Browsing by Subject "Water supply"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Institutional and Policy Analysis of River Basin Management: The Warta River Basin, Poland
    (World Bank Group, 2005) Blomquist, William; Dinar, Ariel; Tonderski, Andrzej
    The authors describe and analyze the emergence of river basin management in the Warta River Basin of Poland. The Warta basin’s 55,193 km2 cover approximately one-sixth of Poland, and the Warta is a principal tributary to the Oder. Water management issues include pollution of the Warta and its main tributaries, prompting cities to rely on groundwater supplies that are beginning to show signs of overdraft, and growing problems of water allocation and scarcity as the basin urbanizes and industrializes. Since the end of the 1980s, the Polish government has been promoting decentralization, constructing a federal system that includes provinces, counties, and municipalities with authority over land use, water use permits, and environmental protection. Polish authorities have also established river basin management authorities corresponding to basin boundaries throughout the nation, including one for the Warta basin. The efforts toward decentralization and integrated water resource management in Poland have been earnest, but the dispersion of water policy authority across several levels of government, the establishment of basin authorities lacking power and funding to implement resource management programs, few arrangements for stakeholder participation, and delays in Polish water law reform have complicated the development and implementation of integrated management at the basin level. This paper—a product of the Agriculture and Rural Development Department—is part of a larger effort in the department to approach water policy issues in an integrated way. The study was funded by the Bank’s Research Support Budget under the research project “Integrated River Basin Management and the Principle of Managing Water Resources at the Lowest Appropriate Level: When and Why Does It (Not) Work in Practice?”
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    Institutional Capacity And The Resolution Of A Commons Dilemma
    (Review of Policy Research, 1985) Blomquist, William; Ostrom, Elinor
    This article concerns the dynamic process of resolving a commons dilemma without an externally imposed solution. We focus on two approaches: a model by Lewis and Cowens (1983) that yields a cooperative private arranghent that incorporates voluntarily chosen public institutions as instruments facilitating a resolution of the commons dilemma. The conditions necessary to Lewis and Cowen's result–a Itresolution without institutions–are contrasted with Ilinstitutional capacity” conditions treated as variables that may take on values enhancing the possibility of resolution. This latter approach yields certain advantages: less extreme assumptions, greater descriptive relevance, and the possibility of a variety of actual resolutions. A description of the case of West Basin in Southern California offers an example of the interaction of institutional capacity with participants' actions to produce a successful resolution of a commons dilemma.