Watershed governance: Transcending boundaries

Seanna L. Davidson
Water Policy and Governance Group, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada; seanna.davidson@uwaterloo.ca

Rob C. de Loë
Department of Environment and Resource Studies, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada; rdeloe@uwaterloo.ca

ABSTRACT: Watershed boundaries are widely accepted by many water practitioners and researchers as the de facto ideal boundary for both water management and governance activities. In governance, watershed boundaries are typically considered an effective way to integrate the social, political, and environmental systems they encompass. However, the utility and authenticity of the watershed boundary for water governance should not be assumed. Instead, both scholars and practitioners ought to carefully consider the circumstances under which watershed boundaries provide an appropriate frame for governance. The purpose of this paper is to identify how water governance can transcend the watershed boundary. An empirical case study of governance for water in Ontario, Canada, reveals boundary-related challenges. In this case, issues relating to boundary selection, accountability, participation and empowerment, policysheds and problemsheds reveal the strengths and weaknesses of relying on watershed boundaries as a frame of reference for governance. The case also highlights promising alternatives that are being used to transcend the watershed boundary.

KEYWORDS: Water governance, watershed boundaries, Lake Simcoe, Ontario, Canada

Water scarcity in England and Wales as a failure of (meta)governance

Gareth Walker
School of Geography and Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; garethlwalker@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: The water crisis is often said to be a crisis of governance failure rather than of availability per se; yet the sources of this failure are poorly understood. This paper examines contemporary water scarcity in England and Wales as a failure of ecological modernity, in which technical and institutional innovation is promoted as a means of increasing economic efficiency in the allocation and use of water resources. The role of the state in fostering this innovation is explored through exploring a shift from ‘government’ to ‘governance’. The paper employs Jessop’s theory of meta-governance to examine governance failure. Meta-governance represents the capacity of the state to flank or support the emergence of specific forms of governance through mobilising material or symbolic resources. Three sources of governance failure are explored: (1) the nature of capitalist exchange and its resulting production of nature, (2) the political dimensions implicit in meta-governance, and (3) the nature of governance as a task of self-organisation. The model is then applied to the rise of water scarcity in England and Wales from the 1970s to the present day. The utility of the model in analysing governance failure is discussed.

KEYWORDS: Water scarcity, water governance, meta-governance, water privatisation, England and Wales

Organisational modalities of farmer-led irrigation development in Tsangano District, Mozambique

Francis Nkoka
World Bank, Lilongwe, Malawi; fnkoka@gmail.com

Gert Jan Veldwisch
Water Resources Management Group of Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands; gertjan.veldwisch@wur.nl

Alex Bolding
Water Resources Management Group of Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands; alex.bolding@wur.nl

ABSTRACT: This paper examines the organisational modalities of farmer-led irrigation systems in Tsangano, Mozambique, which has expanded over large areas with minimal external support. By looking at their historic development trajectories and the integrated nature of land and water resources, technological objects, and people three organisational modalities of irrigation system O&M are distinguished for furrow systems in Tsangano: communal systems, former Portuguese systems, and family systems. Each organisational modality is based on a particular development/investment history through which hydraulic property relations have been established and sustained.The findings cast serious doubts on the central tenets of neo-institutional policy prescriptions. This is particularly relevant as there is a renewed interest in large-scale irrigation development in Africa through public investment, after very limited investments between 1985 and 2005. Public irrigation investment in Africa has been widely perceived to have performed poorly. Farmer-led irrigation development, as studied in this paper, could be the basis for a cost-effective alternative to scale investments that can result in sustainable and pro-poor smallholder irrigation.The findings in this paper show how investments in infrastructure can create, recreate or extinguish hydraulic property and ownership relations, which can lead to collapse. Interveners should carefully investigate prior investment patterns and context-specific cultural logics that inform the sustainability of farmer-led irrigation development.

KEYWORDS: Irrigation, FMIS, farmer-led development, hydraulic property, institutional design principles, Mozambique

Bureaucratic reform in irrigation: A review of four case studies

Diana Suhardiman
International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Vientiane, Lao PDR; d.suhardiman@cgiar.org

Mark Giordano
Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, USA; mg1382@georgetown.edu

Edwin Rap
International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Cairo, Egypt; e.rap@cgiar.org

Kai Wegerich
International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Tashkent, Uzbekistan; k.wegerich@cgiar.org

ABSTRACT: Poor performance of government-managed irrigation systems persists globally. This paper argues that addressing performance requires not simply more investment or different policy approaches, but reform of the bureaucracies responsible for irrigation management. Based on reform experiences in The Philippines, Mexico, Indonesia, and Uzbekistan, we argue that irrigation (policy) reform cannot be treated in isolation from the overall functioning of government bureaucracies and the wider political structure of the states. Understanding of how and why government bureaucracies shape reform processes and outcomes is crucial to increase the actual significance of reforms. To demonstrate this, the paper links reform processes in the irrigation sector with the wider discourse of bureaucratic reform in the political science, public administration, and organisational science literature. Doing so brings to light the need for systematic comparative research on the organisational characteristic of the irrigation bureaucracies, their bureaucratic identities, and how these are shaped by various segments within the bureaucracies to provide the insights needed to improve irrigation systems performance.

KEYWORDS: Irrigation development, irrigation bureaucracies, policy reform, poor systems performance, bureaucratic reform

Inside matters of facts: Reopening dams and debates in the Netherlands

Arjen Zegwaard
Institute for Environmental Studies, Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences, VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Water Resources Management Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands; arjen.zegwaard@wur.nl

Philippus Wester
International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Kathmandu, Nepal; pwester@icimod.org, and Water Resources Management Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands; flip.wester@wur.nlstrong>

ABSTRACT: Both civil engineering and environmentalism strongly influenced the development of water governance in the Netherlands in the 20th century. Much research has focused on these aspects separately. This article maps the interaction between governance, technology and ecological systems in the Netherlands, to provide insights into how these are co-evolving. The analysis is based on a combination of a literature study and an empirical case study on the debates concerning the reopening of the Philipsdam, in the Southwest Delta of the Netherlands. It shows how the negotiations that took place in constructing facts in the Philipsdam case both increased the complexity of decision-making concerning the dam itself and radiated outwards to affect other parts of the Dutch water system. We conclude that the process of constructing facts and the way these are framed once they have been established as facts are both intrinsically political and reflect the multiplicity of views of how the lake works and what the problem is, and how these views are incompatible at times. As such, ontological complexity is ingrained in what is represented as facts and severely complicates an apparently matter of fact decision to reopen a dam.

KEYWORDS: Uncertainty, constructing facts, modelling through, Delta Works, the Netherlands

The productive use of rural piped water in Senegal

Ralph P. Hall
School of Public and International Affairs, Urban Affairs and Planning Program, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA; rphall@vt.edu

Eric A. Vance
Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Statistical Analysis (LISA), Department of Statistics, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA; ervance@vt.edu

Emily van Houweling
Women and Gender in International Development, Office of International Research, Education, and Development (OIRED), Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA; evh@vt.edu

ABSTRACT: Over the past decade there has been a growing interest in the potential benefits related to the productive use of rural piped water around the homestead. However, there is limited empirical research on the extent to which, and conditions under which, this activity occurs. Using data obtained from a comprehensive study of 47 rural piped water systems in Senegal, this paper reveals the extent of piped-water-based productive activity occurring and identifies important system-level variables associated with this activity. Three-quarters (74%) of the households surveyed depend on water for their livelihoods with around one-half (54%) relying on piped water. High levels of piped-water-based productive activity were found to be associated with shorter distances from a community to a city or paved road (i.e. markets), more capable water system operators and water committees, and communities that contributed to the construction of the piped water system. Further, access to electricity was associated with higher productive incomes from water-based productive activities, highlighting the role that non-water-related inputs have on the extent of productive activities undertaken. Finally, an analysis of the technical performance of piped water systems found no statistically significant association between high vs. low levels of productive activity and system performance; however, a positive relationship was found between system performance and the percentage of households engaged in productive activities.

KEYWORDS: Multiple-use water services, domestic plus, technical performance, water committee capacity, rural piped water, Senegal

Water, cities and peri-urban communities: Geographies of power in the context of drought in northwest Mexico

Rolando E. Díaz-Caravantes
El Colegio de Sonora, Hermosillo, Sonora, México; rdiaz@colson.edu.mx

Margaret Wilder
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA; mwilder@u.arizona.edu

ABSTRACT: The urban-peri-urban interaction is frequently studied with a focus on the necessities of urban expansion, chronicling the concerns of land annexation, housing construction and infrastructure. However, in arid regions such as Mexicoʼs drought-prone northwest, the research on peri-urban issues must increasingly focus on the under-examined issue of the power geometries that are reshaping the contours of access to water in fast-growing areas. This paper examines geographies of power of the urban-rural interface in Sonora, Mexico. Focused in the political ecology framework, we compare the success of Hermosilloʼs water supply projects while analysing some cases of peri-urban water users and grouping them into three general types: negotiation, passiveness and resistance, with large powerful water users, referred to in this paper as 'counterpoint cases'. We argue that urban water augmentation strategies reveal a distinct set of urban-peri-urban relations of unequal social power where peri-urban water resources are transferred to urban areas; reflecting, over the last three decades (1981-2010), the demands of powerful, politically connected urban populations and large irrigation districts. While during the same period, peri-urban small-scale communal farmers or ejidatarios lost access to their water as it was moved or used to supply the needs of Hermosilloʼs expansion.

KEYWORDS: Water, geography, power, peri-urban, ejidos, Mexico

Desalination and water security: The promise and perils of a technological fix to the water crisis in Baja California Sur, Mexico

Jamie McEvoy
Department of Earth Sciences, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, USA; jamie.mcevoy@montana.edu

ABSTRACT: Across the globe, desalination is increasingly being considered as a new water supply source. This article examines how the introduction of desalinated water into the municipal water supply portfolio has affected water security in the coastal tourist city of Cabo San Lucas in Baja California Sur (BCS), Mexico. It also analyses the competing discourses surrounding desalination in the region and discusses alternative water management options for achieving water security. This article challenges the notion that desalination is an appropriate and sufficient technological solution for arid regions. The findings provide evidence of increased yet delimited water security at a neighbourhood scale while identifying new vulnerabilities related to desalination, particularly in the context of the global South. This article concludes that implementing a technological fix on top of a water management system that is plagued with more systemic and structural problems does little to improve long-term water management and is likely to foreclose or forestall other water management options. This multi-scalar analysis contributes to the emerging literature on water security by considering both a narrow and broad framing of water security and identifying a range of factors that influence water security.

KEYWORDS: Water security, desalination, adaptive water management, Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, Mexico

Coyotes, concessions and construction companies: Illegal water markets and legally constructed water scarcity in central Mexico

Nadine Reis
Department of Geography, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany; nreis@uni-bonn.de

ABSTRACT: Many regions of (semi)arid Mexico, such as the Valley of Toluca, face challenges due to rapid growth and the simultaneous overexploitation of groundwater. The water reform of the 1990s introduced individual water rights concessions granted through the National Water Commission (Comisión Nacional del Agua, or CONAGUA). Since then, acquiring new water rights in officially 'water-scarce' aquifers is only possible through official rights transmissions from users ceding their rights. With the law prohibiting the sale of water rights, a profitable illegal market for these rights has emerged. The key actor in the water rights allocation network is the coyote, functioning as a broker between a) people wanting to cede water rights and those needing them, and b) the formal and informal spheres of water rights allocation. Actors benefitting from water rights trading include the coyote and his 'working brigades', water users selling surplus rights, and (senior and lower-level) staff in the water bureaucracy. The paper concludes that legally constructed water scarcity is key to the reproduction of illegal water rights trading. This has important implications regarding the current push for expanding regularisation of groundwater extraction in Mexico. Currently, regularisation does not counter overexploitation, while possibly leading to a de facto privatisation of groundwater.

