Résumé
The recent South-African National Water Act (1998) promotes the integrated and decentralised management of water resource within a renovated institutional context. New entities - Catchment Management Agencies (CMAs) and Water Users' Associations (WUAs) - are being set up at regional and local levels. Beyond the questions concerning the priority criteria in the allotment of rights to use the resource, there is the advent of public policy networks formed on the one hand by the CMA and, on the other hand, by the WUA or the sectorial organisations (unions, syndicates, etc.). The AWARE Project (Action Research and Watershed Analysis for Resource and Economic Sustainability) conducted by the Green UPR (Cirad) adopts a modelling and support approach that aims at facilitating the negotiations and the collective decision making process around the hydric resource in the two South-African catchment basins: the Steelpoort and the Kat River. A simulation tool (AWARE) has been specifically designed to model system dynamics at the level of the catchment basin. A role playing game based on this model is being developed. The model assesses different scenarios that represent potential water management strategies as a function of their economic efficacy, environmental reliability and social fairness. The central aspect of the simulated strategies is represented by the assignment of priorities to certain groups of users of the resource within a context of competition among them. AWARE evaluates the economic (production, job creation) and environmental (preservation of the ecological reserve) impacts of the various simulated scenarios that represent alternative water management strategies. (Texte intégral)