Damming Rainy Lake and the ongoing production of hydrocolonialism in the US-Canada boundary waters

Johann Strube
Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education, The Pennsylvania State University, United States of America; johann.strube@psu.edu

Kimberley Anh Thomas
Department of Geography and Urban Studies, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, United States of America; kimthomas@temple.edu

ABSTRACT: Transboundary water governance between the United States and Canada – ahistorically described as cooperative and harmonious – has been instrumental to Settler colonialism and the dispossession of Indigenous peoples around the Great Lakes. At Rainy Lake, on the border between the American state of Minnesota and the Canadian province of Ontario, transboundary water governance supported a binational, Settler colonial joint venture through which European-descended Settlers established themselves in this area. It allowed for the construction of hydroelectric dams that enabled industrial development but also damaged ecosystems and species on which local Ojibwe and Métis communities depended, particularly the lake's wild rice (Zizania palustris) stands. We reconceptualise transboundary water governance in the region by expanding the framework of hydro-hegemony to include relations between Canada, the United States, and Indigenous Nations. By recognising Indigenous Nations and Settler colonial states as having equal status in political negotiations around the use of water, our analysis reveals negative hydro-hegemony between the United States and Canada on one side, and Indigenous Nations on the other. We advance hydrocolonialism as a framework for describing these relationships. Hydrocolonialism persists through the ongoing exclusion of Indigenous Nations from nation-to-nation diplomacy; this exclusion is particularly embedded in the functioning of the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty and the International Joint Commission which it established.

KEYWORDS: Wild rice, Settler colonialism, hydro-hegemony, hydrocolonialism, Boundary Waters Treaty, International Joint Commission, hydroelectric dams, USA, Canada

The impact of pro-poor reforms on consumers and the water utility in Maputo, Mozambique

Valentina Zuin
Yale-NUS College, Singapore; valentina.zuin@yale-nus.edu.sg

Maika Nicholson
Sherwood Design Engineers, San Francisco, CA, United States; maikanicholson@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: Over one billion people gained access to piped water between 2000 and 2015. Piped water access in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), however, is the lowest of all SDG regions and is declining: in 2017, only 56% of the urban population in SSA had access to piped water in their homes, down from 65% in 2000. Increasing water access via private connections is difficult for many of utility providers in SSA, and unconnected households may also choose not to connect to the water utility network because of low-quality utility service, high water charges and high connection fees. This paper focuses on understanding the impact of the pro-poor water reforms implemented between 2010 and 2019 in the Greater Maputo Area (GMA), Mozambique; specifically, it attempts to understand how households were able to obtain piped water access through a water connection campaign, a reduction of the connection fee, and the option of paying in instalments. We use data collected in 2010 and 2012 – before and after these policy changes were introduced – from 1300 households in 6 poor neighbourhoods in peri-urban Maputo. This paper also investigates the broader sectoral impacts of these policies over time from the water utility’s perspective, using data from sector reports and interviews with key informants that were conducted by one of the authors in 2019. We found that between 2009 and 2017, the number of domestic private connections more than doubled in the GMA. Both the utility connection campaign and the reduction in connection fees facilitated water access for low-income households – although the poorest households were still unable to access piped water in the studied neighbourhoods – and for a few households, access was made possible by the option of paying the connection fee in instalments. Such rapid increases in the number of connections had two important implications for the water sector: first, as the number of private connections increased, the quality of service decreased significantly; second, the increase in domestic connections among largely low-income and relatively low-consuming customers resulted in major financial challenges for the system. These results are in line with those of other authors who argue that social and financial goals cannot be achieved in tandem; they also support findings in the existing literature on the limited ability of tariffs to deliver subsidies to the poor.

