Abstract: The south Indian city of Bangalore provides a challenging yet representative context within which to examine issues of governance of urban social-ecological commons. The city was once famous for its numerous large water bodies, which have witnessed tremendous encroachment and pollution in recent years. These water bodies, called tanks or lakes, were typically managed by adjacent village communities but are now administered by a number of government departments involved with aspects of lake management, with multiple overlapping jurisdictions.

Abstract: In Rwanda, rural water supply is not uniformly distributed. Rural areas are characterized by differences in the distance to the nearest water point and in water quality for domestic water, by watering frequency and water availability for irrigation water, and by the price for both. A household's perception of further improvements in water supply will, therefore, depend heavily on the situation it currently faces. The authors used a choice experiment to model how the individual status quo (SQ) affects preferences.

Most hydrological studies do not account for the socio-economic influences on eco-hydrological processes. However, socio-economic developments often change the water balance substantially and are highly relevant in understanding changes in hydrological responses. In this study a multi-disciplinary approach was used to study the cascading impacts of socio-economic drivers of land use and land cover (LULC) changes on the eco-hydrological regime of the Lake Naivasha Basin. The basin has recently experienced substantial LULC changes exacerbated by socio-economic drivers.

This study discusses the effects of water abstractions from two alternative sources on the available water volume around Lake Naivasha, Kenya: the lake itself and a connected aquifer. An estimation of the water abstraction pattern for the period 1999–2010 is made and its effect on the available water volume in Lake Naivasha and its connected aquifer is evaluated using a simple water balance modeling approach.

This study describes the mismatch between required knowledge and efforts by scientists and stakeholders in the Lake Naivasha basin, Kenya. In the basin, integrated water resources management (IWRM) suffers from the absence of critically relevant knowledge. This study further presents a spatial integrated assessment framework for supporting IWRM in the basin. This framework resulted from an ongoing debate between stakeholders and scientists studying the basin's issues. It builds on jointly identified indicators for sustainable governance, and their interdependency, and knowledge gaps.

Interventions in payment for ecosystem services (PES) programs can involve both collective and individual actions. This study explores the potential for the development of payment for water related ecosystem services (PWES) program in the Lake Naivasha basin, Kenya. Using a choice experiment approach, the willingness to accept compensation is estimated for three water-related ecosystem services (WES) attributes: one collective attribute (reforestation) and two individual attributes (environment-friendly agricultural practices and restoration of riparian land).