Is individual metering socially sustainable? The case of multifamily housing in France

Bernard Barraqué
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Agroparistech -€“ CIRED, Paris, France ; bernard.barraque@engref.agroparistech.fr

ABSTRACT: Before generalising water metering and billing at the apartment level for consumer equity reasons, and alleviating the burden of water bills for poor families through increasing block tariffs (IBTs), Paris Council asked for some expert advice. The pros and cons of two separate issues -€“ IBTs efficiency and justice; and individual household metering -€“ were mixed. Our research first summarises various studies of the redistributive effects of tariff changes, first from flat rates to metering, and then from uniform prices to IBTs. We address the particular case of multifamily housing, where it is possible to retain collective billing, while relying on sub-metering to allocate the bill. The limitations of classical econometric surveys on large samples (in terms of understanding households' strategies with tap water) support the need for supplementary detailed sociological surveys at neighbourhood or building levels, if only to check the unexpected redistributive effects of tariff changes in practice. We review the specific French situation, peculiarly in Paris, to show that individual apartment billing is more costly and tends to have regressive effects. Like other cities in France, Paris abandoned the implementation of Art. 93 of the 2000 law, which encouraged individual billing; and we explain why.

Reaching the limits of water resources mobilisation: Irrigation development in the Segura river basin, Spain

Carles Sanchis Ibor
Centro Valenciano de Estudios del Riego, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Valencia, Spain; csanchis@hma.upv.es
Marta García Mollá
Centro Valenciano de Estudios del Riego, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Valencia, Spain; mgarmo@esp.upv.es
Llorenç Avellà Reus
Centro Valenciano de Estudios del Riego, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Valencia, Spain; lavella@esp.upv.es
José Carles Genovés
Centro Valenciano de Estudios del Riego, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Valencia, Spain; jcarles@esp.upv.es

ABSTRACT: The aim of this paper is to analyse the policy of water resources development implemented in the semiarid watershed of the Segura river during the last century, consisting of irrigation development promotion by means of the provision of new resources. The way in which this policy was implemented generated important conflicts among users, severely damaged riverine ecosystems and, paradoxically, created new water demands, perpetuating an outdated model of management.

A decade of implementing water services reform in Zambia: Review of outcomes, challenges and opportunities

Horman Chitonge
National Research Foundation, Department of Sociology, University of Cape Town, South Africa; horman.chitonge@uct.ac.za

ABSTRACT: Zambia has been implementing water sector reforms for the past two decades. These reforms initiated major changes in the organisation and management of water supply services starting from the 1990s culminating in the full-scale commercialisation of water services in major cities and towns. This paper reviews the outcomes of implementing these reforms, focusing on the results of the commercialisation of water services in the last 10 years. Data presented in this paper show that there have been positive developments, but many serious challenges as well. Evidence from the review of the past 10 years suggests that much progress has been made in areas related to management and operation performance, while little success has been recorded in core areas such as expanding the network, service coverage, hours of service, and reducing the affordability burden, especially among lower-income households. The key challenge for the water services sector is to find a workable infrastructural development funding formula that will make it possible to sustain and build on the foundation laid over the past decade.

Editorial: Discursive framing: Debates over small reservoirs in the rural South

Jean-Philippe Venot and Jyothi Krishnan

Water institutions and the 'revival' of tanks in south India: What is at stake locally?

Olivia Aubriot
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France; at the time of the research (2005-2008), the French Institute of Pondicherry, India; oaubriot@vjf.cnrs.fr
P. Ignatius Prabhakar
SEEDS-India; at the time of the research, the French Institute of Pondicherry, India; iprabhakar@yahoo.com

