Capacity Building for Integrated River Basin Management

The article starts with the assessment of the importance of capacity building processes for the success of water development, water management and water sector reform programmes. The role of capacity building for successful and sustainable integrated river basin management is highlighted and characterised. The essence and characteristics of capacities and capacity building as a process are described. Instruments to implement and make capacity building successful are identified and analysed. A variety of weaknesses in the institutions or the institutional arrangements are nowadays the major causes of under - performance of the water sector. Therefore, man), countries or mail), national and international river basins are involved in processes of institutional development or water sector reform. The purpose is mainly to reach an advanced level of integrated river basin management. A variety of capacities are needed to underpin this process either in the field of creating institutional environments, or in developing institutional strength and developing and upgrading human capacities. Some of these capacities can be assessed and fostered through integrated processes of capacity building. Some useful instruments in this process are roughly described as crucial elements notably stakeholder and needs assessment, gap analysis modalities, analytical frameworks for institutional assessment and development and concepts of threshold analysis. Possible capacity building for a specific topical river basin is imagined. The challenges, opportunities and constraints that may be encountered in the application of capacity building are identified. In order to bring integrated river basin management into effect, capacity building is needed to enable some of the necessary institutional arrangements as: (1) The functioning of a platform for stakeholders involved in decision making. (2) Water resources management on hydrological boundaries. (3) An organizational set-up in river basin and sub-basin authorities with their respective by-laws to incorporate decision making at die lowest appropriate level. (4) A planning system oriented at the production of integrated river basin plans. (5) The introduction of a system of water pricing and cost recovery. To provide Policies, strategies, legal and institutional arrangements, financial and economic instruments and relevant human and institutional capacities at the light time and at the light place and synchronised at (inter) national, regional and river basin level is the main challenge of the aggregated international community.