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ScaleWat: scaling up capacities for responsible governance of water tenure

Water tenure dialogues

The Water Tenure Dialogues provide a dedicated forum for governments, practitioners, researchers and civil society to foster participation, share knowledge, and build a common understanding of what water tenure is and what principles should guide responsible governance of water tenure. Through global, regional and national levels of engagement, the dialogues support countries in assessing how water access and rights are structured,  improving governance frameworks and building pathways to more equitable, secure water use.

This initiative responds directly to the Committee on Agriculture (COAG) decision at its twenty-eighth session (2022), which requested that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) assess existing water tenure arrangements and launch a Global Dialogue on Water Tenure. The work is delivered under the umbrella of the ScaleWat project, in line with FAO's mandate.

Water Tenure Dialogues
Global Dialogue on Water Tenure

💧 Why does water tenure matter?

Understanding how water tenure regimes are legally defined, implemented, protected and socially recognized in practice is fundamental to sustainable and equitable resource management and essential to achieving responsible governance.

To that end, FAO has been supporting water tenure assessments as well as advocacy and capacity development activities since 2022 to build knowledge and produce robust, evidence-based information on legal and social assessments and on how people and groups access water at local levels.

Based on the results from Cambodia, Colombia, Indonesia, Rwanda, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, FAO is organizing national, sub-regional and regional dialogues to propose strategic actions, and encourages governments, civil society, academia, and other stakeholders to participate in the consultations which feed into the global dialogue.