KEYWORDS: Water rights, water markets, groundwater concessions, water scarcity, Mexico

New arenas of engagement at the water governance-climate finance nexus? An analysis of the boom and bust of hydropower CDM projects in Vietnam

Mattijs Smits
Environmental Policy Group, Wageningen University; Wageningen, the Netherlands; mattijs.smits@wur.nl

Carl Middleton
MA in International Development Studies Program, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand; carl.chulalongkorn@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: This article explores whether new arenas of engagement for water governance have been created and utilised following the implementation of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) in large hydropower projects in Vietnam. Initial optimism for climate finance – in particular amongst Northern aid providers and private CDM consultants – resulted in a boom in registration of CDM hydropower projects in Vietnam. These plans, however, have since then busted. The article utilises a multi-scale and multi-place network governance analysis of the water governance-climate finance nexus, based on interviews with government officials, consultants, developers, NGOs, multilateral and international banks, and project-affected people at the Song Bung 2 and Song Bung 4 hydropower projects in Central Vietnam. Particular attention is paid to how the place-based nature of organisations shapes the ability of these actors to participate in decision-making. The article concludes that the CDM has had little impact on water governance in Vietnam at the project level in terms of carbon reduction (additionality) or attaining sustainable development objectives. Furthermore, whilst climate finance has the potential to open new, more transparent and more accountable arenas of water governance, current arenas of the water governance-climate finance nexus are 'rendered technical', and therefore often underutilised and inaccessible to civil society and project-affected people.

KEYWORDS: Water governance, Clean Development Mechanism, hydropower, arenas of engagement, Vietnam

Spatial displacement and temporal deferral: Toward an alternative explanation of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint Basin water conflict

Johnny King Alaziz Wong
College of Geosciences, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, US; jwong@mail.usf.edu

M. Martin Bosman
College of Geosciences, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, US; bosman@usf.edu

ABSTRACT: The Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) River Basin conflict officially began in 1989 and despite ongoing declarations of readiness to seek a negotiated outcome to the conflict, there is still no end in sight. In fact, 2014 marks the 25th anniversary of this conflict. In this paper, we depart from conventional explanations of the crisis and propose an alternative theoretical point of entry to draw attention to the key structural forces driving water accumulation strategies in the basin. In doing so, we turn to David Harvey’s theoretical framework of capitalist growth and crisis to present an alternative understanding of the water conflict. By adopting this framework, we will reveal how the most dominant political and economic actor in the conflict, metro-Atlanta, has devised a series of spatial and temporal strategies to delay and displace a resolution while simultaneously using the impasse to entrench its economic and territorial interests to secure as much water as possible from the ACF water basin. The paper emphasises the crisis of capitalism in the form of suburbanisation in metro-Atlanta as the primary context in which the water conflict exists.

KEYWORDS: Water conflicts, capitalism, spatiotemporal fix, switching crisis, accumulation by dispossession, ACF conflict

Technical veil, hidden politics: Interrogating the power linkages behind the nexus

Jeremy Allouche
Institute of Development Studies, STEPS Centre, Brighton, UK; j.allouche@ids.ac.uk

Carl Middleton
MA in International Development Studies Program, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand; carl.chulalongkorn@gmail.com

Dipak Gyawali
Nepal Academy of Science and Technology, Kathmandu, Nepal; dipakgyawali@ntc.net.np

ABSTRACT: The nexus is still very much an immature concept. Although it is difficult to disagree with a vision of integration between water, food and energy systems, there are fewer consensuses about what it means in reality. While some consider its framing to be too restrictive (excluding climate change and nature), particular actors see it as linked to green economy and poverty reduction, while others emphasise global scarcity and value chain management. The nexus debates, however, mask a bigger debate on resource inequality and access, contributing to social instability. Indeed, the market-technical framing of the nexus by the World Economic Forum, located in international business imperatives and global neoliberal policy hides political issues such as inequality, the manufacture of scarcity and international political economy and geopolitics. By addressing these, we then propose a new framing of the nexus.

KEYWORDS: Nexus, scarcity, politics, technology, systems approach

Competition, conflict, and compromise: Three discourses used by irrigators in England and their implications for the co-management of water resources

Luke Whaley
Cranfield Water Science Institute, Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, UK; l.whaley@cranfield.ac.uk

Edward K. Weatherhead
Cranfield Water Science Institute, Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, UK; k.weatherhead@cranfield.ac.uk

ABSTRACT: In this paper we use discourse analysis to explore the current dynamic that exists among farmer irrigators in England, and between irrigators and water managers in order to understand the potential for co-management to develop. To do this we employ two concepts from the field of critical discursive psychology – 'interpretive repertoires' and 'subject positions' – and apply them to a qualitative analysis of 20 interviews with farmers who are members of irrigator groups and two focus group discussions with farmers thinking about forming an irrigator group. The findings reveal that the participants drew upon three interpretive repertoires when talking about the relationship between farming and water resources management, namely the 'competition', 'conflict', and 'compromise' repertoires, with the latter being the least dominant. We situate the repertoires in their wider historical context to reveal the ideological forces at play, and conclude that the relative dominance of the competition and conflict repertoires serve as a barrier to co-management. In particular, this is because they engender low levels of trust and reinforce a power dynamic that favours individualism and opposition. At the same time, the less-dominant compromise repertoire challenges the power of the other two, providing some hope of achieving more participatory forms of water resources management in the future. To this end, we discuss how the restructuring of current agri-environment schemes and government water programmes may be used to promote the adoption and institutionalisation of the compromise repertoire in order to facilitate the emergence of co-management.

KEYWORDS: Water resources, co-management, farming, discourse, power, England

Power-sharing in the English lowlands? The political economy of farmer participation and cooperation in water governance

Luke Whaley
Cranfield Water Science Institute, Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, UK; l.whaley@cranfield.ac.uk

Edward K. Weatherhead
Cranfield Water Science Institute, Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, UK; k.weatherhead@cranfield.ac.uk

ABSTRACT: Participatory and cooperative forms of water governance have become regular features of government discourse and stated policy objectives in England. We consider this aspiration from the perspective of farmers in the English lowlands, by analysing the current power dynamic that exists among these farmers, and between them and the key stakeholders involved in water management. To do this we undertake a political economy analysis that places lowland farming and water governance within the evolution of historical processes that, over time, have influenced the ability of farmers to participate in the governance of their water environment. These historical developments are interpreted through the lens of the Power Cube, an analytical tool for thinking about the interplay between different forms of power operating in different types of spaces and at different levels of governance. Our findings reveal that, despite there being a number of structural changes that provide lowland farmers with the opportunity to participate and cooperate in water governance, three distinct barriers stand in the way. These relate to the power 'within' these farmers, which continues to align with a productivist ideology founded on individualism and competition, often at the expense of the environment; the power that government water managers still exercise 'over' farmers instead of 'with' them; and the relationship between lowland farming and environmental interests, where historically the two sides’ power 'to' act has been diametrically opposed. The findings point to the importance of developing suitable programmes designed to support and incentivize farmer participation and cooperation.

KEYWORDS: Power Cube, participation and cooperation, water governance, farming, lowland England

Social norms in water services: Exploring the fair price of water

Ossi Heino
Tampere University of Technology, Department of Chemistry and Bioengineering, Tampere, Finland; ossi.heino@tut.fi

Annina Takala
Tampere University of Technology, Department of Chemistry and Bioengineering, Tampere, Finland; annina.takala@tut.fi

ABSTRACT: The aim of this article is to analyse price fairness in water services. Although a considerable amount of literature has been published on water pricing, these studies have mainly approached the question from instrumental and rational perspectives. Little attention has been paid to the human side of water pricing. Therefore, the general objective of this research is to shed light on these softer factors, filling the gap in knowledge of the emotional connections with water services. In this research, we explored peopleʼs ideas and views about water pricing by conducting 74 interviews in 11 municipalities in Finland. The results suggest that people are not just rational consumers of a good but also have emotional ties to water utilities and municipal decision-making. The general attitude towards a water utility is confident and sympathetic if its operations and municipal decision-making processes are considered as fair, and conversely, unsympathetic if operations and decision-making are considered unfair. This is a topical issue as many water utilities are facing pressures to increase water prices; being fair appeared to be a crucial way to gain appreciation and support through difficult times. Because fairness seems to be an emergent property of social experiences, special attention should be paid to the 'soft side' of water services.

KEYWORDS: Water services, water pricing, price fairness, social norms, Finland

The rise and implications of the water-energy-food nexus in Southeast Asia through an environmental justice lens

Carl Middleton
MA in International Development Studies Program, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand; carl.chulalongkorn@gmail.com

Jeremy Allouche
Institute of Development Studies, STEPS Centre, Brighton, UK; j.allouche@ids.ac.uk

Dipak Gyawali
Nepal Academy of Science and Technology, Kathmandu, Nepal; dipakgyawali@ntc.net.np

Sarah Allen
Department of Geography, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; saallen@yorku.ca

ABSTRACT: This article maps the rise of the water-energy-food 'nexus' as a research, policy and project agenda in mainland Southeast Asia. We argue that introducing the concept of environmental justice into the nexus, especially where narratives, trade-offs and outcomes are contested, could make better use of how the nexus is framed, understood and acted upon. With funding from high-income country donors, it is found to have diffused from a global policy arena into a regional one that includes international and regional organisations, academic networks, and civil society, and national politicians and government officials. The nexus is yet to be extensively grounded, however, into national policies and practices, and broad-based local demand for nexus-framed policies is currently limited. The article contends that if the nexus is to support stated aspirations for sustainable development and poverty reduction, then it should engage more directly in identifying winners and losers in natural resource decision-making, the politics involved, and ultimately with the issue of justice. In order to do so, it links the nexus to the concept of environmental justice via boundary concepts, namely: sustainable development; the green economy; scarcity and addressing of trade-offs; and governance at, and across, the local, national and transnational scale.

KEYWORDS: Nexus, environmental justice, sustainable development, water-energy-food, Southeast Asia

Node and regime: Interdisciplinary analysis of water-energy-food nexus in the Mekong Region

Tira Foran
CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences, Canberra, Australia; tira.foran@csiro.au

ABSTRACT: Understanding complex phenomena such as the water-energy-food nexus (resource nexus) requires a more holistic, interdisciplinary inquiry. Spurred by a sense of imbalance in approaches to the nexus dominated by integrated assessment/complex systems methodologies, I re-examine the findings and recommendations of a major 'nexus' research-for-development project in the Mekong region. The concept of 'regime of provisioning', a synthesis of social science concepts related to meso-level social order, allows essential political economy and discursive elements of the resource nexus to be analysed. I show that socio-political regimes constrain societal investment in three 'nodes' of the nexus previously identified as critical to manage sustainably: energy efficiency, wild-capture fisheries, and diversified smallholder agriculture. I discuss implications for the 'nexus' as a new policy agenda and offer three propositions for ongoing inquiry and inclusive practice.

KEYWORDS: Water, energy, food security, nexus, critical social science, complex systems, Mekong region

The 'nexus' as a step back towards a more coherent water resource management paradigm

Mike Muller
Wits University Graduate School of Public and Development Management, Johannesburg, South Africa; mikemuller1949@gmail.com

Abstract: The interrelationships between water resources, food production and energy security have influenced policy for many decades so the emergence of the water-food-energy “nexus” as a proposed new focus for water resources management is surprising. This focus is suggested to be understood as a consequence of the decision by developed countries to ignore agreements reached at the 1992 Rio Summit on Sustainable Development and promote instead a “Dublin IWRM”, their original lobbying platform. That approach has not helped developing countries to address food, energy and water security nor assisted global businesses to expand or to manage the risks posed to their operations by poor water management. The nexus approach begins to address these concerns by focusing on a specific “problem-shed”. While this may disintegrate the original robust concept of integrated water management, its emphasis on what water may do for society rather than what society should do for water is a step back toward a more coherent and useful paradigm.