KEYWORDS: Water reforms, urban service provision, pro-poor water services, connection fee, payment in instalments, financial sustainability, coverage increase, Maputo, Mozambique

Cities with mosquitoes: A political ecology of Aedes aegypti’s habitats

Angela Bayona-Valderrama
School of Civil Engineering, University of Leeds, UK; ambayonava@gmail.com

Tatiana Acevedo-Guerrero
IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, Delft, The Netherlands; Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Center for Development Studies CIDER, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia; t.acevedo@un-ihe.org

Cláudio Artur
Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Maputo, Mozambique; jmatine95@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: Both urbanisation and climate change have been linked to the ecological success of Aedes aegypti. These mosquitoes, which breed in stored and stagnant water, are the primary vectors of dengue, chikungunya and Zika, diseases that have been increasingly affecting populations in the Global South. Addressing this problem requires a wider understanding of habitats favourable to the breeding of Aedes aegypti as they are made and remade in the city. Through interviews and archival work documenting the histories and routines of water storage, this exploratory study examines the formation of suitable mosquito habitats in six neighbourhoods of Maputo, Mozambique. The paper has been inspired by debates on urban political ecology to delve into the transformations that water undergoes once it is stored in and around homes. We document the interrelatedness between socio-economic characteristics (in contexts of unequal urbanisation) with physico-chemical changes of stored water, as it becomes a suitable mosquito habitat.

KEYWORDS: Stored water, habitats favourable to Aedes aegypti, political ecology, Maputo, Mozambique

Modern and nonmodern waters: Sociotechnical controversies, successful anti-dam movements and water ontologies

Silvia Flaminio
University of Lausanne, Faculty of Geosciences and Environment, Institute of Geography and Sustainability, Lausanne, Switzerland; and University of Lyon, UMR 5600 EVS, Lyon, France; silvia.flaminio@unil.ch

ABSTRACT: Many new dam projects are presently being put forward, revealing both the comeback of large hydraulic infrastructure and the resilience of the modern ontology of water. To contribute to the understanding of modern water’s perpetuation, this paper takes a step back in time and looks at the cases of two dam projects which were cancelled during the 1980s due to environmental protests: the Loyettes Dam on the Rhône River in France and the Gordon-below-Franklin Dam on the Gordon River in Tasmania, Australia. Previous studies in the political ecology of water have paid attention to opposing discourses, representations, imaginaries and, more recently, to ontologies when considering conflicts involving modern water. This paper further explores the contestation of modern water that occurred in the late twentieth century. It focuses not only on pre-existing ontologies of water but also on the production of water ontologies during and after sociotechnical controversies. It does so by 1) asking how modern water seeks to maintain itself, and 2) questioning the rise of alternative water ontologies. The discussion identifies different water ontologies which vary in a continuum from nonmodern to modern; it also connects them with ways of being with the environment in general. The study concludes that while controversies may result in the transformation of planning practices and changes in water ontologies, the hegemony of modern water is only partially challenged by successful anti-dam movements.

KEYWORDS: Dams, modern water, water ontologies, Gordon River, Tasmania, Australia, Rhône River, France

The landing of parachuted technology: Appropriation of centralised drip irrigation systems by irrigation communities in the region of Valencia (Spain)

Noemí Poblador
CIRAD, Montpellier, France; noepoblador@hotmail.com

Carles Sanchis-Ibor
Centro Valenciano de Estudios del Riego, Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia; csanchis@upv.es

Marcel Kuper
CIRAD, University of Montpellier, UMR G-Eau; marcel.kuper@cirad.fr

ABSTRACT: Drip irrigation technology in existing collective surface irrigation schemes is frequently implemented through top-down policies and black box projects, causing significant changes in agricultural water management, uneven effects on local practices and organisations, and very different reactions in the social structures of irrigation. In this paper, we analyse the institutional co-production of technological change in the case of irrigation for fruit production in the Region of Valencia (Spain) following the implementation of drip irrigation systems in two irrigation communities. The State conceived public subsidy schemes promoting drip irrigation that had to be implemented rapidly. The private sector designed and implemented the new subsidised standardised infrastructure with a logic that was disconnected from collective-action principles. Farmers’ representatives opted for a centralised fertigation model that introduced significant rigidity into the irrigation system, hindering the development of polyculture and organic farming. Irrigation communities were then obliged to redesign the irrigation system to make it compatible with their needs and to recover social control over drip irrigation. Our results highlight the importance of human capital and social control in processes of technological change in collective irrigation institutions.