ABSTRACT: In India, the 'revival' of seasonal lake-reservoirs (tanks) is part of decentralisation and participatory management reforms regarding surface water, whereby programmes to rehabilitate these centuries-old infrastructures have made mandatory the creation of formal water users associations (WUAs). In Tamil Nadu, South India, WUAs are created without even taking into account the existence of customary institutions'€™ ways of managing tanks, and thus the WUAs either run parallel to the latter, lead to their decline or ensure continuity with them. Conversely, in Puducherry'€™s tank rehabilitation project, customary institutions are purposely neglected in order to empower marginalised sections of the population. The aim of this article is to compare the impact of creating such a formal association on the decision-making process, taking as an example four formal associations. Whatever the project, its success or otherwise lies in the hands of the local elite -€“ either socio-economic or the new political elite -€“ while all committee members are affiliated to political parties. In such a context, we question the stakes behind being a member of a formal user association and, more specifically, how these associations impact water management, how knowledge about water is acquired -€“ especially with regard to groundwater recharge -€“ and how this vital resource is controlled.

Demystifying 'tradition': The politics of rainwater harvesting in rural Rajasthan, India

Saurabh Gupta
Institute for Agricultural Economics and Social Sciences in the Tropics and Sub-Tropics, University of Hohenheim, Germany; saurabh.gupta@uni-hohenheim.de

ABSTRACT: The debate on traditional rainwater harvesting has largely cast the issue in terms of 'for-or-against'. Much intellectual energy has been spent on demonstrating whether traditional rainwater harvesting works or not. Yet, we know very little about how it works in specific localities. This paper seeks to address this analytical question. Taking the case of a Gandhian activist organisation, Tarun Bharat Sangh (TBS), which has received international recognition for promoting traditional rainwater harvesting by means of small earthen dams (locally known as johads) in Rajasthani villages, this paper explains how a grassroots organisation, while advocating the cause of people'€™s control of their local natural resources, uses and manipulates the concept of 'traditional' for creating a niche for itself in the arena of soil and water conservation. The paper problematises 'traditional' rainwater harvesting and the various positive connotations associated with it in the narrative of the TBS, and highlights the lack of attention given to issues of equity in its interventions. It is suggested that deliberate efforts on the part of grassroots organisations are required to address the issues of equity if the goals of sustainable ecological practices are to be achieved in any meaningful sense.

Local water management of small reservoirs: Lessons from two case studies in Burkina Faso

Hilmy Sally
International Water Management Institute, Ouagadougou Burkina Faso; h.sally@cgiar.org
Hervé Lévite
International Water Management Institute, Ouagadougou Burkina Faso; herve.levite@gmail.com
Julien Cour
Independent consultant, Toulouse, France; julien.cour@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: Burkina Faso is actively pursuing the implementation of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) in its development plans. Several policy and institutional mechanisms have been put in place, including the adoption of a national IWRM action plan (PAGIRE) and the establishment so far of 30 local water management committees (Comités Locaux de l'€™Eau, or CLE). The stated purpose of the CLE is to take responsibility for managing water at sub-basin level. The two case studies discussed in this paper illustrate gaps between the policy objective of promoting IWRM on one hand, and the realities associated with its practical on-the-ground implementation on the other. A significant adjustment that occurred in practice is the fact that the two CLE studied have been set up as entities focused on reservoir management, whereas it is envisioned that a CLE would constitute a platform for sub-basin management. This reflects a concern to minimise conflict and optimally manage the country'€™s primary water resource and illustrates the type of pragmatic actions that have to be taken to make IWRM a reality. It is also observed that the local water management committees have not been able to satisfactorily address questions regarding access to and allocation of water though they are crucial for the satisfactory functioning of the reservoirs. Water resources in the reservoirs appear to be controlled by the dominant user. In order to correct this trend, measures to build mutual trust and confidence among water users 'condemned' to work together to manage their common resource are suggested, foremost of which is the need to collect and share reliable data. Awareness of power relationships among water-user groups and building on functioning, already existing formal or informal arrangements for water sharing are key determinants for successful implementation of the water reform process underway.

