Kitui is a semi-arid and sparsely populated rural county, where low and unreliable rains create water insecurities for fragile cropping and livestock systems. Searching for and fetching water continue to dominate the daily lives of women and children, with households using around four different sources in a year. Rains drive a sharp shift in source choice from groundwater-based handpumps and piped schemes to free surface water sources, risking ill health. This, in turn, decrease revenues for water service providers, jeopardising operation and maintenance services in wet seasons. The Water Diaries reveal different expenditure groups, from those that incur no expenses throughout the year to those that pay more than 10 per cent of their annual expenditures for water. Yet daily consumption remains at only 20 litres per person. Donor investments in water security are fragile and fleeting with devolution transferring a legacy of past failures to newly elected county governments. The results of a professional service delivery model have illustrated how the government and donors can guarantee reliable drinking water services at lower costs, though action and uptake are slow. While hydroclimatic conditions are harsh, weak governance and opaque accountability compound challenges and waste investments.

With a legacy of sociopolitical and economic exclusion, ethnic conflicts, and an extremely arid climate, the Turkana people struggle to meet the two most basic necessities of life – food and water. One perennial river flowing from Uganda replenishes the groundwater on which the survival and growth of Lodwar depends. Lodwar’s water utility ranks poorly across national regulation metrics delivering an average of 24 litres per person per day to half of the town’s residents. Violent flash floods are known to wash away homes, people and animals almost every year. Relocating to safer grounds in peri-urban areas means losing income opportunities, education and healthcare services, and most importantly, water. A vibrant informal market has emerged, with tanker trucks and motorbikes selling water from the utility’s boreholes at high costs. For those who cannot afford vended water, scooping out dry riverbeds is the only option. With the discovery of crude oil and untapped groundwater reserves, coupled with construction of regional transport links, there is optimism for economic development in this marginalised county. Yet unless there is action to address the fundamental lack of capacity or coordination among multiple stakeholders, Lodwar’s water woes are likely to limit human and economic development.

This chapter defines, discusses, and evaluates local disaster planning, management, and mitigation, emphasizing the importance of local control over land planning and development. It focuses on the grass roots level where the impact of disasters is first and most ferociously felt, where lives are lost, and property is destroyed. Building on this base, it discusses why collaborative strategies should be created, especially where multijurisdictional issues are involved and where local expertise and resources are insufficient to respond to the full scope of the problem. To this end, it describes state and federal disaster planning and mitigation programs and resources in the context of a broader approach that leverages intergovernmental climate change planning and management. The chapter includes numerous case studies of local hazard mitigation efforts, particularly those guided by land use planning and regulation. The difficulty of planning managed retreat from development in vulnerable areas caused by the total takings jurisprudence of the U.S. Supreme Court is discussed and a path forward illuminated. The chapter concludes by discussing why the existential threat of climate change and related natural disasters can no longer be addressed by uncoordinated efforts. We can choose to succeed by engaging in collaborative efforts utilizing all legal powers, technical expertise, and financial resources available.

The Jucar Basin faces the challenge of meeting an enormous demand for irrigation while water quality degrades from urban, industrial, and agricultural pollution. Relying on engineering solutions is not enough. Empirical evidence in Jucar indicates that water markets and institutional policies seem to deal with water scarcity more successfully than water pricing and irrigation subsidies. A first water governance priority is to convince farmers of substituting freshwater for the available urban recycled water. Second, seawater desalination plants must be upgraded so they will work at full capacity. More long-term governance goals are to curtail surface irrigation diversions and groundwater extractions, and reallocating water to urban, industrial, and environmental uses. These reforms will only work if they get the support and cooperation of farmers by compensating them for the reallocation of water from agriculture to other sectors.