Agricultural water governance in the desert: Shifting risks in central Arizona

Abigail M. York
School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA; abigail.york@asu.edu

Hallie Eakin
School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA; hallie.eakin@asu.edu

Julia C. Bausch
Morrison Institute, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, USA; jcbausch@asu.edu

Skaidra Smith-Heisters
School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA; skaidra.smith-heisters@asu.edu

John M. Anderies
School of Human Evolution and Social Change, School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA; m.anderies@asu.edu

Rimjhim Aggarwal
School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA; rimjhim.aggarwal@asu.edu

Bryan Leonard
School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA; bleonar6@asu.edu

Katherine Wright
School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA; kewrigh4@asu.edu

ABSTRACT: In Arizona, the policy debates over the 2019 Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan exposed long-running tensions surrounding how we use and value scarce water resources in a desert. These negotiations also highlighted generations-old disputes between indigenous communities’ water rights and Anglo settlers. This paper explores how irrigators respond to, and participate in, the crafting of institutional arrangements while at the same time experiencing increased exposure to climatic and hydrological risk. Our analysis incorporates qualitative interview data, a literature review, archival information from policy reports, and secondary data on water use and agricultural production. Building on the fieldwork with farmers and water experts that we completed before the drought contingency planning efforts began, we describe the status quo and then explore potential future contexts based on shifting incentives and on the constraints that arise during periods of Colorado River water shortages. Through an understanding of the socio-hydrological system, we examine the region’s agricultural water use, water governance, indigenous water rights and co-governance, and the potential future of agriculture in the region. Our study illustrates how the historic and current institutions have been maintaining agricultural vibrancy but also creating new risks associated with increased dependence on the Colorado River.

KEYWORDS: Irrigated agriculture, drought, governance, climate change, Colorado River, Arizona

Urban ponds, environmental imaginaries and (un)commoning: An urban political ecology of the pondscape in a small city in Gujarat, India

Anna Zimmer
Independent researcher, New Delhi, India; anlouve@gmail.com

René Véron
Institute of Geography and Sustainability, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland; rene.veron@unil.ch

Natasha L. Cornea
School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom; n.l.cornea@bham.ac.uk

ABSTRACT: Urban ponds in India have for a long time been used for multiple purposes and have been accessible to a wide range of social groups; they thus often represent an urban commons. However, recent transformations of urban ponds into infrastructure that serves more limited uses have been accompanied by enclosure and social exclusion. Using an urban political ecology approach that is enriched with the concepts of environmental imaginaries and (un)commoning, this paper examines the ideational foundations and societal mechanisms underpinning the transformation of the pondscape of Navsari, a small city in the state of Gujarat. Based on interviews and field observations, the study found that the small-town elite’s imaginary of the 'modern city' underpinned the shift to the ponds becoming part of Navsari’s drinking water infrastructure; this led to the enclosure of the ponds and thus the ideational and physical separation of residents from these waterbodies and the exclusion of traditional user groups. This socio-ecological transformation of the pondscape, however, was not characterised by simple, linear processes of uncommoning driven by local elites: the dismantling of the urban commons (in the form of waste dumping by multiple actors) largely preceded the creation of infrastructure; enclosures and exclusions remained imperfect and spatially variable; and in some places informal resource-use rules continued or were recreated by local communities. This research points to how important it is for urban political ecology to consider the imaginaries and practices of multiple actors – including those beyond the metropolitan areas – in the construction of a nuanced narrative of dispossession in the neoliberal city.