Keywords: Water resources management, food security, energy security, political economy analysis, environmental policy

Securitising sustainability? Questioning the 'water, energy and food-security nexus'

Matthias Leese
International Centre for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW), University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany; matthias.leese@izew.uni-tuebingen.de

Simon Meisch
International Centre for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW), University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany; simon.meisch@uni-tuebingen.de

ABSTRACT: The water, energy and food-security nexus approach put forward by the Bonn2011 Conference highlights the need for an integrative approach towards issues of water, energy and food, and puts them under a general framework of security. While acknowledging the need for urgent solutions in terms of sustainability, the nexus approach, at the same time, makes a normative claim to tackle the needs of the poorest parts of the world population. A closer look at the underlying rationales and proposed policy instruments, however, suggests that the primary scope of the conference proceedings is not a normative one, but one that reframes the conflict between distributional justice and the needs of the world economy under the paradigm of security. Reading this slightly shifted perspective through a Foucauldian lens, we propose that security is now put forward as the key mechanism to foster a new 'green' economy, and that the needs of the poorest are, if anything at all, a secondary effect of the proposed nexus approach.

KEYWORDS: sustainability, nexus, securitisation, green economy, development

Tackling complexity: Understanding the food-energy-environment nexus in Ethiopia’s Lake Tana sub-basin

Louise Karlberg
Stockholm Environment Institute, Stockholm, Sweden; louise.karlberg@sei-international.org

Holger Hoff
Stockholm Environment Institute, Stockholm, Sweden; holger.hoff@sei-international.org

Tedasse Amsalu
Institute for Land Administration, Bahir Dar University, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia; tadesse_2@yahoo.co.uk

Kim Andersson
Stockholm Environment Institute, Stockholm, Sweden; kim.andersson@sei-international.org

Taylor Binnington
Stockholm Environment Institute, Somerville, MA, USA; taylor.binnington@sei-international.org

Francisco Flores-López
Stockholm Environment Institute, Davis, CA, USA; franscisco.flores@sei-international.org

Annemarieke de Bruin
Stockholm Environment Institute, University of York, Heslington, York, UK; annemarieke.debruin@sei-international.org

Solomon Gebreyohannis Gebrehiwot
Ethiopian Institute of Water Resources, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia; solomon.gebreyohannies@slu.se

Birhanu Gedif
Geospatial Data and Technology Centre (GDTC), Bahir Dar University, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia; birhanu1968@gmail.com

Oliver Johnson
Stockholm Environment Institute, c/o ICRAF, Nairobi, Kenya; oliver.johnson@sei-international.org

Friedrich zur Heide
GFA Consulting Group, Hamburg, Germany; Friedrich.zurHeide@gfa-group.de

Maria Osbeck
Stockholm Environment Institute, Stockholm, Sweden; maria.osbeck@sei-international.org

Chuck Young
Stockholm Environment Institute, Davis, CA, USA; chuck.young@sei-international.org

ABSTRACT: Ethiopia has embarked upon a rapid growth and development trajectory aiming to become a middle-income country by 2025. To achieve this goal, an agricultural development led industrialization strategy is being implemented which aims to intensify and transform agriculture, thereby boosting yields and, subsequently, economic returns. At the same time, the energy use which currently consists of more than 90% traditional biomass use is shifting towards increasing electricity production predominantly from large-scale hydropower plants, with the aim to improve access to modern energy sources. While the targets are commendable it is not clear that either all direct impacts or potential conflicts between goals have been considered. In this paper we evaluate and compare the impacts of alternative development trajectories pertaining to agriculture, energy and environment for a case-study location, the Lake Tana Subbasin, with a focus on current national plans and accounting for cross-sector interlinkages and competing resource use: the food-energy-environment nexus. Applying a nexus toolkit (WEAP and LEAP) in participatory scenario development we compare and evaluate three different future scenarios. We conclude that the two processes – agricultural transformation and energy transition – are interdependent and could be partly competitive. As agriculture becomes increasingly intensified, it relies on more energy. At the same time, the energy system will, at least in the foreseeable future, continue to be largely supported by biomass, partly originating from croplands. Two outstanding dilemmas pertaining to resources scarcity were identified. Water needed for energy and agricultural production, and to sustain ecosystem services, sometimes exceeds water availability. Moreover, the region seems to be hitting a biomass ceiling where the annual increments in biomass from all terrestrial ecosystems are in the same order of magnitude as biomass needs for food, fodder and fuel. We propose that a stakeholder-driven nexus approach, underpinned by quantitative and spatially explicit scenario and planning tools, can help to resolve these outstanding dilemmas and can support more consistent policy and decision making, towards improved resource productivities, lower environmental pressures and enhanced human securities.

KEYWORDS: Energy transition, agricultural intensification and transformation, WEAP-LEAP, participatory scenario development, Ethiopia

The water-energy-food security nexus through the lenses of the value chain and the Institutional Analysis and Development frameworks

Sergio Villamayor-Tomas
Division of Resource Economics, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany; villamas@agrar.hu-berlin.de

Philipp Grundmann
Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Engineering, Potsdam, Germany; pgrundmann@atb-potsdam.de

Graham Epstein
The Vincent and Elinor Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA; gepstein@indiana.edu

Tom Evans
Department of Geography and Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA; evans@indiana.edu

Christian Kimmich
Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Birmensdorf, Switzerland, and Division of Resource Economics, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany; christian.kimmich@wsl.ch

ABSTRACT: A number of frameworks have been used to study the water-food-energy nexus; but few of these consider the role of institutions in mediating environmental outcomes. In this paper we aim to start filling that gap by combining insights from the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework and value chain analysis. Specifically we study food, energy and water value chains as networks of action situations (NAS) where actorsʼ decisions depend not only on the institutional structure of a particular situation but also on the decisions made in related situations. Although the IAD framework has developed a solid reputation in the policy sciences, empirical applications of the related NAS concept are rare. Value-chain analysis can help drawing the empirical boundaries of NAS as embedded in production processes. In this paper we first use value-chain analysis to identify important input-output linkages among water, food and energy production processes, and then apply the IAD-NAS approach to better understand the effect of institutions within and across those processes. The resulting combined framework is then applied to four irrigation-related case studies including: the use of energy for water allocation and food production in an irrigation project in Spain; the production and allocation of treated water for food and bioenergy production in Germany; the allocation of water for food production and urban use in Kenya; and the production and allocation of energy for food production in Hyderabad, India. The case analyses reveal the value of the framework by demonstrating the importance of establishing linkages across energy, water and food-related situations and the ways in which institutions limit or facilitate synergies along the value chains.

KEYWORDS: Water-energy-food nexus, Institutional Analysis and Development framework, Socio-Ecological Systems Framework, value-chain analysis, irrigation cases

Water governance in a comparative perspective: From IWRM to a 'nexus' approach?

David Benson
The Environment and Sustainability Institute and Department of Politics, University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Cornwall, UK; d.i.benson@exeter.ac.uk

Animesh K. Gain
GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Section Hydrology, Potsdam, Germany; animesh@gfz-potsdam.de

Josselin J. Rouillard
Ecologic Institute, Berlin, Germany; josselin.rouillard@ecologic.eu

ABSTRACT: Nexus thinking, in the form of integrating water security with agriculture, energy and climate concerns, is normatively argued to help better transition societies towards greener economies and the wider goal of sustainable development. Yet several issues emerge from the current debate surrounding this concept, namely the extent to which such conceptualisations are genuinely novel, whether they complement (or are replacing) existing environmental governance approaches and how – if deemed normatively desirable – the nexus can be enhanced in national contexts. This paper therefore reviews the burgeoning nexus literature to determine some common indicative criteria before examining its implementation in practice vis-à-vis more established integrated water resources management (IWRM) models. Evidence from two divergent national contexts, the UK and Bangladesh, suggests that the nexus has not usurped IWRM, while integration between water, energy, climate and agricultural policy objectives is generally limited. Scope for greater merging of nexus thinking within IWRM is then discussed.

KEYWORDS: Nexus, integrated water resources management (IWRM), water governance, energy, agriculture

Understanding political will in groundwater management: Comparing Yemen and Ethiopia

Frank van Steenbergen
MetaMeta Research, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands; fvansteenbergen@metameta.nl

Assefa Kumsa
CoCoon Groundwater in the Political Domain Team, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; akumsa@metameta.nl

Nasser Al-Awlaki
CoCoon Groundwater in the Political Domain Team, Yemen; former Minister of Agriculture of Yemen.

ABSTRACT: This paper explores the role of politics in water management, in particular, comparing groundwater management in Yemen and Ethiopia. It tries to understand the precise meaning of the often-quoted term 'political will' in these different contexts and compares the autocratic and oligarchic system in Yemen with the dominant party 'developmental state' in Ethiopia. The links between these political systems and the institutional domain are described as well as the actual management of groundwater on the ground. Whereas the Ethiopian state is characterised by the use of hard power and soft ideational power, the system in Yemen relies at most on soft negotiating power. There is a strong link between the political system, the positioning of different parties and access to power, the role of central and local governments, the propensity to plan and vision, the effectiveness of government organisations, the extent of corruption, the influence of informal governance mechanisms, the scope for private initiative and the political interest in groundwater management and development in general. More important than political will per se is political capacity – the ability to implement and regulate.

KEYWORDS: Groundwater, conflict, cooperation, politics, governance, Yemen, Ethiopia

Information and knowledge for water governance in the networked society

Belén Pedregal
Department of Human Geography, University of Seville; Seville, Spain; bpedregal@us.es

Violeta Cabello
Department of Human Geography, University of Seville; Seville, Spain; vcabello@us.es

Nuria Hernández-Mora
Department of Human Geography, University of Seville; Seville, Spain; nhernandezmora@us.es

Natalia Limones
Department of Human Geography, University of Seville; Seville, Spain; natalialr@us.es

Leandro Del Moral
Department of Human Geography, University of Seville; Seville, Spain; lmoral@us.es

ABSTRACT: In the last few years, parallel evolutionary processes in the socio-political, governmental and technological arenas have been providing new pathways for the collaborative generation, coordination and distribution of polycentric information. From a technological perspective, the proliferation of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has boosted the availability of information about our planet, along with its storage, processing and dissemination capabilities. The Worldwide Web and satellite and electronic sensors combined with smart phone technologies have also opened new means for social, political and scientific innovation. From a socio-political standpoint, the implementation of policies that encourage the reutilisation of data and protect the right to information of interested parties, together with growing social demands for transparency, have resulted in an increasing number of governments drawing strategies to open up public data. In this context, this paper addresses two main topics that we deem will be key drivers for improved water governance in the near future. First, it discusses new practices of collaborative and distributed generation and disclosure of information for water governance, and the resulting challenges and opportunities afforded by the use of ICTs. Second, it looks at the interplay between the uptake of ICTs and institutional frameworks, social dynamics and technological structures within which they operate to understand the extent to which ICTs affect decision-making processes and contribute to creating alternative spaces for the production of common services or alternative discourses. Despite the advances in open data policies, findings suggest that there remain significant challenges to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by ICTs, mostly derived from the structural conditions of existing models of decision-making, and information generation and management. It seems that the potentialities of ICTs as transformative tools are conditioned by the regeneration of the context within which decisions are made, that is, the democratic process itself.

