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Integrated water resources management in

Peru through shared vision planning

Guillermo Mendoza and Hal Cardwell, International Center for Integrated Water Resources Management,

Institute for Water Resources of the US Army Corps of Engineers; and Pedro Guerrero, Project for Modernization

of Water Resources Management, National Water Authority of Peru, Ministry of Agriculture of Peru

ater is Peru’s new gold. In the past decade, Peru

has been going through a dramatic transformation

with high economic growth and a growing prosper-

ous population. However, water is in the wrong place and the

country recognizes the need to develop sustainable solutions

for water management. With more than 80 per cent of its water

falling in the Andes, hundreds of miles from the growing popula-

tion centres along the arid coast, and hydrology already being

radically altered by melting glaciers, Peru needed to act. In 2009

the country passed a new water law and set out on an ambitious

plan to develop locally-driven solutions for water sustainabil-

ity. In effect, the law states that water is both an economic

and social good, and that integrated water resources manage-

ment (IWRM) incorporates social, cultural and environmental

values with the goal to maximize social and economic well-being

without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems.

Easier said than done.

Shortly after the law was passed, the newly-created

National Water Authority of Peru (ANA) initiated

pilots at six basins to decentralize water resources

management, create river basin councils and imple-

ment transparent and participatory planning. A key

aspect of the pilots was the use of a collaborative, tech-

nically-informed planning process known as shared

vision planning (SVP) to develop IWRM plans that

recognized the multiple interests of a growing society.

These water resources planning efforts are history in the

making, as Peru integrates planning principles, struc-

tured participation and systems modelling to support

decision-making at river basin scales.

Peru’s major water management challenges

The challenges faced by Peru are significant on three

counts. First, it was unclear how to implement the 2009

Water Resources Law. Integration and public participa-

tion have become standard goals for water resources

management worldwide. However, the logistical,

technical and socio-institutional complexity of water

problems in Peru, as elsewhere, make it difficult to find

many successes in the implemention of collaborative

planning, trade-off analysis and decision-making for

IWRM at the river basin scale.

Second, water resources management in Peru had

historically been a centralized process largely focused

on agriculture. In contrast, the new law requires new

regional governance institutions such as river basin

councils, that have authority to develop and validate

participatory IWRM plans. The development of these

IWRM plans will require that the councils make deci-

sions on social and economic well-being trade-offs

with participation of the various interests in a basin.

Investments and planning in Peru’s water resources

will have to meet multisectoral demands on water

and Pacific draining basins, support unprecedented

economic growth, and enhance social equity because

many Peruvians, especially in the headwaters of the

basins, continue to live below the poverty line.

Third, water conflicts are real social stressors to an

economy that is one of the world’s fastest growing (gross

domestic product (GDP) grew 9.8 per cent in 2008 and

6.3 per cent in 2013), but that occurs largely along an arid

ater

ducation

and

nstitutional

evelopment

The Chili River Basin outside Arequipa: the new water law broadens stakeholder

participation and seeks to internalize the costs of water pollution

Image: Guillermo F. Mendoza