demands conducting conflict analyses to understand power dynamics and (potential) sources of grievances a project may influence. The establishment of community-based conflict resolution mechanisms can moreover mitigate tensions from escalating into violence, and empower communities to take part in governance processes.  
• Adaptive management frameworks for shifting socio-ecological conditions: adaptivity calls for applying engineering principles that allow for responsiveness to changing environmental and social conditions. Water management strategies must be designed to evolve based on real-time data (where available), as well as regular feedback from communities.   
• Developing conflict sensitive M&E systems: climate sensitive and peace positive M&E systems should include metrics that assess not only the performance, durability, and reliability of water infrastructure, but also social indicators measuring equitable access among different demographics.  

CGIAR staff also emphasised throughout the training the critical need to develop gender-responsive water management approaches. Women play a pivotal role in water-related activities – particularly in developing countries – being often responsible for water collection for household needs, hygiene, and subsistence farming. It is therefore critical for water management projects to conduct gender-specific vulnerability analyses to account for community members who may be experiencing gendered access and control over resources, access to decision-making processes, and how different genders may be involved in various aspects and stages of water management.  

To round off the capacity building module, participants applied their learnings in a practical, group-based exercise focused on the development of a water project in a hypothetical case study. As part of this, participants were asked to specify which risk mitigation strategies could be deployed, how (gender) transformative and peace positive outcomes could be planned for, and how social outcomes could be evaluated and monitored.  

As a result of this training, participants were left better equipped to actively integrate socio-economic and conflict-related considerations into their day-to-day work, enabling them to explore how their work may bring opportunities for sustaining peace. Given the urgent need to build capacities on this topic, CGIAR looks forward to continued collaboration with the NWRC in this space to further mainstream conflict sensitive and peace positive water management practices.      

Authors: Frans Schapendonk and Tina Jaskolski, Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT