Participation vs management

COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION AND COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT

Cinemagraph by Sophia Liu

The importance of community participation and community management in water management/ governance are often emphasised and like several other terms and concept this week are not well understood.

"Community management has remained the dominant paradigm for managing rural water supplies in sub-Saharan Africa. There is a widespread perception that community participation principles are inherently embedded in the community management model. " Learn more about this by reading: Katherine F. Shields, Michelle Moffa, Nikki L. Behnke, Emma Kelly, Tori Klug, Kristen Lee, Ryan Cronk, Jamie Bartram; Community management does not equate to participation: fostering community participation in rural water supplies. Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development 1 November 2021; 11 (6): 937–947. doi: https://doi.org/10.2166/washdev.2021.089

Community participation is a consultative empowerment process designed to establish communities as effective decision making entities. It is a mobilising process to encourage a community to become involved in the planning and implementation of water projects. is to enable the community to ‘have a say in their own development’, and take full responsibility and authority for operation and maintenance of their water systems (Harvey and Reed, 2007). It is proposed that when communities participate, contribute, and manage their water supply systems, they have power and control over their water supply systems. It is critical to note that community participation does not automatically lead to effective community management, community participation is essential for sustainability (equity and efficiency) but community management is not.

Community management can be viewed as a form of community participation. It is a bottom up development process whereby community members have a say in their own development ads the community assumes control, managerial, operational and maintenance responsibility for the water system. Under community management systems the responsibility of governments, NGOs or agencies in rural water supplies, is reduced to “providing certain backup services (i.e. legal regulations, hydrological information, capacity building) and [the] direct responsibility for constructing and maintaining water supplies [are left] to the community.”