CALL FOR PAPERS
Special Issue on
Voices of Water Professionals:
Shedding Light on Socio-Political Processes in the Water Sector
With the financial support of GIZ
Guest Editors:
Gilbert Levine (Fulbright Advisor, ex- Cornell University)
Mercy Dikito-Wachtmeister (Global Water Partnership)
Miguel Solanes (ex-Economic Commission for Latin America, UN)
Water Alternatives is intended to build bridges across disciplines and between water scientists and practitioners. Most of the existing literature dealing with water and society is written by the former, as the latter often feel constrained by time or bound by professional confidentiality while exercising in international or governmental spheres. Yet, they are central witnesses of the social and political processes at work in water law or policy making, water resources development and planning, river basin, irrigation system or water utility management, and often find themselves at the interface between commercial or political interests and collective values of resource use efficiency, social equity and environmental sustainability.
This special issue of Water Alternatives is dedicated to tapping the often silent and unarticulated wealth of experience related to social and political processes in real-life professional practice, that often escapes academic scrutiny and usually dissipates after the retirement of key actors of the water sector, including experts and researchers, private consulting/construction companies, managers and policymakers, politicians, bankers and officials working in national and international aid or cooperation agencies, or NGOs at the forefront of social or environmental struggles.
The collection of papers in this issue is meant to go beyond sanctioned and official discourses, cosmetic intentions and conventional justifications, or plain accounts of past experiences. We would like buzzwords to be dissected and contributions that analyse in a direct and open manner real-world constraints and processes, actors’ behaviours and strategies (strategic action, political manoeuvring, etc), where various diverging/opposed values, ideologies and forms of power confront one another.
We expect to learn from active or retired water professionals who will find value in reflecting critically along these lines on their past experience and share their personal (and not institutional) perspective with the readers of Water Alternatives. We invite submissions on the following topics:
- Insights on the social and political processes at work in water law or policy-making, water resources development and planning, river basin, irrigation system or water supply scheme management
- The interface/antagonism between commercial or political interests and collective values of resource use efficiency, social equity and environmental sustainability
- Actors’ behaviours and strategies
- Problems and barricades that prevent a better link between science and practice
Contributions can be made in the form of conventional scientific papers that will be peer-reviewed, or in the form of reflexive “viewpoints/experiences” that may be shorter – with a minimum word count of 3000 – and reviewed by the editors/guest-editors.
Timeline
- Abstract (300 words) by September 30, 2012
- Decision to authors by October 15, 2012
- Full papers by January 15, 2012
- Peer reviewed comments by March 1, 2013
- Final version of paper by April 30, 2013 for publication on the first of June 2013
Contact the guest-editors
Gilbert Levine gl14@cornell.edu
Mercy Dikito-Wachtmeister mercy.dikito-wachtmeister@gwpforum.org
Miguel Solanes mrsolanes@yahoo.es
or send your abstract to: managing_editor@water-alternatives.org