KEYWORDS: Urban political ecology, urban commons, environmental imaginaries, ponds, Gujarat, India

Commercialisation as organised hypocrisy: The divergence of talk and action in water services in small towns in Uganda

Mireia Tutusaus
IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, Delft, The Netherlands; mireiatutusausluque@gmail.com

Klaas Schwartz
IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, Delft, The Netherlands and Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam; k.schwartz@un-ihe.org

ABSTRACT: The topic of commercialisation in the water services sector has been subject to heated debate over the past years. By drawing on an analysis of the service of small towns by the National Water and Sewerage Corporation of Uganda, we argue that multiple interpretations of the commercialisation of services can coexist within a single water utility. Whereas the water utility claims to adhere to a model of commercial water provisioning, the implemented model shows significant deviations from the ideal. In this article, we elaborate on the organisational strategies that help sustain a dissonance between what is prescribed in the discourse and what happens on the ground and we mobilise the concept of organised hypocrisy to describe these strategies. We highlight that the water utility needs to show adherence to a commercial public utility model in order to access resources from donors and the national government, while it must at the same time provide actual water services to these towns. The collective celebration of the success of the discursive model of commercialisation, despite the deviations to the model during implementation, promotes the persistence of this model in the international policy domain.

KEYWORDS: Commercialisation, water supply services, organised hypocrisy, Uganda

Depoliticising poor water quality: Ambiguous agreement in a wastewater reuse project in Morocco

Amal Ennabih
Sciences-Po Lyon, UMR Triangle, Lyon, France; am.ennabih@gmail.com

Pierre-Louis Mayaux
CIRAD, UMR G-EAU, Univ Montpellier, Montpellier, France; pierre-louis.mayaux@cirad.fr

ABSTRACT: How are depoliticising discourses on water issues produced and rendered effective? Research on discursive depoliticisation has focused on the ability of different types of policy networks to generate powerful and reasonably coherent depoliticised narratives. In the paper, by tracing the depoliticisation of poor water quality in a wastewater reuse project in Marrakesh, Morocco, we suggest that depoliticised discourses can also be produced in a much more dispersed, less coordinated way. In the case analysed here, depoliticisation occurred through an 'ambiguous agreement' around a highly polysemic idea, that of innovation. All the key actors understood that the project was innovative but that water quality was not a significant part of the innovation. This encouraged each actor to frame poor water quality as a strictly private matter that the golf courses needed to tackle on their own; however, each actor also had their own, idiosyncratic interpretation of exactly what this innovation was about and why poor water quality was in the end not that important. Showing how depoliticisation can be the product of mechanisms with varying degrees of coordination helps account for the ubiquity of the phenomenon.

KEYWORDS: Depoliticisation, discourse, wastewater reuse, polysemy, ambiguous agreement, Morocco

Nationalism, legitimacy and hegemony in transboundary water interactions

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

Abstract: This article examines how discourses of water nationalism are used to justify and legitimise a state’s water policy both domestically and internationally and how that discourse constitutes a battleground of ideas and power in transboundary water interactions. Most literature on hydropolitics takes the social construct of the nation state as a given but the construct reveals a certain degree of fragility. For this reason, legitimacy, both domestic and global, is a crucial factor in understanding these transboundary water disputes. Water-related slogans and landscape symbols can be used to reinforce the legitimising effects of these discourses and are employed as an ideology for consolidating hegemony at the transboundary level. These discourses, however, are also contested both domestically and globally. This paper uses three specific case studies around dam building projects – the Merowe Dam in Sudan, the Rogun Dam in Tajikistan and the Southeastern Anatolia Project in Turkey – to identify how these discourses create different types of transboundary water interactions.

Keywords: Nation state construct, legitimacy, fragility, hegemony, transboundary water relations, hydropolitics

Does collaborative governance increase public confidence in water management? Survey evidence from Aotearoa New Zealand

Marc Tadaki
Cawthron Institute, Nelson, New Zealand; marc.tadaki@cawthron.org.nz

Jim Sinner
Cawthron Institute, Nelson, New Zealand; jim.sinner@cawthron.org.nz

Philip Stahlmann-Brown
Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research, Wellington, New Zealand; brownp@landcareresearch.co.nz

Suzie Greenhalgh
Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research, Auckland, New Zealand; greenhalghs@landcareresearch.co.nz