KEYWORDS: Water data, open data, polycentric information, networked society, technopolitics, water governance

Pockets of participation: Bureaucratic incentives and Participatory Irrigation Management in Thailand

Jacob I. Ricks
School of Social Sciences, Singapore Management University, Singapore; jacobricks@smu.edu.sg

ABSTRACT: Despite a history of participatory policies, Thailand’s Royal Irrigation Department (RID) has had little success in developing water user organisations (WUOs) capable of facilitating cooperation between farmers and the irrigation agency. Even so, pockets of participation exist. What can explain these rare successes? What policy lessons can they provide? Comparing nine WUOs, I identify factors that contribute to the emergence of relatively successful groups. Most importantly, I show that successful WUOs are contingent on the actions of local irrigation officials. These findings emphasise the important role of street-level bureaucrats in implementing participatory policies. The incentive structures provided by the RID, though, deter most officials from sincerely collaborating and cooperating with farmers. Thus experts and policy-makers interested in promoting participatory resource management should focus more attention on shaping incentives for local officials to engage meaningfully with farmers.

KEYWORDS: Participatory resource management, irrigation, street-level bureaucrats, public participation, Thailand

Diesel subsidies and Yemen politics: Post-2011 crises and their impact on groundwater use and agriculture

Adel Al-Weshali
Water and Environment Centre, Sana’a University, Sana’a, Yemen; drweshali@yahoo.com

Omar Bamaga
Center of Excellence in Desalination Technology, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; obamaga@kau.edu.sa

Cecilia Borgia
MetaMeta Research, AJ ‘s Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands; cborgia@metameta.nl

Frank van Steenbergen
MetaMeta Research, AJ ‘s Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands; fvansteenbergen@metameta.nl

Nasser Al-Aulaqi >
Water and Environment Centre, Sana’a University, Sana’a, Yemen

Abdullah Babaqi
Water and Environment Centre, Sana’a University, Sana’a, Yemen; asbabaqi@y.net.ye

ABSTRACT: Groundwater is the main source of agricultural and municipal water and contributes 70% of total water use in Yemen. All aquifers are depleting at a very high rate owing to combined effects of a host of socioeconomic, institutional and climate-change factors. The government policy on diesel subsidy was largely believed to be one of the significant factors which stimulated large-scale pumping of water for irrigating water-intensive cash crops such as qat, fruits, and vegetables. A rapid field assessment was conducted between June and December 2011 in six different regions of the country to analyse the impacts of the severe diesel crisis that accompanied the political turmoil of 2011 on groundwater use and agriculture. The study highlighted winners and losers in the process of adapting to diesel shortage and high diesel prices. Farmers’ responses differed according to their social status, financial resources, and farming systems. Poorly endowed households partially or completely abandoned agriculture. Others abandoned farming of irrigated cereals and fodder, but practised deficit irrigation of fruits and vegetables, thus halving the consumption of diesel. Crop yields dropped by 40-60% in all surveyed regions. The intra-governorate transport halt due to the sharp increase in transport cost caused prices at the farm gate to drop. Only those farmers who could absorb increases in diesel prices due to high return:cost ratios, higher drought tolerance, stable prices (qat), and access to alternative sources of water could cope with the diesel crisis.

KEYWORDS: Groundwater, diesel subsidy, diesel crisis, irrigated agriculture, Yemen

Motor pump revolution in Ethiopia: Promises at a crossroads

Mengistu Dessalegn
International Water Management Institute (IWMI), East Africa, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; m.desalegn@cgiar.org

Douglas J. Merrey
Independent Consultant, Natural Resources Policy and Institutions Specialist, Pittsboro, NC, USA; dougmerrey@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: In sub-Saharan Africa, motor pump irrigation is at an earlier stage than in Asia but is growing rapidly in many countries. The focus of both policy and research in Africa to date has been on facilitating supply chains to make pumps available at a reasonable price. In Africa, pump irrigation is mainly based on two sources: shallow groundwater aquifers and small streams and rivers. Both usually have limited and variable yields. We present a case study from Ethiopia where pump irrigation based on small rivers and streams is expanding rapidly, and draw parallels to experiences in Asia and other African countries. We show that while farmers understand the social nature of community-managed irrigation, they share with policymakers a narrow understanding of pump irrigation as being primarily 'technical'. They perceive pumps as liberating them from the 'social' limitations of traditional communal irrigation. However, the rapid expansion of pump irrigation is leading to increasing competition and conflict over the limited water resource. We analyse the wider implications for Africa of this blindness to the social dimension of pump irrigation and offer suggestions on future policy and applied research to address the problem before it becomes a widespread crisis.

KEYWORDS: Community-managed irrigation, motor pump irrigation, sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Fogera, Ethiopia

Misrepresenting the Jordan River Basin

Clemens Messerschmid
Hydrogeologist, Free Lance Consultant, Ramallah, Palestine; clemensmesserschmid@yahoo.de

Jan Selby
Department of International Relations, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK; j.selby@sussex.ac.uk

ABSTRACT: This article advances a critique of the UN Economic and Social Commission for West Asia’s (ESCWA’s) representation of the Jordan River Basin, as contained in its recently published Inventory of Shared Water Resources in Western Asia. We argue that ESCWA’s representation of the Jordan Basin is marked by serious technical errors and a systematic bias in favour of one riparian, Israel, and against the Jordan River’s four Arab riparians. We demonstrate this in relation to ESCWA’s account of the political geography of the Jordan River Basin, which foregrounds Israel and its perspectives and narratives; in relation to hydrology, where Israel’s contribution to the basin is overstated, whilst that of Arab riparians is understated; and in relation to development and abstraction, where Israel’s transformation and use of the basin are underplayed, while Arab impacts are exaggerated. Taken together, this bundle of misrepresentations conveys the impression that it is Israel which is the main contributor to the Jordan River Basin, Arab riparians its chief exploiters. This impression is, we argue, not just false but also surprising, given that the Inventory is in the name of an organisation of Arab states. The evidence discussed here provides a striking illustration of how hegemonic hydro-political narratives are reproduced, including by actors other than basin hegemons themselves.

KEYWORDS: Jordan River, hydrology, bias, political geography, hegemony

Exploring sustainability through stakeholders’ perspectives and hybrid water in the Swiss Alps

Flurina Schneider
Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern, Bern; flurina.schneider@cde.unibe.ch

ABSTRACT: Can the concept of water as a socio-natural hybrid and the analysis of different users’ perceptions of water advance the study of water sustainability? In this article, I explore this question by empirically studying sustainability values and challenges, as well as distinct types of water as identified by members of five water user groups in a case study region in the Swiss Alps.Linking the concept of water as a socio-natural hybrid with the different water users’ perspectives provided valuable insights into the complex relations between material, cultural, and discursive practices. In particular, it provided a clearer picture of existing water sustainability challenges and the factors and processes that hinder more sustainable outcomes. However, by focusing on relational processes and individual stakeholder perspectives, only a limited knowledge could be created regarding a) what a more sustainable water future would look like and b) how current unsustainable practices can be effectively transformed into more sustainable ones.I conclude by arguing that the concept of water as a socio-natural hybrid provides an interesting analytical tool for investigating sustainability questions; however, if it is to contribute to water sustainability, it needs to be integrated into a broader transdisciplinary research perspective that understands science as part of a deliberative and reflective process of knowledge co-production and social learning between all actor groups involved.

KEYWORDS: Hybrid water, stakeholder perceptions, water sustainability, Switzerland

Water and climate data in the ganges Basin: Assessing access to information regimes and implications for cooperation on transboundary rivers

Sagar Prasai
The Asia Foundation, New Delhi, India; sagar.prasai@asiafoundation.org

Mandakini Devasher Surie
The Asia Foundation, New Delhi, India; mandakini.surie@asiafoundation.org

ABSTRACT: Public access to government-maintained water and climate data in the three major co-riparian countries of the Ganges Basin – Nepal, India and Bangladesh – has been either inadequately granted or formally restricted. This paper examines the effects of newly enacted Right to Information (RTI) laws in these three countries to assess changes in the information access regimes as they relate to hydrological data. We find that neither the RTI laws nor the internal and external demand for increased transparency in governments have affected access to information regimes on water at a fundamental level. In India, the RTI laws have not eased public access to data on its transboundary rivers including in the Ganges Basin and in Nepal and Bangladesh, while data can be legally accessed using RTI laws, the administrative procedures for such an access are not developed enough to make a tangible difference on the ground. We then discuss the implications of our findings on the continuing impasse on regional collaboration on water in South Asia and point to rapid advancements in technology as an emerging pathway to greater data democracy.

KEYWORDS: Transboundary water governance, Ganges Basin, right to information, regional cooperation, policy contestation, data-sharing, data democracy

Spatialising agricultural water governance data in polycentric regimes

Faith Sternlieb
Colorado Water Institute, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA; faith.sternlieb@gmail.com

Melinda Laituri
Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA; melinda.laituri@colostate.edu

ABSTRACT: Water governance in the Colorado River Basin (CRB) is based on a historical and complex set of policies, legal decisions, and operational guidelines called the Law of the River. Behind the complex institutional structure lies an intricate web of data on water, most of which are hydrogeological in nature. However, we posit that in order to realise sustainable water governance, management efforts must also address data on water governance. Therefore, our central research question is: what is the role of water governance data in water governance, as it pertains to agriculture? First, we lay out the digital landscape and theoretical framework that justify the development of the Colorado River Basin Water Governance Relational Database. Then, we conduct an analysis of water-sharing policies within Law of the River to identify and categorise boundaries. By operationalising a boundary typology in a geographic information system, we found that data on agricultural water governance have little to no current role in water governance due to scale discrepancies, insufficient availability and collection of data, and lack of standardisation. In addition, agricultural water governance in the CRB was found to exhibit polycentric patterns. However, unlike the flexible and adaptive nature of some polycentric systems, polycentric data sets may pose challenges to water governance due to limited information regarding organisational changes, policy developments, and special interests. This study advances the science-policy dialogue in four ways: 1) by emphasising the salience of the data on water governance, 2) by incorporating water governance data in water governance and policy decisions, 3) by demonstrating the value of integrating data types, and 4) by engaging users through geo-visualisation.

KEYWORDS: Colorado River Basin, boundary, Geographic Information Science, relational database, science-policy discourse

Not just a tool. Taking context into account in the development of a mobile App for rural water supply in Tanzania

Anna Wesselink
University of Twente, Enschede, the Netherlands; a.j.wesselink@utwente.nl

Robert Hoppe
University of Twente, Enschede, the Netherlands; r.hoppe@utwente.nl

Rob Lemmens
University of Twente, Enschede, the Netherlands; r.l.g.lemmens@utwente.nl

ABSTRACT: The 'eGovernance' hype around the potential of mobile phone and geoweb technologies for enhancing 'good governance' is soaring. In East Africa, the extensive use of mobile telephony adds to the imagined promises of ICT. We reflect on the assumptions made by the proponents of such tools, using our own action research project as an example. We took great care to consider context in the development of software for enhancing empowerment and accountability in rural water supply in Tanzania. However, we found that the rural water supply context in Tanzania is much more complex than the contexts for which successful mApps have been developed previously. Institutional analysis and public administration theory help to understand why. Rural water supply shows institutional hybridity, with water being at the same time a private, public and common-pool good. In addition, in accountability relations, many informal mechanisms prevail where explicit reporting is not relevant. Finally, our proposal sat uneasily with other ongoing iGovernment initiatives. We conclude that we need to consider eGovernance tools as political Apps that can be expected to trigger political responses.