The politics, development and problems of small irrigation dams in Malawi: Experiences from Mzuzu ADD

Bryson Gwiyani Nkhoma
Mzuzu University, Mzuzu, Malawi; brysongnk@yahoo.co.uk

ABSTRACT: The paper examines the progress made regarding the development of small irrigation dams in Malawi with the view of establishing their significance in improving rural livelihoods in the country. The paper adopts a political economy theory and a qualitative research approach. Evidence from Mzuzu ADD, where small reservoirs acquire specific relevance, shows that despite the efforts made, the development of small dams is making little progress. The paper highlights that problems of top-down planning, high investment costs, negligence of national and local interests, over-dependency on donors, and conflicts over the use of dams -€“ which made large-scale dams unpopular in the 1990s continue to affect the development of small irrigation dams in Malawi. The paper argues that small irrigation dams should not be simplistically seen as a panacea to the problems of large-scale irrigation dams. Like any other projects, small dams are historically and socially constructed through interests of different actors in the local settings, and can only succeed if actors, especially those from formal institutions, develop adaptive learning towards apparent conflicting relations that develop among them in the process of implementation. In the case of Mzuzu ADD, it was the failure of the government to develop this adaptive learning to the contestations and conflicts among these actors that undermined successful implementation of small irrigation dams. The paper recommends the need to consider local circumstances, politics, interests, rights and institutions when investing in small irrigation dams.

Planning and corrupting water resources development: The case of small reservoirs in Ghana

ABSTRACT: Agricultural (water) development is once again at the fore of the development agenda of sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, corruption is seen as a major obstacle to the sustainability of future investments in the sector but there is still little empirical evidence on the ways corruption pervades development projects. This paper documents the planning and implementation processes of two specific small reservoir programmes in the north of Ghana. We specifically delve into the dynamics of corruption and interrogate the ways they add to the inherent unpredictability of development planning. We argue that operational limitations of small reservoirs such as poor infrastructure, lack of managerial and organisational capacity at the community level and weak market integration and public support are the symptoms -€“ rather than inherent problems €- of wider lapses in the planning processes that govern the development of small reservoirs in Ghana and worldwide. A suite of petty misconduct and corrupt practices during the planning, tendering, supervision, and administration of contracts for the rehabilitation and construction of small reservoirs results in delays in implementation, poor construction, escalating costs, and ultimately failures of small reservoirs vis-à-vis their intended goals and a widely shared frustration among donor agencies, civil servants, contractors, and communities. Such practices hang on and can only be addressed through a better understanding of the complex web of formal decisions and informal rules that shape the understanding and actions of the state.

Bridging divides for water? Dialogue and access at the 5th World Water Forum

Nícola Ulibarrí
Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources, Stanford University, CA; ulibarri@stanford.edu

ABSTRACT: The 5th World Water Forum was officially presented as a deliberative democracy where diverse stakeholders could gather to talk about water. However, the conference was marred by significant conflict, ranging from audience complaints to protests, and to alternative political declarations. This paper explores why a Forum designed to 'Bridge Divides for Water' (the official theme) was so contentious that participants were unable to reach any sort of consensus. I explore four hypothesised mechanisms by which the Forum itself counteracted the possibility of Bridging Divides and creating constructive dialogue. First, I argue that, because of cost, security and size, the Forum made many participants feel unable to fully access the Forum and share their opinions. Second, I suggest that the programmatic structure of the Forum promoted simplified ways of talking about water that made translation between perspectives difficult. Third, I contend that the physical space where Forum deliberations occurred institutionalised unequal social arrangements, making certain viewpoints more audible than others. Fourth, I demonstrate that the Turkish host government actively masked contestation to present a 'civilised' Forum to the world.