ABSTRACT: Collaborative decision-making is widely understood as a democratic corrective to top-down forms of environmental management; it is a way in which citizens can contribute local knowledge to the policy process and have a more direct role in shaping policies and rules that affect them and their environments. However, while the democratic virtues of collaborative governance are often asserted, they are rarely evidenced; this leaves claims of democratic empowerment open to question. This study used a longitudinal survey of three New Zealand regions (n = 1350) to identify whether major multi-year investments in collaborative decision-making (2012-2018) are leading to increased public confidence in the effectiveness, responsiveness and fairness of water management institutions. Residents in collaborative catchments were found to have scores that were statistically indistinguishable from residents of non-collaborative catchments on management effectiveness, perceived agreement about water management, and fairness. Collaborative catchment residents did assign higher scores for water management responsiveness than did other residents, but the size of this difference was small compared to the effects of gender, ethnicity, region and level of individuals’ prior engagement in water management. Despite major investments in collaborative community decision-making exercises, community confidence in the legitimacy, fairness and effectiveness of environmental management has not improved over the four years documented in our surveys. Researchers and practitioners should focus on developing ways to assess – and realise – the democratic benefits of collaborative decision-making for water.

KEYWORDS: Collaborative governance, legitimacy, participation, evaluation, democracy, New Zealand

Challenges of accessing water for agricultural use in the Breede-Gouritz Catchment management agency, South Africa

Awelani Sadiki
Faculty of Applied Sciences, Department of Environmental and Occupational Studies, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape Town, South Africa; awelani.sadiki1@gmail.com

Bongani Ncube
Centre for Water and Sanitation Research, Department of Civil Engineering and Surveying, Faculty of Engineering & the Built Environment, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape Town, South Africa; ncubeb@cput.ac.za

ABSTRACT: Agricultural water is not equitably shared in South Africa. A substantial proportion of water is in the hands of large commercial farmers and the water access of smallholder farmers is limited. Policies and strategies developed since 1994 to ensure equal access to productive water have had little impact. This paper presents an analysis of the challenges of accessing water through the water user licence process in the Breede-Gouritz Catchment Management Agency (BGCMA) of South Africa. A review of the national Water Allocation Reform (WAR) programme and the related BGCMA strategies was carried out. Interviews were conducted with smallholder farmers and with key officials responsible for water allocation processes in the BGCMA and other water-related institutions; the Framework of Water Governance by Franks and Cleaver (2007) was used to analyse the processes. Results revealed that existing lawful water use continues to privilege previously advantaged commercial farmers and that smallholder farmers’ access to productive water is hampered by lack of human and financial capacity within the institutions that support them, and by limited coordination among these institutions. A water allocation unit at the BGCMA that specifically deals with water licencing is necessary to speed up the process and to enable local people to inclusively participate in water resource management.

KEYWORDS: Water Allocation Reform, water user licence, smallholder farmers, access, South Africa, water governance

Drinking water service delivery choices in Poland: Empirical analysis of impact factors

Katarzyna Szmigiel-Rawska
Department of Local Development and Policy, Faculty of Geography and Regional Studies, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland; k.szmigiel@uw.edu.pl

Julita Łukomska
Department of Local Development and Policy, Faculty of Geography and Regional Studies, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland; j.lukomska@uw.edu.pl

ABSTRACT: This paper focuses on poli-organisational governance structures in which local governments provide services in the drinking water sector. A set of hypotheses was developed relating to the choice between in-house, corporatized, or externalised service delivery. The empirical evidence was based on long term socio-economic factors at local government levels in Poland. Local Polish government constitutes a highly decentralised system which features a wide range of service delivery governance arrangements. This is the first systematic attempt to investigate the different types of water service delivery in this environment. The model was tested using quantitative tools created on statistical variables, and by a survey of 1089 municipal representatives. The research findings provide insight into a set of context variables which describe the conditions under which local officials keep the service in-house, and the conditions that incline local authorities to engage public or private agents. The survey questionnaire allowed us to identify 15 different arrangements for drinking water supply delivery. The research findings provide evidence that the likelihood of in-house provision of water services is determined by the size of the local government, the abundance of the environment, the level of modernisation, and the locality’s financial self-management.