KEYWORDS: mApp, eGovernance, iGovernment, institutional analysis, informal accountability

Community knowledge sharing and co-production of water services: Two cases of community aqueduct associations in Colombia

Valeria Llano-Arias
University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland; valeria.llanoarias@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: Local-level participatory communication practices have enabled the opening of new democratic spaces in which decisions on water policies are taken. Through their resistance to water privatisation policies, many Colombian community aqueducts have made use of a transformed political and social role. Citizens from community aqueduct associations are generating new forms of political participation and citizenship, capable of challenging the widespread political apathy in the country.

This article presents two case studies of community aqueduct associations in Colombia; exploring the scope of their communication and mobilisation actions in challenging power relations concerning water governance and in enhancing citizen participation in democratic actions. The article also explores how local water governance initiatives such as the development of a water management computer software with particular communitarian characteristics, can support local initiatives for political transformation and more sustainable water governance.

These new forms of citizenship based on claims of sovereignty over natural, common goods are gradually transforming Colombian democratic space. The article draws on debates around active citizenship, deepening democracy, and participatory communication approaches to explain the aims of community organisations and the mechanisms by which they are self-organising and managing water at the local level.

KEYWORDS: Community aqueducts, participatory communication, water governance, Colombia

Networked water citizen organisations in Spain: Potential for transformation of existing power structures in water management

Nuria Hernández-Mora
Department of Human Geography, University of Seville; Seville, Spain; nhernandezmora@us.es

Violeta Cabello
Department of Human Geography, University of Seville; Seville, Spain; vcabello@us.es

Lucia de Stefano
Department of Geodynamics, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain; lstefano@ucm.es

Leandro del Moral
Department of Human Geography, University of Seville; Seville, Spain; lmoral@us.es

Abstract: The shift from hierarchical-administrative water management toward more transparent, multi-level and participated governance approaches has brought about a shifting geography of players, scales of action, and means of influencing decisions and outcomes. In Spain, where the hydraulic paradigm has dominated since the early 1920s, participation in decisions over water has traditionally been limited to a closed water policy community, made up of economic water users, primarily irrigator associations and hydropower generators, civil engineering corps and large public works companies. The river basin planning process under the Water Framework Directive of the European Union presented a promise of transformation, giving access to non-economic water users, environmental concerns and the wider public to water-related information on planning and decision-making. This process coincided with the consolidation of the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) by the water administration, with the associated potential for information and data generation and dissemination. ICTs are also increasingly used by citizen groups and other interested parties as a way to communicate, network and challenge existing paradigms and official discourses over water, in the broader context of the emergence of “technopolitics”. This paper investigates if and in what way ICTs may be providing new avenues for participated water resources management and contributing to alter the dominating power balance. We critically analyse several examples where networking possibilities provided by ICTs have enabled the articulation of interest groups and social agents that have, with different degrees of success, questioned the existing hegemonic view over water. The critical review of these cases sheds light on the opportunities and limitations of ICTs, and their relation with traditional modes of social mobilisation in creating new means of societal involvement in water governance.

Keywords: ICTs, water governance, social networks, public participation, power, Spain

Does social media benefit dominant or alternative water discourses?

María Mancilla-García
Department of Financial Law, Political Economy and Philosophy of Law at the University of Malaga, Malaga, Spain; m.mancillagarcia@qeh.oxon.org

ABSTRACT: Political ecology and cognate fields have highlighted the social constructedness of different water discourses, exposing them as the product of a particular view of nature with underpinning interests and political consequences. Integrated Water Resources Management, technical approaches, or the privatisation of drinking water services have enjoyed dominant positions, being able to determine what constitutes common sense. This has excluded numerous other alternative approaches, such as those championed by indigenous peoples. Social media, through its easy accessibility and its emphasis on visual, interactive, and short communication forms, bears the promise to challenge dominant discourses. Whether social media benefits dominant or alternative discourses has not yet been explored by the political ecology literature to which this article contributes. The article conducts a qualitative analysis of the use of two of the main social networking services (Facebook and Twitter) by nine organisations working on water. Organisations were selected considering their likelihood to champion different water discourses. The article analyses the formats used, the place of communities, and the kind of language employed. It argues that while social media presents an interesting potential for alternative discourses, it also offers important tools for dominant discourses to consolidate themselves. The article concludes that social media does not structurally challenge the status quo and suggests avenues for future research.

KEYWORDS: Social media, discourse, hegemony, counter-hegemony, water organisations

Water conflicts and entrenched governance problems in Chile’s market model

Carl J. Bauer
School of Geography & Development, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA; cjbauer@email.arizona.edu

ABSTRACT: The Chilean system of tradable water rights and water markets has been well known and controversial in international water policy circles since the 1990s. Chile’s 1981 Water Code is a textbook example of neo-liberalism, with strong private property rights and weak government regulation, and the market in water rights has been the dominant theme in debates about Chilean water policy, both nationally and internationally. The Water Code was somewhat reformed in 2005 after over 13 years of political debate. In this paper I review the issues in water policy and politics in Chile during the decade since that reform. What does the ongoing Chilean experience tell us about water privatisation, markets, and commoditisation? Water conflicts have become the essential issue in Chile, rather than water markets. In the past decade conflicts among multiple water users have deepened and widened in many parts of the country, involving river basins and groundwater aquifers. The institutional framework for governing these water conflicts has worked poorly, for a variety of reasons, and the conflicts have become a serious national political problem. I review the evolving political and policy debates in Chile, including the current government’s proposal in 2014 for a new and stronger reform of the Water Code. In short, the critical problem of the Chilean water model is the lack of institutional capacity for governance or integrated water resources management, and the problem has worsened as water conflicts have become closely linked to conflicts in the energy and environmental sectors.

KEYWORDS: Water conflicts, water governance, water politics, water markets, Chile

Discourses of deflection: The politics of framing China’s South-North Water Transfer Project

Britt Crow-Miller
Department of Geography, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon; bcrow@pdx.edu

ABSTRACT: Despite significant financial, ecological and social trade-offs, China has moved forward with constructing and operationalising the world’s largest interbasin water transfer project to date, the South-North Water Transfer Project (SNWTP). While it is fundamentally linked to broader political-economic goals within the context of China’s post-Mao development agenda, the SNWTP is frequently discussed in apolitical terms. Based on extensive discourse analysis and interviews with government officials across North China, I argue that the Chinese government is using "discourses of deflection" to present the project as politically neutral in order to serve its ultimate goal of maintaining the high economic growth rates that underpin its continued legitimacy. These discourses, which replace concerns with human-exacerbated water stress with naturalised narratives about water scarcity and the ecological benefits of water transfer, serve to deflect attention away from anthropogenic sources of water stress in the North China Plain and serve as apolitical justifications for pursuing a short-term supply-side approach rather than the more politically challenging and longer-term course of dealing with the underlying drivers of water stress in the region.

KEYWORDS: Discourse, interbasin water transfer, water politics, China

Which risks get managed? Addressing climate effects in the context of evolving water-governance institutions

Ken Conca
American University, Washington DC, USA; conca@american.edu

ABSTRACT: Warnings about climate change invariably stress water-related effects. Such effects are typically framed as both unpredictable and disruptive, and are thus said to create large new risks to the water sector demanding adaptive responses. This article examines how such responses are mediated by, and also compromised by, two dominant trends in the evolution of water governance institutions: (1) the rise of an “integrated” paradigm of water resources management, which has encouraged the development of more complex and interconnected water institutions, and (2) the rapidly changing political economy of water financing and investment. Each of these trends carries its own strong presumptions about what constitutes water-related risk and how such risk is properly managed. The article uses the specific example of large dam projects to illustrate how these ongoing trends in water governance shape and complicate the prospect of managing climate-water risks.

KEYWORDS: Integrated Water Resources Management, climate change, climate adaptation, risk, uncertainty

Upgrading domestic-plus systems in rural Senegal: An incremental Income-Cost (I-C) analysis

Ralph P. Hall
School of Public and International Affairs, Urban Affairs and Planning Program, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA; rphall@vt.edu

Eric A. Vance
Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Statistical Analysis (LISA), Department of Statistics, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA; ervance@vt.edu

Emily van Houweling
Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver, Denver, CO, USA; emily.vanhouweling@du.edu

ABSTRACT: There is growing evidence that rural and peri-urban households depend on water not only for basic domestic needs but also for a wide variety of livelihood activities. In recognition of this reality, an alternative approach to water service planning, known as multiple-use water services (MUS), has emerged to design water services around householdsʼ multiple water needs. The benefits of MUS are diverse and include improved health, food security, income generation, and women’s empowerment. A common argument put forth by WASH sector professionals in favour of upgrading existing water systems is that productive water uses allow for income generation that, in turn, enhances the ability to pay for services. However, there has been limited rigorous research to assess whether the additional income generated from productive use activities justifies water service upgrading costs. This paper describes an income-cost (I-C) analysis based on survey data and EPANET models for 47 domestic-plus water systems in rural Senegal to assess whether the theoretical financial benefits to households from additional piped-water-based productive activities would be greater than the estimated system upgrade costs. The paper provides a transparent methodology for performing an I-C analysis. We find that the potential incremental income earned by upgrading the existing domestic-plus systems to provide intermediate-level MUS would be equivalent to the funds needed to recover the system upgrade costs in just over one year. Thus, hypothetically, water could pay for water. A sensitivity analysis shows that even with a 55% reduction in household income earned per cubic meter of water, the incremental income is still greater than the upgrade costs over a ten-year period for the majority of the systems.

KEYWORDS: Domestic-plus systems, intermediate-level MUS, multiple-use water services, rural water supply, incremental I-C analysis, Senegal

Groundwater as a source of conflict and cooperation: Towards creating mutual gains in a Finnish water supply project

Vuokko Kurki
Tampere University of Technology, Tampere, Finland; vuokko.kurki@tut.fi

Tapio S. Katko
Tampere University of Technology, Tampere, Finland; tapio.katko@tut.fi

ABSTRACT: Community planners, decision-makers and authorities frequently encounter conflicts revolving around natural resource management as well as around urban planning. Since the 1970s, the dynamics of conflict resolution have evolved from conventional expert-based rational solutions towards collaborative ones. Against this background, our research investigates one contentious groundwater project in the Tampere Region in Finland. Conflict assessment clarified the divergent interests of the multiple parties. Drawing on negotiation theory, this study illustrates how polarised positions and competitive framing, as well as the influence of historical baggage, may form an insurmountable barrier to successful negotiation. While the acknowledgement of various interests should form the heart of the integrative negotiation process, excessive energy is used for argumentation to protect predefined goals with as minor concessions as possible. Addressing the collaborative approach, we suggest multiple ways towards creating mutual gains and cooperation in future water supply projects.

KEYWORDS: Conflict assessment, case-study, groundwater, integrative negotiation, mutual gains approach, Finland

Vernacular knowledge and water management – Towards the integration of expert science and local knowledge in Ontario, Canada

Hugh Simpson
Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, Guelph, Ontario, Canada; School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada; Water Policy and Governance Group; hcsimpso@uwaterloo.ca

Rob de Loë
Department of Environment and Resource Studies, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada; Water Policy and Governance Group; rdeloe@uwaterloo.ca

Jean Andrey
Professor, Department of Geography and Environmental Management, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada; jandrey@uwaterloo.ca

ABSTRACT: Complex environmental problems cannot be solved using expert science alone. Rather, these kinds of problems benefit from problem-solving processes that draw on 'vernacular' knowledge. Vernacular knowledge integrates expert science and local knowledge with community beliefs and values. Collaborative approaches to water problem-solving can provide forums for bringing together diverse, and often competing, interests to produce vernacular knowledge through deliberation and negotiation of solutions. Organised stakeholder groups are participating increasingly in such forums, often through involvement of networks, but it is unclear what roles these networks play in the creation and sharing of vernacular knowledge. A case-study approach was used to evaluate the involvement of a key stakeholder group, the agricultural community in Ontario, Canada, in creating vernacular knowledge during a prescribed multi-stakeholder problem-solving process for source water protection for municipal supplies. Data sources – including survey questionnaire responses, participant observation, and publicly available documents – illustrate how respondents supported and participated in the creation of vernacular knowledge. The results of the evaluation indicate that the respondents recognised and valued agricultural knowledge as an information source for resolving complex problems. The research also provided insight concerning the complementary roles and effectiveness of the agricultural community in sharing knowledge within a prescribed problem-solving process.

