In an increasingly conflict-ridden world, ensuring sustainable access to essential services for vulnerable populations presents a considerable challenge. Existing best practices for sustainable development, including participatory processes and community-led, collaborative governance structures, often overlook applications in conflict settings. As such, there is a need to study and adapt these approaches in order to ensure that sustainable development efforts leave no one behind.
The following paper will address this research gap by investigating a case study of water governance in Yangon, Myanmar. In February 2021, the Myanmar military staged an unexpected takeover of the government which has led to frequent clashes between the de facto authorities and the resistance movement. Within this context, the UN-Habitat office in Myanmar is in the process of establishing water distribution systems. These systems will provide clean water to inhabitants of informal settlements as a part of the COVID-WASH project. This project is an emergency response project designed to reduce the spread of COVID-19. When implementing projects in communities, UN-Habitat uses a participatory methodology called the People’s Process. The People’s Process includes the creation of Community Development Committees (CDCs) which, in the COVID-WASH project, will manage the water distribution systems. However, it is unclear how the conflict setting impacts the People’s Process and whether it is able to establish water governance systems that will be able to sustainably supply clean water to the informal settlement residents.
The research question is thus, “Does the People’s Process contribute to creating sustainable water governance structures in the current context of Yangon’s informal settlements, and if so, in what ways?” The following sub questions are used to answer the main research question: (1) What best practices exist for creating community-led sustainable water governance structures? (2) How does UN-Habitat operationalize the People's Process for water governance in Yangon's informal settlements? (3) In what ways does the People's Process compare to best practices for creating sustainable water governance and why? (4) In what ways does the conflict setting affect the ability of the Peoples' Process to create sustainable water governance and why?
Sub question one is answered through a literature review which investigates relevant fields such as participatory processes, governance of common pool resources, collaborative governance, and water governance. Literature on contextual factors relevant to the situation in Myanmar are also discussed. The results of the literature review are then used to create a theoretical framework for assessing UN-Habitat’s water governance structures. The resulting framework is grounded in a realist review which investigates how and why systems work the way they do. The following sub questions are answered with data from interviews. Nine interviews were conducted with UN-Habitat staff, members of CDC from similar projects, and one representative from the NGO WaterAid. Transcripts of the interviews were coded for analysis.
To answer sub question two, an outline of the People’s Process as used to implement the COVID-WASH project is presented and compared to other outlines of the People’s Process. Sub question three is then answered by investigating where UN-Habitat’s process aligns with the theoretical framework and where and why it does not. An actor analysis is another key result of this research. The discussion then expands on the results in order to answer the main research question, as well as sub question four.
Ultimately, the People's Process emerges as a powerful participatory model that fosters community ownership and engagement. The CDCs follow a well structured and functional governance framework. Given the 5-10 year lifecycle of the distribution systems, the governance structures appear to be somewhat sustainable within limitations. However due to a lack of clear cut parameters for sustainability, it is difficult to assess to what degree these structures are sustainable. Two points stand out from the research which may serve as areas for improvement. First, CDCs face difficulties in incentivizing community members to fill vacant positions. Second, financial constraints limit the CDCs' ability to undertake substantial improvements beyond routine O&M. It was additionally found that the conflict setting has a greater impact on UN-Habitat’s processes than on the CDC’s themselves. For the CDCs, the conflict setting primarily serves to exacerbate existing problems. As such, it may be more productive to search for ways to improve the resilience of the governance structures as a means of ensuring they are sustainable in the face of shocks to the system.
For UN-Habitat, recommendations therefore include considering how collaborative governance may be used to enhance the resilience of the systems by sharing the governance responsibilities of the CDCs among multiple actors. Additionally, greater reflection on what outcomes are sufficiently sustainable and how those can be empirically monitored and evaluated would allow for a better judgment on where improvements to the water governance structures are needed. Recommendations for future research include adding aspects of causality to the theoretical framework in order to identify which elements are directly linked to sustainability as an outcome. Additionally, further investigation into how community-led, multi-actor systems operate in a variety of conflict settings could be useful in refining the conclusions of this research.