KEYWORDS: Service delivery modes, local government, water services, drinking water provision, Poland

Institutional analysis of small dam removals: A comparison of non-federal dam removals in Washington and Oregon

Matthias P. Fostvedt
Water Resources Graduate Program, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA; fostvedm@oregonstate.edu

Desiree D. Tullos
Biological and Ecological Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA; desiree.tullos@oregonstate.edu

Bryan Tilt
School of Language, Culture, and Society, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA; bryan.tilt@oregonstate.edu

ABSTRACT: The vast majority of dams in the US, and thus the majority of those removed, are small structures that are governed primarily by state and local institutions. Important differences between large and small dams suggest that the existing work on the governance of large dam removals should not be expected to explain decisions about small dam removals. It is, for example, unclear which policies and organisations drive dam removals when there is no direct federal nexus. It is also unclear how the relevant policies and organisations shape the local decision-making process and how the design of the decision-making process influences stakeholder opinions on the decision to remove the dam. The objective of this study is thus to characterise and evaluate the governance that has driven recent decisions to remove small dams. A modified version of Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development framework was applied to two dam removal case studies, that of the Beeson-Robison Dam in Oregon and the Nelson Dam in Washington state. In each case, an online survey was distributed to stakeholders involved in the dam removals in order to characterise the design and costs of the governance process and to investigate how those variables were associated with stakeholder opinions on the decision to remove the dam. Results found little difference in governance processes between the two case studies, suggesting that the organisation that led the removal – a local government and an NGO, respectively – was not an important determinant in the governance process. Instead, the case studies suggest that a governance mechanism characterised by passive threat, active support led to the decision to remove both dams. It is hypothesised that a similar governance mechanism is at play in other environmental management and restoration activities. Other key findings include the high levels of satisfaction and optimism among stakeholders of both projects, likely a result of the time and energy invested in a collaborative decision-making process at both sites. Further work should be conducted to more fully characterise the governance mechanisms behind small dam removals, which may help reduce the conflicts and costs of future projects.

KEYWORDS: dam removal, Institutional Analysis and Development framework, governance, US Pacific Northwest

An assessment of scale-sensitivity in policy design and implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive within the context of the Danube Basin

Tahira Syed
Tufts University, Medford, Boston, USA; tahira.syed@tufts.edu

Enamul Choudhury
School of Public and International Affairs, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio, USA; enamul.choudhur@wright.edu

Shafiqul Islam
Water Diplomacy Program, Tufts University, Medford, Boston, USA; shafiqul.islam@tufts.edu

ABSTRACT: Scales and boundaries are integral components of environmental governance policies. These scales and boundaries – administrative, political or institutional – usually do not align with biophysical scales. For effective environmental governance, a key policy question is which scale to use when. This question, however, is often ignored due to the unavailability of the tools and data necessary for incorporating scale issues into policy design and implementation. In this paper, we introduce the concept of scale–descale–rescale (SDR) as a tool for policy analysis. 'scale' refers to the current scale of a policy; 'descale' refers to levels of scale that are higher and lower than the current scale; 'rescale' refers to the process of bringing all three scales together in order to examine their interactive impact. In this paper, we present an examination of the framing and implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) in the Danube River Basin; we find that the current scale of the WFD design is at the river basin level while, at the same time, its implementation is expected to be carried out at the national and sub-river basin levels. To fully understand the efficacy of the WFD as a policy instrument, we first use the SDR tool to descale the design and implementation of the WFD at five scales: multinational, national, subnational, river basin and sub-river basin; we then rescale them in order to observe the overall impact. We find that in the Danube River Basin an interconnected web of scale issues is impacting and often obstructing effective implementation of the WFD.