KEYWORDS: Vernacular knowledge, water governance, stakeholder networks, collaborative decision making, agriculture, Ontario, Canada

Brazil’s São Luiz do Tapajós Dam: The art of cosmetic environmental impact assessments

Philip M. Fearnside
National Institute for Research in Amazonia (INPA), Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil; pmfearn@inpa.gov.br

ABSTRACT: Brazil’s planned São Luiz do Tapajós dam is a key part of a massive plan for hydropower and navigable waterways in the Tapajós basin and on other Amazon River tributaries. The dam’s Environmental Impact Study (EIA) illustrates the fragility of protections. EIAs are supposed to provide input to decisions on development projects, but in practice these studies tend to become formalities in legalizing prior decisions made in the absence of information on or consideration of project impacts. The EIA has a tendency to minimize or ignore significant impacts. Loss of fisheries resources is likely to be critical for Munduruku indigenous people and for traditional riverside dwellers (ribeirinhos), but the EIA claims that there is "low expectation that natural conditions of aquatic environments will be significantly altered". The destruction of Munduruku sacred sites is simply ignored. The Brazilian government’s priority for the dam has resulted in blocking creation of the Munduruku’s Sawré Muybu indigenous land and other indigenous lands throughout Brazilian Amazonia. With the exception of one legally recognized community (Montanha e Mangabal), non-indigenous ribeirinhos are considered as not 'traditional people'. Even the one recognized community is not considered to require free, prior and informed consent. The São Luiz do Tapajós case illustrates problems in decision making in Brazil and in many other countries.

KEYWORDS: Hydropower, Indigenous people, EIA, Hydroelectric dams, Amazon, Brazil

Virtual water and water footprints: Overreaching into the discourse on sustainability, efficiency, and equity

Dennis Wichelns
Bloomington, Indiana, USA; dwichelns@csufresno.edu

ABSTRACT: The notions of virtual water and water footprints were introduced originally to bring attention to the large amounts of water required to produce crops and livestock. Recently, several authors have begun applying those notions in efforts to describe efficiency, equity, and the sustainability of resources and production activities. In this paper, I describe why the notions of virtual water and water footprints are not appropriate for analysing issues pertaining to those topics. Both notions lack a supporting conceptual framework and they contain too little information to enhance understanding of important policy issues. Neither notion accounts for the opportunity cost or scarcity value of water in any setting, or the impacts of water availability and use on livelihoods. In addition, countries trade in goods and services – not in crop and livestock water requirements. Thus, the notions of virtual water and water footprints cannot provide helpful insight regarding the sustainability of water use, economic efficiency, or social equity. Gaining such insight requires the application of legitimate conceptual frameworks, representing a broad range of perspectives from the physical and social sciences, with due consideration of dynamics, uncertainty, and the impacts of policy choices on livelihoods and natural resources.

KEYWORDS: Agriculture, efficiency, food security, livelihoods, risk, trade, uncertainty

On the sidelines: Social sciences and interdisciplinarity in an international research centre

Jean-Philippe Venot
IRD, UMR G-EAU, Montpellier, France; Water Resources Management Group, Wageningen University; jean-philippe.venot@ird.fr

Mark Giordano
Georgetown’s University School of Foreign Service, Washington, DC, USA; mark.giordano@georgetown.edu

Douglas J. Merrey
Independent Consultant, Pittsboro, North Carolina, USA; dougmerrey@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: This paper reflects on the notion of interdisciplinarity in the research for development sector from a specific vantage point, that of social science researchers at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). Drawing from first-hand experiences of doing research at IWMI, a member of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, and a series of interviews with former and current staff, we highlight the disputed nature of social science research within the institute and link it to major challenges to interdisciplinary research practice. For research managers and non-social science researchers, social science research has always been, and still is, central to IWMI’s mission and current activities. Social science researchers, on the other hand, tend to think their work has progressively been sidelined from a core to a peripheral concern; they feel they are underrepresented in management and hence have little influence on strategic orientation. This reinforces a tendency to work in isolation and not engage in the unavoidable negotiations that characterise the workings of an organisation. The uneasiness felt by IWMI social science researchers is largely grounded in the fact that many do not share the view that IWMI’s objectives and research practices are value-neutral and that the purpose of social science research is to add human dimensions to natural science projects rather than lead to knowledge creation.

KEYWORDS: Social sciences, interdisciplinary research, international agriculture research organization, IWMI-International Water Management Institute, coupled human-natural systems, water resources management

Viewpoint - Paradigm shift of water services in Finland: From production mentality to service mindset

Ossi Heino
Tampere University of Technology, Department of Chemistry and Bio-engineering, Tampere, Finland; ossi.heino@tut.fi

Annina Takala
Tampere University of Technology, Department of Chemistry and Bio-engineering, Tampere, Finland; annina.takala@tut.fi

ABSTRACT: In this article, the current management paradigm of water services in Finland is conceptualised. For this purpose, the managers of water utility in ten Finnish municipalities were interviewed. Consequently, the ways in which water services are perceived and managed are also described in this article. In addition, it is argued that the current paradigm produces systemic behaviour that can be considered to give rise to unsustainable ways of developing water services. Based on the problems of the current paradigm, an alternative paradigm is drafted that rethinks the value-creation logic. This alternative paradigm implies that one should be aware of the interactions between systems in which water services play a crucial role, and act accordingly.

KEYWORDS: Paradigm, value creation, water services, Finland

A compact to revitalise large-scale irrigation systems using a leadership-partnership-ownership 'theory of change'

Bruce Lankford
University of East Anglia, UEA, Norwich, UK; b.lankford@uea.ac.uk

Ian Makin
International Water Management Institute, Colombo, Sri Lanka; i.makin@cgiar.org

Nathanial Matthews
Water Land and Ecosystems (WLE) Programme, Colombo, Sri Lanka; n.matthews@cgiar.org

Peter G. McCornick
International Water Management Institute, Colombo, Sri Lanka; p.mccornick@cgiar.org

Andrew Noble
International Centre for Agriculture in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), Amman, Jordan; a.noble@cgiar.org

Tushaar Shah
International Water Management Institute, Anand, India; t.shah@cgiar.org

ABSTRACT: In countries with transitional economies such as those found in South Asia, large-scale irrigation systems (LSIS) with a history of public ownership account for about 115 million ha (Mha) or approximately 45% of their total area under irrigation. In terms of the global area of irrigation (320 Mha) for all countries, LSIS are estimated at 130 Mha or 40% of irrigated land. These systems can potentially deliver significant local, regional and global benefits in terms of food, water and energy security, employment, economic growth and ecosystem services. For example, primary crop production is conservatively valued at about US$355 billion. However, efforts to enhance these benefits and reform the sector have been costly and outcomes have been underwhelming and short-lived. We propose the application of a 'theory of change' (ToC) as a foundation for promoting transformational change in large-scale irrigation centred upon a 'global irrigation compact' that promotes new forms of leadership, partnership and ownership (LPO). The compact argues that LSIS can change by switching away from the current channelling of aid finances controlled by government irrigation agencies. Instead it is for irrigators, closely partnered by private, public and NGO advisory and regulatory services, to develop strong leadership models and to find new compensatory partnerships with cities and other river basin neighbours. The paper summarises key assumptions for change in the LSIS sector including the need to initially test this change via a handful of volunteer systems. Our other key purpose is to demonstrate a ToC template by which large-scale irrigation policy can be better elaborated and discussed.

KEYWORDS: Irrigation, food security, water security, ecosystem services, theory of change

A political economy of environmental impact assessment in the Mekong Region

Andrew Wells-Dang
Independent researcher, 57 Tran Phu, Hoi An, Vietnam; andrewwd@gmail.com

Kyaw Nyi Soe
Pact/Mekong Partnership for the Environment, Yangon, Myanmar; ksoe@pactworld.org

Lamphay Inthakoun
Independent researcher, Nonghai village, Hatxaifong district, Vientiane, Lao PDR; lamphay@gmail.com

Prom Tola
Independent researcher, House No. 85E1, Street 107, Sangkat O Reussey 4, Khan Chamcarmon, Phnom Penh, Cambodia; tolaprom@yahoo.com

Penh Socheat
Pact/Mekong Partnership for the Environment, Phnom Penh, Cambodia; psocheat@pactworld.org

Thi Thanh Van Nguyen
Pact/Mekong Partnership for the Environment, Hanoi, Vietnam; ntvan@pactworld.org

Areerat Chabada
Pact/Mekong Partnership for the Environment; Pathumwan, Bangkok, Thailand; achabada@pactworld.org

Worachanok Youttananukorn
Pact/Mekong Partnership for the Environment; Pathumwan, Bangkok, Thailand; worachanok@pactworld.org

ABSTRACT: Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is an issue of concern to governments, organized civil society groups, as well as business actors in the Mekong region. EIA and related forms of environmental assessments are being carried out throughout the region with varying levels of quality, legal frameworks, monitoring and compliance. Through a political economy approach, we seek to understand the interests and incentives among key stakeholders in each of the five Mekong region countries and propose ways that EIA processes can potentially be improved, with reference to hydropower and other infrastructure and development projects. The analysis is based on a collaborative research process carried out under the auspices of the Mekong Partnership for the Environment, a USAID-funded program implemented by Pact that aims to advance regional cooperation on environmental governance. We find that at present, EIA implementation is limited by numerous political economy constraints, some general across the Mekong region, others specific to one or more country contexts. Certain of these constraints can be addressed through a regional cooperative approach, while others will require longer-term changes in social and political dynamics to encourage uptake and impact and avoid possible blockage from entrenched interest groups.

KEYWORDS: Environmental Impact Assessment, political economy, infrastructure, hydropower, governance, economic development, Mekong region

Bulk Water Suppliers in the City of Harare – An endogenous form of privatisation of urban domestic water services in Zimbabwe?

Emmanuel Manzungu
University of Zimbabwe, Department of Soil Science and Agricultural Engineering, Harare, Zimbabwe; emmanuelmanzungu@gmail.com

Margret Mudenda-Damba
University of Zimbabwe, Centre for Applied Social Sciences, Harare, Zimbabwe; dambamargret@gmail.com

Simon Madyiwa
University of Zimbabwe, Department of Soil Science and Agricultural Engineering, Harare, Zimbabwe; smadyiwa@gmail.com

Vupenyu Dzingirai
University of Zimbabwe, Centre for Applied Social Sciences, Harare, Zimbabwe; vdzingi@gmail.com

Special Musoni
University of Zimbabwe, Department of Soil Science and Agricultural Engineering, Harare, Zimbabwe; smusoni3@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: This paper investigates the phenomenon of bulk water suppliers in the city of Harare, Zimbabwe’s largest urban metropolis and capital. Bulk water suppliers began in 2005 to sell domestic water to middle- and high-income suburbs because of shortcomings in the city’s water delivery system without state regulation, and have since become a permanent feature of the Zimbabwean urban waterscape. The study was conducted between 2012 and 2013 in three up-market suburbs of Harare, which were known to depend on bulk water suppliers. State regulation of bulk water suppliers was introduced in 2013, close to a decade after the start of operations, indicating a reactive and reluctant acknowledgement that bulk water suppliers were now significant players in water service provision. The regulation was, however, poorly conceptualised, based on potable water standards, which proved to be cumbersome and placed onerous demands on the suppliers. The paper concludes that bulk water suppliers are playing a critical role in water service provision in Zimbabwe’s largest metropolis and represent a spontaneous injection of local private capital in the urban domestic water supply sector. They can therefore be seen as a viable endogenous form of privatisation of urban domestic water service (as contrasted to multinational companies) but should be viewed as complementing rather than replacing functional urban water supply systems. The operations of bulk water suppliers can be enhanced if a regulatory regime, informed by realities on the ground is crafted.