Fostering institutional creativity at multiple levels: Towards facilitated institutional bricolage

Douglas J. Merrey
Independent Consultant, 905 Fearrington Post, Pittsboro, NC 27312, USA; dougmerrey@gmail.com
Simon Cook
Centre for Water Resources, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia; simonernest@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: Problems occur when institutional arrangements for collective management of food and water systems fail to meet demands. Many of the problems characterising river basins and other collectively managed water resource systems can be ascribed largely to the failure of institutions to enable problems beyond the individual to be managed collectively. The nature of these demands, and the institutional responses to them, vary widely and are not amenable to simple definitions and prescriptions. We begin with a brief review of conventional approaches to analysing institutions and organisations, focused largely, but not exclusively, on river basins. We observe that attempts to reduce the institutional landscape of river basins to over-simplistic formulas introduces more problems than solutions, because the reality is that institutions evolve through complex creative processes that adopt and adapt diverse ingredients - rather like making a stew. Despite such intricacies, institutions are clearly non-random, so we continue a search for a means of describing them. We adopt the concept of bricolage, as proposed by Cleaver and others, and use it to show the value of promoting and facilitating an organic creative approach to building and strengthening river basin and other water management institutions.

Parcelling out the watershed: The recurring consequences of organising Columbia river management within a basin-based territory

Eve Vogel
Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, US; evevogel@geo.umass.edu

ABSTRACT: This article examines a 75-year history of North America'€™s Columbia river to answer the question: what difference does a river basin territory actually make? Advocates reason that river basins and watersheds are natural and holistic water management spaces, and can avoid the fragmentations and conflicts endemic to water management within traditional political territories. However, on the Columbia, this reasoning has not played out in practice. Instead, basin management has been shaped by challenges from and negotiations with more traditional jurisdictional spaces and political districts. The recurring result has been 'parcelling out the watershed': coordinating river management to produce a few spreadable benefits, and distributing these benefits, as well as other responsibilities and policy-making influence, to jurisdictional parts and political districts. To provide generous spreadable benefits, river management has unevenly emphasised hydropower, resulting in considerable environmental losses. However, benefits have been widely spread and shared - and over time challengers have forced management to diversify. Thus a river basin territory over time produced patterns of both positive and negative environmental, social, economic, and democratic outcomes. To improve the outcomes of watershed-based water management, we need more interactive and longer-term models attentive to dynamic politics and geographies.

Strategies of the poorest in local water conflict and cooperation -€“ Evidence from Vietnam, Bolivia and Zambia

Mikkel Funder
Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen, Denmark; mfu@diis.dk
Rocio Bustamante
Centro Agua, Universidad Mayor de San Simon, Cochabamba, Bolivia; rocio.bust@gmail.com
Vladimir Cossio
Centro Agua, Universidad Mayor de San Simon, Cochabamba, Bolivia; vladicossio@gmail.com
Pham Thi Mai Huong
Hanoi University of Agriculture, Hanoi, Vietnam; huongmaipham@yahoo.com
Barbara van Koppen
International Water Management Institute, Pretoria, South Africa; b.vankoppen@cgiar.org
Carol Mweemba
Integrated Water Resources Management Center, University of Zambia, Lusaka, Zambia; carol.mweemba@unza.zm
Imasiku Nyambe
Integrated Water Resources Management Center, University of Zambia, Lusaka, Zambia; inyambe@unza.zm
Le ThiThan Phuong
Hanoi University of Agriculture, Hanoi, Vietnam; ltphuong_cares@yahoo.com
Thomas Skielboe
Nordic Agency for Development & Ecology, Copenhagen, Denmark; ts@iwgia.org

ABSTRACT: Media stories often speak of a future dominated by large-scale water wars. Rather less attention has been paid to the way water conflicts already play out at local levels and form part of people'€™s everyday lives. Based on case study studies from Vietnam, Bolivia and Zambia, this paper examines the strategies of poor households in local water conflicts. It is shown how such households may not only engage actively in collaborative water management but may also apply risk aversion strategies when faced with powerful adversaries in conflict situations. It is further shown how dependency relations between poor and wealthy households can reduce the scope of action for the poor in water conflicts. As a result, poor households can be forced to abstain from defending their water resources in order to maintain socio-economic and political ties with the very same households that oppose them in water conflicts. The paper concludes by briefly discussing how the poorest can be supported in local water conflicts. This includes ensuring that alternative spaces for expressing grievances exist and are accessible; facilitating that water sharing agreements and rights are clearly stipulated and monitored; and working beyond water governance to reduce the socio-economic dependency-relations of poor households.