KEYWORDS: Scale, multilevel governance, WFD, complexity, Danube River Basin

Cooperation, fragmentation and control: News media representations of changing water access from Austin to the Texas rice belt

Brendan L. Lavy
Department of Environmental Sciences, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX, USA; b.lavy@tcu.edu

ABSTRACT: The waters of the Lower Colorado River Valley of Texas have sustained urban populations and agricultural operations for over a century. More recently, however, rapid urban growth, continued economic development, and a changing climate have led to the prioritisation of urban over agricultural water uses. This research analyses public discourse found in newspaper coverage of water-related issues to understand how media represents two decades of change in the control of water resources along an urban-to-agricultural gradient. It documents the changing relationship between long-established commercial agricultural water users and the increasing water demands of one of North Americaʼs fastest growing urban areas and identifies the discourses and counter-discourses that are used by urban and agricultural interests to constrain or enable access to the basinʼs water resources. Findings indicate that the water-related discourse has evolved through distinct periods of cooperation, fragmentation and control. These periods are defined by the mechanisms that urban and agricultural interests have used to constrain or enable water access. Themes identified suggest that urban interests have increasingly expanded their influence in decisions related to water distribution and that they have done so by forming strategic alliances with the regional water authority and by leveraging the power of local and state officials in water matters. Agricultural interests have, in the meantime, struggled to maintain access to their historic share of water despite forming new social ties with environmental organisations and despite outlining the importance of water to the local economy.

KEYWORDS: Water resources, allocation, access, media, discourse analysis, Texas

Eutrophication and water quality policy discourse in the Lake Erie Basin

Bereket N. Isaac
School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability (SERS), University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada; bnegasii@uwaterloo.ca

Rob de Loë
School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability (SERS), University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada; rdeloe@uwaterloo.ca

ABSTRACT: Watershed-based approaches to addressing water quality issues often involve a diverse set of actors working collaboratively to develop policy. Such an approach is currently underway in the Western Lake Erie Basin, where the province of Ontario and the state of Ohio have embarked on a 40% phosphorus run-off reduction target to address eutrophication problems in the lake. In this study, we adopt the concept of discourse to inform our understanding of the collaborative process undertaken to develop domestic action plans (DAPs) to guide efforts by various stakeholders. We find that in both cases there were distinct groups of actors who shared and promoted a particular narrative or storyline. These storylines provided varying accounts of the science and policy aspects of the eutrophication problem in Lake Erie, and there was variation as well in the specific actors to whom they attributed responsibility. We illustrate how the storylines shaped the nature and form of the action plans. We provide a discussion of the policy implications of unequal capacities among different actor coalitions to influence trajectories and outcomes in the context of governance for water quality. It is shown that the potential of discourse coalitions to influence policy raises important questions as to whose voice is considered legitimate enough to be included in the policy process.

KEYWORDS: Lake Erie, eutrophication, water policy, discourse analysis, storylines, Canada, USA

Interdisciplinary research in Rajasthan, India: Exploring the role of culture and art to support rural development and water management

Michael Buser
University of the West of England, Centre for Sustainable Environments and Planning, Bristol, UK; michael.buser@uwe.ac.uk

Loraine Leeson
University of Middlesex, Department of Fine Arts, UK; l.leeson@mdx.ac.uk

M.S. Rathore
Centre for Environment and Development Studies (CEDSJ), Jaipur, India; msrorama@gmail.com

Anurupa Roy
The Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust, New Delhi, India; royanurupa@gmail.com

Nina Sabnani
Industrial Design Centre, IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India; nina.sabnani@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: This paper examines the role of art and culture in supporting rural development in the context of critical water challenges. It focuses on an interdisciplinary network and research programme conducted in 2018 with the village of Jhakhoda, in Rajasthan, India. The village has experienced years of declining water quality and has recently turned to rainwater harvesting and other conservation measures as a means to address water challenges. The research team sought to support local NGO and village efforts through creative, regionally specific forms of cultural activity. Through our project, we found that arts approaches can contribute to changes in the way people understand water and environmental challenges and can play a significant role in working towards sustainable water futures.

