New Water Policy and Practice Volume 1, Number 1 - Fall 2014 | Page 45

New Water Policy and Practice

the stakeholders themselves. The work of
the Arava Institute attests to the axiom that
in a region of conflict, relationships build
trust and trust builds cooperation.2

Decentralized approaches are one
viable path toward improved wastewater
management in complex transboundary
scenarios such as Israel and the Palestinian
West Bank. In the Hebron/Besor watershed, one Israeli–Palestinian transboundary watershed, we are assessing pollution
in the watershed and implementing decentralized greywater treatment infrastructure. Through this work, we have come to
understand the importance of collaboration and face-to-face meetings for learning
and improving wastewater management
and project implementation in a region of
conflict. Key lessons suggest the primacy
of relationship building, stakeholder engagement, and maintaining an adaptive approach overall. We summarize our lessons
learned here:

dient way especially when larger-level
political complexity and conflict exists.
Essential to the success of any such decentralized treatment project will be ongoing monitoring and capacity-building
support to promote project sustainability.

Decentralized infrastructure, community-level management approaches,
and horizontal information-sharing may
achieve significant impacts in the short
term, and begin to build a platform for expanded collaboration in the long term in
those regions where water and other political conflicts are prevalent. We emphasize
consulting local stakeholders and beneficiaries of projects to genuinely listen to and
address their needs and concerns, before,
during, and after project implementation.
We call on other researchers to approach
solutions to water issues by adapting methods to fit the sociopolit