Project politics, priorities and participation in rural water schemes

Barbara van Koppen
International Water Management Institute, Pretoria, South Africa; b.vankoppen@cgiar.org
Vladimir Cossio Rojas
Centro AGUA, Universidad Mayor de San Simon, Cochabamba, Bolivia; vladimir.cossio@centro-agua.org
Thomas Skielboe
International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, Copenhagen, Denmark; ts@iwgia.org

ABSTRACT: Governments, NGOs and financers invest considerable resources in rural domestic water supplies and irrigation development. However, elite capture and underuse, if not complete abandonment, are frequent. While the blame is often put on 'corrupt, lazy and indisciplined' communities, this article explores the question of how the public water sector itself contributes to this state of affairs. Four case studies, which are part of the research project Cooperation and Conflict in Local Water Governance, are examined: two domestic water supply projects (Mali, Vietnam); one participatory multiple use project (Zambia); and one large-scale irrigation project (Bolivia). It was found that accountability of water projects was upward and tended to lie in construction targets for single uses with already allocated funding. This rendered project implementers dependent upon the village elite for timely spending. Yet, the elite appeared hardly motivated to maintain communal schemes, unless they themselves benefited. The dependency of projects on the elite can be reduced by ensuring participatory and inclusive planning that meets the project'€™s conditions before budget allocation. Although such approaches are common outside the water sector, a barrier in the water sector is that central public funds are negotiated by each sector by profiling unique expertise and single livelihood goals, which trickle down as single use silos. The article concludes with reflections on plausible benefits of participatory multiple use services for equity and sustainability.

Introduction to the Themed Section: Water governance and the politics of scale

Emma S. Norman
Native Environmental Science Program, Northwest Indian College, Bellingham, WA, USA; enorman@nwic.edu
Karen Bakker
Department of Geography and Program on Water Governance, Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada; karen.bakker@ubc.ca
Christina Cook
Faculty of Medicine, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada; clcook@alumni.ubc.ca

ABSTRACT: This introductory article of the themed section introduces a series of papers that engage with water governance and the politics of scale. The paper situates the ongoing 'politics of scale' debates, and links them to discussions germane to water governance. We call for closer attention to the inter-relationships between power and social networks in studies of water governance, with particular reference to both institutional dynamics and scalar constructions. Framed in this way, we suggest that the engagement at the intersection of politics of scale and water governance moves the concept of scale beyond the 'fixity' of territory. The paper reflects on the ways in which the recognition of scale as socially constructed and contingent on political struggle might inform analyses of water governance and advance our understanding of hydrosocial networks.

The politics of scaling water governance and adjudication in New Mexico

Eric P. Perramond
Environmental Science and Southwest Studies Programs, The Colorado College; eric.perramond@coloradocollege.edu

ABSTRACT: This paper discusses the scalar politics of the water rights adjudication process in New Mexico (US). Over the past 150 years, water governance in New Mexico has gradually shifted away from communal management towards more individualised 'water rights'. This paper addresses the consequences of this shift for water users while also addressing the literature on the politics of scale and scalar politics. Actors engaged in water governance mobilise scale, and scalar politics operate in different settings, depending on the priorities of the stakeholders. Using interviews, archival research, and institutional ethnography, I illustrate how scale of various kinds is fundamental to the process of water rights adjudication and water governance in the state of New Mexico. Although the academic sense of the politics of scale remains contested, these debates seem largely abstract to most water users, even if they materially and rhetorically engage in multiple levels of scalar politics. The framing of scale arguments ranges from the biopolitics of individual water rights holders, to the new regionalisation of ditches due to adjudication, to considerations at the larger watershed level.