KEYWORDS: Water, interdisciplinarity, art, puppetry, mural, Phad painting, Rajasthan, India

Addressing failed water infrastructure delivery through increased accountability and end-user agency: The case of the Sekhukhune District, South Africa

Moritz Hofstetter
International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Pretoria, South Africa (at the time of research), and Water Resources Management group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands; moritz.hofstetter@wur.nl

Alex Bolding
Water Resources Management group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands; alex.bolding@wur.nl

Barbara van Koppen
Poverty, Gender and Water, International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Pretoria, South Africa; b.vankoppen@cgiar.org

ABSTRACT: Despite progressive policies and a legal framework that includes the constitutional right to sufficient water, there are still enormous problems with water service delivery in low income rural South Africa. To understand the factors responsible for the observed discrepancy between ambitious policies and disappointing water service delivery, we undertook an analysis of the implementation of these policies in Sekhukhune District, South Africa; we scrutinised the public service water delivery in that district using an actor-oriented approach. We found that during the four phases of public water services delivery – identification, planning, construction and operation – practices often deviated from the stipulated policies; we also found that accountability relations between service delivery agencies and end users were undermined by gatekeeping and patronage. We argue that there is no need for major policy changes; we concluded from our research that by mobilising mechanisms that are based on existing policies, accountability relations can be strengthened and service delivery improved. We describe an experimental approach which focuses on budget transparency and end-user-driven development; it is an approach which aims at strengthening the agency of end users while limiting possibilities for rent-seeking and gatekeeping by councillors and contractors.

KEYWORDS: Rural water service delivery, accountability, end-user agency, patronage, South Africa

The Role of the Water Framework Directive in the controversial transition of water policy paradigms in Spain and Portugal

Julia Martínez-Fernández
Universidad de Murcia, Spain; and Fundación Nueva Cultura del Agua, Zaragoza, Spain; julia@fnca.eu

Susana Neto
CERIS – Civil Engineering Research and Innovation for Sustainability, Department of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Georesources, University of Lisbon, Portugal; susana.neto@tecnico.ulisboa pt

Nuria Hernández-Mora
Fundación Nueva Cultura del Agua, Spain; nhernandezmora@fnca.eu

Leandro del Moral
Fundación Nueva Cultura del Agua and Department of Human Geography, Universidad de Sevilla, Spain; lmoral@us.es

Francesc La Roca
Fundación Nueva Cultura del Agua, Spain; froca@uv.es

ABSTRACT: The process of drafting, approving and implementing the Water Framework Directive (WFD) has played a pivotal role in the water-related political agenda of the Iberian Peninsula. The WFD has provided an institutional impetus for a shift from the dominant hydraulic paradigm towards a new water governance approach. The new approach, known as the New Water Culture (NWC), predated the WFD. It was initiated in Spain and Portugal in the 1990s and has been promoted by a coalition of academics, social activists, and water managers. Given the long tradition and relevance of water debates in Spain and Portugal, the sociopolitical and territorial conflicts surrounding the implementation of the new regulatory framework are of particular significance. Legal debates about the (in)correct transposition of the WFD into Spanish and Portuguese legislation are still unresolved. Legal debates about the (in)correct transposition of the WFD into Spanish and Portuguese legislation are still unresolved. Controversies focus on issues such as the use of economic instruments, for instance cost recovery and the use of public subsidies (a key component of the hydraulic paradigm), as well as the role of public participation in decision making processes. Significant resistance has been mounted by the traditional water policy community, which continues to dominate power structures surrounding water. Throughout the long WFD implementation process, conflicting views and interests have consistently emerged with regard to the diagnosis and identification of existing pressures and the definition, evaluation and implementation of the proposed measures. Controversies have also emerged around the extensive use of exceptions which has allowed the hydraulic paradigm to persist over time. Progress towards the promised governance model, however, is taking place, with significant improvements in transparency, more accurate knowledge regarding the aquatic ecosystems services and the inclusion in water management agencies of more diverse experts including social scientists, biologists and geologists. This paper looks at the role the WFD implementation process is playing in the struggle for the transformation of water policy in Spain and Portugal. It examines this through the lens of the NWC movement.

