Water resource management reform today emphasizes user participation. However, in developing
country contexts the water laws and institutions which have followed from this reform have
consistently ignored how people actually manage their water. Informal rural and peri-urban water
users have managed their water resources for centuries and continue to respond to new
opportunities and threats, often entirely outside the ambit of formal government regulation or
investment. The community-based water laws which guide this informal management in fact govern
water development and management by significant numbers of water users, if not the majority of
citizens and the bulk of the poor, who depend on water for multiple uses for fragile agrarian
livelihoods. These community-based arrangements tend to have many of the people-based, propoor attributes desired in principle, if not always found in practice in current water management
reform agendas – they are typically robust, dynamic and livelihood-oriented, and often encompass
purposeful rule-setting and enforcement and provide incentives for collective action. At the same
time, they can also be hierarchical and serve to entrench power and gender disparities