KEYWORDS: Urban domestic water supply, privatisation, waterscape, bulk water suppliers, Zimbabwe

Critical reflections on building a community of conversation about water governance in Australia

Naomi Rubenstein
Monash Sustainability Institute, Monash University, Australia; naomi.rubenstein@monash.edu

Philip J. Wallis
Monash Sustainability Institute, Monash University, Australia; phil.wallis@monash.edu

Raymond L. Ison
Engineering & Innovation Department, Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK, ray.ison@open.ac.uk

Lee Godden
Centre for Resources, Energy and Environmental Law, The University of Melbourne, Carlton, Australia; l.godden@unimelb.edu.au

ABSTRACT: Water governance has emerged as a field of research endeavour in response to failures of current and historical management approaches to adequately address persistent decline in ecological health of many river catchments and pressures on associated communities. Attention to situational framing is a key aspect of emerging approaches to water governance research, including innovations that build capacity and confidence to experiment with approaches capable of transforming situations usefully framed as 'wicked'. Despite international investment in water governance research, a national research agenda on water governance was lacking in Australia in the late 2000s as were mechanisms to build the capacity of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research and collaborative policy practice. Through a two-year Water Governance Research Initiative (WGRI), we designed and facilitated the development of a community of conversation between researchers concerned with the dynamics of human-ecological systems from the natural sciences, humanities, social sciences, policy, economics, law and philosophy. The WGRI was designed as a learning system, with the intention that it would provide opportunities for conversations, learning and reflection to emerge. In this paper we outline the starting conditions and design of the WGRI, critically reflect on new narratives that arose from this initiative, and evaluate its effectiveness as a boundary organisation that contributed to knowledge co-production in water governance. Our findings point to the importance of investment in institutions that can act as integrative and facilitative governance mechanisms, to build capacity to work with and between research, policy, local stakeholders and practitioners.

KEYWORDS: Water governance, learning systems, knowledge systems, networks, Australia

The Italian water movement and the politics of the commons

Chiara Carrozza
Centro de Estudos Sociais, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal; chiaracarrozza@ces.uc.pt

Emanuele Fantini
Department of Integrated Water Systems and Governance, UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, Delft, the Netherlands; e.fantini@unesco-ihe.org

ABSTRACT: The article contributes to the debate on the commons as a political strategy to counter the privatisation of water services by focusing on the experience of the Italian water movement. It addresses the question: how has the notion of the commons – popularly associated with the Global South – been understood, adopted and translated into practice by social movements in a European country like Italy? We identify three different understandings of the commons coexisting within the Italian water movement – emphasising universality, locality and participation. We describe the political claims and the initiatives informed by these understandings, and the actors which promoted them. Our analysis underlines that the polysemy of the notion of the commons, its complementarity with the 'human right to water' and its overlapping with the idea of 'public' not only proved to be effective in the Italian case, but also posed challenges when it came to translate the notion of the commons into specific governance and management frameworks. The politics of the commons defines the space where these dynamics unfold: it is more articulated than a mere rhetorical reference to the commons, but less homogeneous and coherent than the idea of a 'commons movement'.

KEYWORDS: Commons, water, social movements, privatisation, Italy

The struggle for residential water metering in England and Wales

David Zetland
Leiden University College, The Hague, The Netherlands; d.j.zetland@luc.leidenuniv.nl

ABSTRACT: The transformation of water services that began with the privatisation of water companies in 1989 extended to households with the implementation of water metering. Meters 'privatised' water and the cost of provision by allocating to individual households costs that had previously been shared within the community. This (ongoing) conversion of common pool to private good has mostly improved economic, environmental and social impacts, but the potential burden of metering on poorer households has slowed the transition. Stronger anti-poverty programmes would be better at addressing this poverty barrier than existing coping mechanisms reliant on subsidies from other water consumers.

KEYWORDS: Water meters, collective goods, privatisation, regulation, England, Wales

Cultivating the desert: Irrigation expansion and groundwater abstraction in Northern State, Sudan

Stephen Fragaszy
Independent Consultant; Research undertaken whilst at SoGE, University of Oxford, UK; sfragaszy@gmail.com

Alvar Closas
International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Cairo, Egypt; a.closas@cgiar.org

ABSTRACT: This study examines the socioeconomic features that underpin the expansion of groundwater-dependent irrigation in Northern State, Sudan. Groundwater development in the region serves as an economic lifeline given the poor Nile-based irrigation infrastructure and future changes in Nile hydrology. Groundwater-dependent irrigation is found to be expanding in previously uncultivated regions increasingly distant from the Nile. The study finds these historically marginal lands are targeted for capital-intensive agricultural projects because landholding patterns in traditionally cultivated areas preclude new large developments and improved infrastructure has lowered farming costs in distant terraces. Private companies and large landholders have a history of successful agricultural ventures in Northern State and are reliant on easily accessible and reliable groundwater resources for these new farms.

KEYWORDS: Groundwater abstraction, irrigation, agriculture, land tenure, Saharan Nile, Sudan

Water, infrastructure and political rule: Introduction to the Special Issue

Julia Obertreis
Department of History, Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany; julia.obertreis@fau.de

Timothy Moss
Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Relations (IRI THESys), Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany; timothy.moss@hu-berlin.de

Peter P. Mollinga
Department of Development Studies, SOAS University of London, London, UK; pm35@soas.ac.uk

Christine Bichsel
Geography Unit, Department of Geosciences, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland; christine.bichsel@unifr.ch

ABSTRACT: This introductory article sets the scene for this special issue on water, infrastructure and political rule. It makes the case for revisiting the complex relationships between these three dimensions which have fascinated scholars since Wittfogel’s pioneering – if much criticised – work on causal links between large-scale irrigation systems and autocratic leadership. Scholarship on water, on infrastructure, as well as on political rule has made huge advances since Wittfogel’s days, requiring a wholesome reappraisal of their triangular relationship. In this article, we review the relevant advances in scientific knowledge and epistemological approaches on each dimension. We subsequently summarise the different ways in which each of the following papers takes up and interrogates the relationship between water, infrastructure and political rule prior to the final paper which synthesises the principal findings emerging from the special issue.

KEYWORDS: Water, infrastructure, rule, Oriental despotism, Wittfogel

Water and the (infra-)structure of political rule: A synthesis

Christine Bichsel
Geography Unit, Department of Geosciences, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland; christine.bichsel@unifr.ch

ABSTRACT: This synthesis paper engages with the key messages which emerge from across the eight papers in this special issue. It situates them in the context of Wittfogel’s hydraulic hypothesis and its legacy. The paper seeks to synthesise the insights of the papers with the aim to reinterpret the relationship between water, infrastructure and political rule and to provide a stimulus for further research.

KEYWORDS: Water, infrastructure, political rule, hydraulic society

Fostering Tajik hydraulic development: Examining the role of soft power in the case of the Rogun Dam

Filippo Menga
University of Manchester, School of Environment, Education and Development, Manchester, UK; filippo.menga@manchester.ac.uk

Naho Mirumachi
Department of Geography, King’s College London, London, UK; naho.mirumachi@kcl.ac.uk

ABSTRACT: Basin riparians are not equally endowed in their resources and capacity to control water within a shared international river basin. Beyond hydrological constraints and geographical positions, other less tangible factors such as discourses and narratives influence interactions among basin riparians for water resources control and river basin development, requiring further analytical refinement of the role of power. The analysis of discursive and ideological dimensions of power, or 'soft' power, in particular, enables insights to strategies and tactics of water control under conditions of power asymmetries between basin states. This paper examines the debate around the controversial large-scale Rogun Dam project on the Vakhsh River in Tajikistan, exploring how the exercise of 'soft' power can, and sometimes cannot, shape transboundary water outcomes over water allocation. By focusing on international diplomacy and narratives, the paper provides insights into the non-coercive ways in which hydraulic development is justified. In particular, it is shown how 'soft' power was utilised by the Tajik decision-makers to legitimise dam development both at the international and domestic levels. The paper illustrates how, in the case of the Rogun Dam, 'soft' power falls short of determining a hydraulic development that changes the status quo of water allocation for Tajikistan.

KEYWORDS: Transboundary water relations, power, dams, Central Asia, Aral Sea Basin

Re-engineering the state, awakening the nation: Dams, Islamist modernity and nationalist politics in Sudan

Maimuna Mohamud
Heritage Institute for Policy Studies, Mogadishu, Somalia; maimuna.mohamud@heritageinstitute.org

Harry Verhoeven
School of Foreign Service in Qatar, Georgetown University; hv89@georgetown.edu

ABSTRACT: This article investigates how and why dam building has fulfilled a crucial role in hegemonic projects of elite consolidation and nation-building. By drawing on the case of Sudan’s Dam Programme and the associated propaganda the Khartoum government has produced, we show how the dams have not just served to materially restructure the Sudanese political economy but have also been essential in the attempted rekindling of the identity of both the regime and the country. Massive investment in hydro-infrastructure dovetailed with the political rebalancing of an authoritarian system in crisis, turning dam-builders into nation-builders: the message of the dams as midwife to a pious, prosperous and revitalised Sudan allowed it to reconcile the nationalism of its military and security wing with the enduring ambitions for transformation of its Islamist base. Dam building in Sudan, as elsewhere, has thus meant a physical redrawing of the landscape and intensified rent creation and seeking but also embodies a high modernist narrative that matches the interests and worldviews of very different constituencies. This, we argue, helps explain its salience in earlier periods of state-building and nation-building, as well as contemporarily.

KEYWORDS: Hydropolitics, dams, nationalism, Islamism, nation-building, Sudan

A matter of relationships – Actor-networks of colonial rule in the Gezira Irrigation System, Sudan

Maurits Ertsen
Water Resources Management, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands; m.w.ertsen@tudelft.nl

ABSTRACT: In the first half of the 20th century, colonial rulers, a British firm and Sudanese farmers changed the Gezira Plain in Sudan into a large-scale irrigated cotton scheme. Gezira continues to be in use up to date. Its story shows how the abstract concept 'development' is shaped through the agency of humans and non-humans alike in government offices and muddy fields. Gezira provides a well-suited starting point for moving into the networks of development without any pre-suggested division in terms of levels, contexts or relations. Hierarchies, arenas and institutions do exist. Such power relations are associations between humans and non-humans: relatively stable relations are typically produced when non-human agency is involved, for example through books, roads, and money. The Gezira case shows the potential of actor-network theory in building and understanding of conceptual and empirical links between water, infrastructure and political rule.