KEYWORDS: WFD implementation, New Water Culture, Spain, Portugal, water governance, controversial transition

Three faces of the European Union Water Initiative: Promoting the Water Framework Directive or sustainable development?

Oliver Fritsch
Environmental and Conservation Sciences & Sir Walter Murdoch School of Public Policy and International Affairs, Murdoch University, Perth, Australia; oliver.fritsch@murdoch.edu.au

David Benson
Environment and Sustainability Institute, University of Exeter, Penryn, United Kingdom; d.i.benson@exeter.ac.uk

Camilla Adelle
Centre for the Study of Governance Innovation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa; camilla.adelle@up.ac.za

Audrey Massot
Environmental and Conservation Sciences, Murdoch University, Perth, Australia; aumassot13@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: The Water Framework Directive (WFD) not only recast water management practices within the European Union (EU); it also opened a new chapter for the EU’s external ambitions in the field of water. The central vehicle here is the EU Water Initiative (EUWI), a transnational, multi-actor partnership approach that was established in 2002 to support wider United Nations development goals. The EUWI is underpinned by principles such as river basin planning, resource efficiency, and participation, and the WFD serves as a legal and political template for achieving these aims in interested partner countries. This article analyses the implementation of the Initiative in all five partnerships: Africa, China, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, Latin America, and the Mediterranean; it argues that the Initiative’s origins in sustainable development related global debates led to selective interpretations of water management principles in these diverse social, political and ecological contexts. In short, these five partnerships emphasise different aspects of the three pillars of sustainable development, and their respective interpretations result in the different WFD variants outside of Europe. These patterns, we argue, not only reflect contextual differences but also strategic EU and member state foreign policy imperatives that have influenced how the WFD has been promoted globally.

KEYWORDS: Water Framework Directive, European Union Water Initiative, integrated water resources management, sustainable development

Development and implementation of the concept of disproportionate costs in water management in Central Europe in the light of the EU WFD

Jan Macháč
Faculty of Social and Economic Studies, J.E. Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem, Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic; jan.machac@ujep.cz

Jan Brabec
Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, Prague 5, Czech Republic; and Faculty of Social and Economic Studies, J.E. Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem, Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic; brabec@e-academia.eu

Ondřej Vojáček
Faculty of Social and Economic Studies, J.E. Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem, Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic; ondrej.vojacek@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: Many Central European water bodies that failed to achieve the good ecological and chemical status required by the Water Framework Directive in the first management cycle are expected to again fail in the second cycle. An exemption from achieving good status may be applied for under certain circumstances but must be justified. One option is to show that achieving good status is not cost proportionate, but no uniform methodology for assessing proportionality exists in the EU. The paper maps the existing approaches to this type of justification in the Central European countries. The methods used to justify exemptions differ significantly among the countries. A large majority of reports mention monetary cost–benefit analysis, although a range of other methods such as distribution of costs, affordability and criterial cost–benefit analysis are also utilised. The findings show that countries that have experience with proportionality assessment from the first management cycle or have created clear and easy-to-use methodologies (or none) are more likely to justify the exemption by citing disproportionate costs; on the other hand, a higher complexity of methodology – such as used in the Czech Republic – creates incentives to avoid using the disproportionate-cost justification and to instead utilise other available types of justification.

KEYWORDS: Water Framework Directive, good status, exemption, cost proportionality, Central Europe, justification

Between regulation and targeted expropriation: Rural-to-urban groundwater reallocation in Jordan

Timothy Liptrot
Department of Government, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA; liptrott94@gmail.com

