Development Policy Centre Podcast

This seminar will discuss some of the compounded challenges of implementing a donor-driven reform and water resources management in Lebanon, a paradigmatic fragile, politically and socially divided, aid dependent country. Despite a major water sector reform started over a decade ago, and substantial donor pressure to promote it, water resources management remains a core sustainable development challenge for Lebanon. The conditional, generic, and prescriptive approach of the donors in driving the reform was confronted with a fragmented socio-political landscape and weak institutions. This resulted in an ambiguous formulation of the reform, a slow and uncertain implementation, further loss of institutional coherence, and at best no improvement in social, environmental or economic sustainability. The talk will shed some light on the various stages of this reform and what lessons may inform future aid initiatives in Lebanon and other fragmented post-war states such as Iraq or Syria. Rim El Kadi is currently Assis