KEYWORDS: Actor-network theory, material agency, power, infrastructure, social relations, Gezira scheme, Sudan

Ruling by canal: Governance and system-level design characteristics of large-scale irrigation infrastructure in India and Uzbekistan

Peter P. Mollinga
Department of Development Studies, SOAS University of London, London, UK; pm35@soas.ac.uk

Gert Jan Veldwisch
Water Resources Management Group of Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands; gertjan.veldwisch@wur.nl

ABSTRACT: This paper explores the relationship between governance regime and large-scale irrigation system design by investigating three cases: 1) protective irrigation design in post-independent South India; 2) canal irrigation system design in Khorezm Province, Uzbekistan, as implemented in the USSR period, and 3) canal design by the Madras Irrigation and Canal Company, as part of an experiment to do canal irrigation development in colonial India on commercial terms in the 1850s-1860s. The mutual shaping of irrigation infrastructure design characteristics on the one hand and management requirements and conditions on the other has been documented primarily at lower, within-system levels of the irrigation systems, notably at the level of division structures. Taking a 'social construction of technology' perspective, the paper analyses the relationship between technological structures and management and governance arrangements at irrigation system level. The paper finds qualitative differences in the infrastructural configuration of the three irrigation systems expressing and facilitating particular forms of governance and rule, differences that matter for management and use, and their effects and impacts.

KEYWORDS: Canal irrigation, design, governance, management, India, Uzbekistan

Conserving water and preserving infrastructures between dictatorship and democracy in Berlin

Timothy Moss
Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Relations (IRI THESys), Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany; timothy.moss@hu-berlin.de

ABSTRACT: This paper sheds a long-term perspective on the politics of water infrastructure in 20th century Berlin, focusing on how water conservation became enrolled in the political agendas of very diverse regimes, from the Weimar Republic to the present day. The paper poses the following three questions: firstly, in what socio-technical and political contexts have strategies of water conservation emerged (and disappeared) in Berlin? Secondly, what meanings have been attributed to these strategies and how were they politically appropriated? Thirdly, what continuities and changes to water-saving strategies can be traced across Berlin’s turbulent 20th century history? These questions are addressed with an empirical analysis of four periods of Berlin’s water infrastructure history: a) an era of expansion (1920-1935) about harnessing (regional) water for (urban) prosperity, b) an era of national autarky (1936-1945) about enrolling urban water in the Nazi cause, c) an era of division (1948-1989) about reordering truncated water flows in divided West and East Berlin, and d) an era of reunification (1990-present) in which expansionism has confronted environmentalism, giving rise to contestation over the desirability of water conservation. This empirical analysis is framed conceptually in terms of a dialogue between notions of obdurate socio-technical systems and dynamic socio-material assemblages.

KEYWORDS: Water politics, water conservation, infrastructure history, path dependence, assemblage, Berlin

Transnational system building across geopolitical shifts: The Danube-Oder-Elbe Canal, 1901-2015

Jiří Janáč
Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic; janac@usd.cas.cz

Erik van der Vleuten
School of Innovation Sciences, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, Netherlands; e.b.a.v.d.vleuten@tue.nl

ABSTRACT: We study the politics of water infrastructure through the Large Technical Systems (LTS) literature, which examines human agency in the dynamics of complex sociotechnical systems. We take into account the transnational turn in LTS-studies in the past decade. Transnational analysis is about the mutual shaping of the international, national, and local. Accordingly, we look at how key system builders – historical agents envisioning and working on the entire sociotechnical system – identified and negotiated international, national, regional, and local politics through the design process. We do this for the intriguing case of the Danube-Oder-Elbe Canal, the so-called 'missing link' between the North, Baltic, and Black Seas, with a design history spanning wildly diverging paradigms of political rule – from imperialism to fascism, communism, and 'EU-ropeanism'.

KEYWORDS: Large Technical Systems, water politics, transnational infrastructure, Central European history, transnational history, environmental history

Infrastructural relations: Water, political power and the rise of a new 'despotic regime'

Veronica Strang
Institute of Advanced Study, Durham University, Durham, UK; veronica.strang@durham.ac.uk

ABSTRACT: It is 60 years since Karl Wittfogel highlighted a key relationship between political power and the ownership and control of water. Subsequent studies have suggested, commensurately, that exclusion from the ownership of essential resources represents a fundamental form of disenfranchisement – a loss of democratic involvement in societal direction. Several areas of theoretical development have illuminated these issues. Anthropologists have explored the recursive relationship between political arrangements and cosmological belief systems. Narrow legal definitions of property have been challenged through the consideration of more diverse ways of owning and controlling resources. Analyses of material culture have shown how it extends human agency, as well as having agentive capacities itself; and explorations of infrastructures have highlighted their role in composing socio-technical and political relations. Such approaches are readily applied to water and the material culture through which it is controlled and used. Drawing on historical and ethnographic research on water in Australia and the UK, this paper traces changing relationships between cosmological beliefs, infrastructure and political arrangements over time. It suggests that a current trend towards privatised, transnational water ownership potentially opens the door to the emergence of new 'despotic regimes'.

KEYWORDS: Water ownership, water governance, human-nonhuman relations, UK, Australia

Water infrastructure and the making of financial subjects in the south east of England

Alex Loftus
Department of Geography, King’s College, London, UK; alex.loftus@kcl.ac.uk

Hug March
Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3), Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Castelldefels, Spain; hmarch@uoc.edu

Fiona Nash
affiliation fiona.j.nash@googlemail.com

ABSTRACT: Over the last four decades the locus of economic power has shifted from industry to finance. As part of this trend, the 'financialisation' of the water sector has added a new layer of complexity to the hydrosocial cycle, witnessed in the emergence of new financial actors, logics and financing instruments. Such a shift has profoundly reshaped the relationship between water utilities and consumers in the South East of England, where the household has become, in the words of Allen and Pryke (2013), a human revenue stream for financialised utilities. In this paper, we make an argument that the water meter is one of the crucial mediators through which finance will touch the lives of individual subjects. In the South East of England, after initial opposition to universal metering – in part shaped by fears over fluctuating revenues – water companies are now embedding a metering programme within a billing and tariff structure that aims to ensure governable and predictable subjects. Drawing on Urban Political Ecology, we argue that the financialisation of the water sector in England shapes the emergence of new financial subjectivities while enabling new forms of political rule that operate at a range of spatial scales.

KEYWORDS: Water meters, financialisation, hydrosocial cycle, households, South East England

Water services, lived citizenship, and notions of the state in marginalised urban spaces: The case of Khayelitsha, South Africa

Lucy Rodina
Institute for Resources Environment and Sustainability, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada; l.rodina@alumni.ubc.ca

Leila M. Harris
Institute for Resources Environment and Sustainability, and Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada; lharris@ires.ubc.ca

ABSTRACT: In this paper we argue that in South Africa the state is understood and narrated in multiple ways, notably differentiated by interactions with service provision infrastructure and the ongoing housing formalisation process. We trace various contested narratives of the state and of citizenship that emerge from interactions with urban water service infrastructures. In effect, the housing formalisation process rolls out through specific physical infrastructures, including, but not limited to, water services (pipes, taps, water meters). These infrastructures bring with them particular logics and expectations that contribute to a sense of enfranchisement and associated benefits to some residents, while others continue to experience inadequate services, and linked exclusions. More specifically, we learn that residents who have received newly built homes replacing shack dwellings in the process of formalisation more often narrate the state as legitimate, stemming from the government role as service provider. Somewhat surprisingly, these residents at times also suggest compliance with obligations and expectations for payment for water and responsible water consumption. In contrast, shack dwellers more often characterise the state as uncooperative and neglectful, accenting state failure to incorporate alternative views of what constitutes appropriate services. With an interest in political ecologies of the state and water services infrastructures, this paper traces the dynamic processes through which states and citizenship are mutually and relationally understood, and dynamically evolving. As such, the analysis offers insights for ongoing state-society negotiations in relation to changing infrastructure access in a transitioning democracy.

KEYWORDS: Informal settlements, water services, citizenship, access to water, South Africa

The environmental history of water (P.S. Jutti, T.S. Katko and H.S.Vuorinen (Eds). 2008. IWA Publishing, London, UK).
Gabor Laszlo Szanto

International water security: Domestic threats and opportunities (Nevelina I. Pachova, Mikiyasu Nakayama and Libor Jansky. 2008. United Nations University Press, Tokyo, Japan)
Mark Giordano

Gender and natural resource management: Livelihoods, mobility and interventions (B. Resurreccion, and R. Elmhirst (Eds). 2008).
Louis Lebel and Santita Ganjanapan

Water and peace for the people: Possible solutions to water disputes in the Middle East (J.M. Trondalen. 2008).
Mark Zeitoun

Total water management: Practices for a sustainable future (Neil S. Grigg. 2008).
Tapio S. Katko

Transboundary water governance in southern Africa (Larry A. Swatuk and Lars Wirkus. 2009).
Coleen Fox

Environmental protection of international watercourses under international law (McIntyre, O. 2007).
Joseph W. Dellapenna

 

Global corruption report 2008: Corruption in the water sector (Zinnbauer, D. and Dobson, R. 2008).
Undala Alam

Troubled waters -€“ Palestinians denied access to water (Amnesty International, 2009).
Jason Brozek

Interlinking of rivers in India: Issues and concerns (M. Monirul Q. Mirza; Ahsan Uddin Ahmed; Q.K. Ahmad, 2008).
François Molle

Sharing the benefits of large dams in West Africa (Skinner, J.; Niasse, M. and Lawrence, H., 2009).
Jean-Philippe Venot

Dam (Turpin, T., 2008).
Carl Middleton

Native peoples and water rights: Irrigation, dams, and the law in Western Canada (Matsui, K., 2009).
Hana Boye and Richard Paisley

Water war in the Klamath basin: Macho law, combat biology, and dirty politics (Doremus, H. and Tarlock, D., 2008).
Philippus Wester

Water policy in Spain (Garrido, A. and Llamas, M.R.; Eds. 2010).
David Sauri

The evolution of the law and politics of water (Dellapenna, J.W. and Gupta, J.; Eds. 2008).
Stefano Burchi

Out of the mainstream: Water rights, politics and identity (Boelens, R.; Getches, D. and Guevara-Gil, A.; Eds. 2010).
Helen Ingram

Power and water in the Middle East: The hidden politics of the Palestinian-Israeli water conflict (Zeitoun, M.; 2008).
Larry Swatuk

Water ethics. Foundational readings for students and professionals (Brown, P. and Schmidt, J., Eds, 2010).
David Groenfeldt

Water policy in Texas: Responding to the rise of scarcity (Griffin, R.C.; Ed. 2011).
Zachary Sugg

Water politics and development cooperation (Scheumann, W.; Neubert, S. and Kipping, M.; Eds. 2008).
Maria Koenig

Time to reform South African water reforms: A review of '€œTransforming water management in South Africa'€ (Schreiner, B. and Hassan, R.; Eds. 2011).
Douglas J. Merrey

Water, place and equity (Whiteley, J.M.; Ingram, H. and Perry, R.W.; Eds. 2008).
Timothy Moss

Privatizing water. Governance failure and the world'€™s urban water crisis (Bakker, K.; 2010).
José Esteban Castro

The meaning of water (Strang, V.; 2004); What is water (Linton, J.; 2010)
Peter P. Mollinga

Transboundary water management. Principles and practice (Earle et al.; 2010).
Jeroen Warner

Water fountains in the worldscape (Hynynen et al.; 2012).
Terje Oestigaard

Development through bricolage: Rethinking institutions for natural resources management (Cleaver, F. 2012).
Douglas J. Merrey

Turkey's water policy (Kibaroglu, A.; Scheumann, W.; Kramer, A. (Eds.), 2011).
Ariel Dinar

Shared borders, shared waters: Israeli-Palestinian and Colorado River Basin water challenges (Megdal, S.B., Varady, R.G. and Eden, S. (Eds). 2013).
David B. Brooks

Water and ethics: A values approach solving the water crisis (Groenfeldt, D. 2013).
Helen Ingram

Water, Christianity and the rise of capitalism (Oestergaard, T. 2013).
Tapio S. Katko