Hussam Hussein
Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR), University of Oxford, Oxford, UK; hh.hussam.hussein@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: In response to rising urban water demand, some regions have reallocated water from irrigation to more valuable uses. Groundwater over-exploitation, however, continues to degrade aquifer quality, and states rarely succeed at stopping overuse. This study asks whether growing urban requirements enable the reallocation of groundwater from irrigation to higher value added uses in domestic and industrial consumption. The paper is based on a series of interviews with policy makers and academics in Jordan, combined with data from remote sensing analysis. The results find that regulatory measures such as tariffs and well licensing have a limited impact on agricultural water use when opposed by a broad coalition of interest groups; instead, a targeted expropriation n a single small area, combined with an expansion of supply, did succeed in reallocating 35 million cubic metres of groundwater. The results suggest that urban water needs do increase state interest in reallocation. That reallocation was successful in only one of the attempted basins suggests that donor-region resistance is a major factor in reallocation outcomes. We discuss the strategy of, for future reallocators, targeting only aquifers with low political and enforcement costs.

KEYWORDS: Groundwater management, water reallocation, water policy, water management, urbanisation, Jordan

Under the historian’s radar: Local water supply practices in Nairobi, 1940-1980

Jethron Ayumbah Akallah
Department of History and Archaeology, Maseno University, Maseno, Kenya; ayumbajetty@yahoo.com

Mikael Hård
Department of History, Technical University of Darmstadt (TU Darmstadt), Darmstadt, Germany; hard@ifs.tu-darmstadt.de

ABSTRACT: By presenting oral history material from two informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya, the article illustrates how inhabitants during the period 1940 to 1980 acquired and used water on a daily basis. The authors’ observations challenge established paradigms in the history of technology as well as Science and Technology Studies (STS), most notably the Large Technological System (LTS) model. To understand the realities of the supply situation in cities in both the Global North and Global South, we must look beyond such systems; historians must complement material from official archives, utilities, ministries and other authorities with further sources. Interviews with urban inhabitants can help us to modify standard LTS perspectives, and the experiences of ordinary citizens can enable us to develop an alternative view of 'urban resilience' as a concept. Rather than passively being supplied with the necessities of daily life by public or private providers, inhabitants themselves successfully acquired those necessities. Interviews indicate that, compared to customers with access to the centralised water system, so-called slum dwellers exhibited a relatively high level of resilience in terms of water provision.

KEYWORDS: Water provision, large technological system, history of technology, Nairobi, urban resilience

Bright spots for local WFD implementation through collaboration with nature conservation authorities?

Nadine Jenny Shirin Schröder
Research Group Governance and Sustainability, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Lüneburg, Germany; nadine.schroeder@stud.leuphana.de

Jens Newig
Research Group Governance and Sustainability, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Lüneburg, Germany; newig@uni.leuphana.de

Nigel Watson
Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom; n.watson1@lancaster.ac.uk

ABSTRACT: Twenty years after the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) came into force, much remains to be done by member states in order to achieve the Directive’s ambitious aims. In Germany, far fewer measures have been realised or even planned that are needed for the achievement of WFD goals. There are, however, a number of local cases across the country where WFD measures are being realised. A key question can thus be asked as to what are the key characteristics of WFD processes and arrangements in those 'bright spots'? In order to answer this question, we investigated pathways of local WFD implementation in six federal states of Germany; we used data from semi-structured interviews with WFD-related actors at all administrative levels; we also used participatory observation as well as analyses of policy documents and official websites. Our cases are local-level actors realising measures related to hydromorphology and connectivity. Although local actors face common barriers, some have progressed with implementation of WFD measures while others have not. We found that our bright spots of WFD implementation are characterised by the presence of highly dedicated individuals and, often, collaboration between the WFD and nature conservation authorities, although we found the relationship between the two actors was ambivalent. Such collaboration provided those realising WFD measures with access to the instruments of nature conservation law. Although the WFD prescribes sectoral integration, such cooperation did not evolve everywhere; among our cases, collaborating actors showed low independence, meaning no or only few alternative means to cope with implementation barriers, and physical proximity between WFD actors and nature conservation authorities. Finally, we explored the opportunities for, and constraints on, transferring this collaborative approach to other situations where WFD implementation continues to stagnate.

KEYWORDS: Water Framework Directive implementation, nature conservation, water governance, cooperation, polycentricity, Germany