Ensuring Integrated Water Resource Management in Tanzania Benefits All

The introduction of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) in the early 1990s by international donors has led to some important new knowledge about availability and uses of water resources in Tanzania. However, more needs to be done to recognise the priorities of the rural majority of small-scale users, and not just those of donors, the environmental lobby and foreign investors in land and water. Greater efforts also need to be made by the basin offices to regulate high-impact users, and to work with existing district and local government structures that have developed and managed water to serve the rural majority since independence, rather than create additional top-down parallel institutional layers.