Toward post-sovereign environmental governance? Politics, scale, and EU Water Framework Directive

Corey Johnson
Department of Geography, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC, USA; corey_johnson@uncg.edu

ABSTRACT: The EU Water Framework Directive (EUWFD) of 2000 requires that all EU member states "protect, enhance and restore" rivers to attain good surface water quality by 2015. To achieve this mandate, member states divide themselves into watershed basins (River Basin Districts) for the purposes of monitoring and remediation, even if those districts cross international borders. This paper examines three key elements of the rescaling of governance along watershed lines. First, I draw on a cross section of literatures on territoriality of the state and the changing regulation of nature to argue that analyses of the EU tend to privilege the nation-state as an ontological starting point. Second, the EUWFD as a rescaling of environmental gvernance is explored. The third element of the paper considers the relationship between the de- and re-territorialisation of environmental governance on the one hand, and the changing character of sovereignty in the EU on the other. On this basis, the paper argues that the EUWFD represents a hybrid form of territoriality that is changing the political geography of the European Union and that the redrawing of political-administrative scales along physical geographical lines provides evidence of the emergence of a new, non-nested scalar politics of governance in Europe.

State development and the rescaling of agricultural hydrosocial governance in semi-arid Northwest China

Afton Clarke-Sather
Department of Geography, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA; afton.clarke-sather@colorado.edu

ABSTRACT: Over the past 20 years, agriculture in the semi-arid Zuli river valley in Northwest China has been transformed from subsistence to commercial production. Instead of spring wheat and millet, peasants now grow maize, potatoes, and cabbage for national markets. This transformation has been facilitated by a series of interventions that have rescaled agricultural hydrosocial relations in the valley. Many of these interventions, such as alternative cash crops, do not fall under what is traditionally considered water governance, but have altered peasants'€™ relationship with agricultural water nonetheless. This article (1) calls for a broadening of our understanding of scale in hydrosocial relations that gives more attention to the socioeconomic interactions that facilitate human relationships with water in the absence of the biophysical resource of water; (2) illustrates that state-backed rescaling of hydrosocial relations comprises contingent processes, which may or may not be planned; and (3) examines how water governance can mean examining what people do without water, as well as what people do with water. This article illustrates that a diverse set of state actors govern farmers'€™ relationships with agricultural water in often conflicting ways by rescaling both the biophysical resource of water, and socioeconomic institutions that affect agricultural water use.

Restructuring and rescaling water governance in mining contexts: The co-production of waterscapes in Peru

Jessica Budds
Department of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Reading, UK; j.r.budds@reading.ac.uk
Leonith Hinojosa
Geography Department, The Open University, UK; l.hinojosa-valencia@open.ac.uk

ABSTRACT: The governance of water resources is prominent in both water policy agendas and academic scholarship. Political ecologists have made important advances in reconceptualising the relationship between water and society. Yet while they have stressed both the scalar dimensions and the politicised nature of water governance, analyses of its scalar politics are relatively nascent. In this paper, we consider how the increased demand for water resources by the growing mining industry in Peru reconfigures and rescales water governance. In Peru, the mining industry'€™s thirst for water draws in and reshapes social relations, technologies, institutions, and discourses that operate over varying spatial and temporal scales. We develop the concept of waterscape to examine these multiple ways in which water is co-produced through mining, often beyond the watershed scale. We argue that an examination of waterscapes avoids the limitations of thinking about water in purely material terms, structuring analysis of water issues according to traditional spatial scales and institutional hierarchies, and taking these scales and structures for granted.

Cultural politics and transboundary resource governance in the Salish sea

Emma S. Norman
Native Environmental Science Program, Northwest Indian College, Bellingham, WA, USA; enorman@nwic.edu

ABSTRACT: This paper explores the cultural politics of water governance through the analysis of a new governing body created by indigenous leaders in the Pacific Northwest of North America: The Coast Salish Aboriginal Council. This paper investigates how the administrative structures and physical boundaries of water governance are both socially constructed and politically mobilised. The key moments explored in this article are closely linked to the power dynamics constituted through postcolonial constructions of space. Inclusion of cultural politics of scale will, arguably, provide a more nuanced approach to the study of transboundary environmental governance. This has important implications for the study of natural resource management for indigenous communities, whose traditional homelands are often bifurcated by contemporary border constructions.