KEYWORDS: Drip irrigation, water users associations, adaptation, centralised fertigation, organic farming, Valencia, Spain

More sustainable systems through consolidation? The changing landscape of rural drinking water service delivery in Uganda

Angela Huston
Department of Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics, McGill University, Montréal, QC, Canada; and IRC, The Hague, Netherlands; angela.huston@mail.mcgill.ca

Susan Gaskin
Department of Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics, McGill University, Montréal, QC, Canada; susan.gaskin@mcgill.ca

Patrick Moriarty
IRC, The Hague, The Netherlands; moriarty@ircwash.org

Martin Watsisi
IRC Uganda, Kampala, Uganda; watsisi@ircwash.org

ABSTRACT: The drinking water services sector in Uganda is in the early stages of a nationally planned transition; it aims to move from a paradigm based on community managed point sources towards one of professional utilities of piped networks. The implementation of this transition was studied in Western Uganda’s Kabarole District between 2017 and 2019; a systems approach (building blocks) was used to assess the sustainability of the different service models. The level of services was assessed using household and infrastructure surveys; these were supplemented by a management assessment, key informant interviews and stakeholder workshops. The two utility models present in Kabarole outperformed the community management model, with the existing national utility demonstrating greater maturity and performance than the newer Umbrella utility. The community management model, while relatively well defined in policy and planning frameworks, was poorly implemented, with less than 20% of community management structures operational at water points. The water sector is undergoing a process of consolidation of service delivery under a smaller number of larger providers, a trend that has been observed in other countries as they progress towards universal supply. In this paper, the prospects and risks of the current sector trajectory are discussed, as are the implications for monitoring, regulation and planning systems across the urban–rural spectrum.

KEYWORDS: Utility, service delivery models, systems, community management, Uganda

Municipal failure, unequal access and conflicts over water: A hydrosocial perspective on water insecurity of rural households in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Karen Lebek
Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems (IRI THESys) and Geography Department, Humboldt University Berlin, Berlin, Germany; karen.lebek@hu-berlin.de

Michèle Twomey
Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems (IRI THESys) and Geography Department, Humboldt University Berlin, Berlin, Germany; micheletwomey@gmail.com

Tobias Krueger
Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems (IRI THESys) and Geography Department, Humboldt University Berlin, Berlin, Germany; tobias.krueger@hu-berlin.de

ABSTRACT: Despite South Africa’s modern water legislation and commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals, over three million South Africans, most of whom live in rural areas, still lack access to a basic supply of safe drinking water. This case study examines the implications of unequal levels of household water insecurity (HWI) among rural households and communities; it considers the effects on their health and productivity and on their power relations with other households. We first ask whether municipal water services have succeeded in improving water access and reducing HWI for served households in the study area; we then investigate misuse and vandalism of municipal water infrastructure – the reason it occurs and how it interrelates with unequal access and HWI. We understand HWI in both a physical and a relational sense and employ the hydrosocial cycle as a lens to explore its relational dimension. Our research indicates that the District Municipality responsible for water services has largely failed to improve water access and reduce HWI for users of standpipes and users of unimproved sources/surface water, with adverse effects on health and productivity; only users of illegal yard taps benefit from water services. Partial coverage, incremental infrastructure development, neglect of infrastructure maintenance and corruption have produced uneven power relations that result in conflicts over water, vandalism and misuse of water infrastructure.

KEYWORDS: Household water insecurity, water services, vandalism, water infrastructure, power relations, South Africa

Parsing the politics of singular and multiple waters

Lindsay Vogt
Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies (ISEK), University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; lindsay.vogt@uzh.ch

Casey Walsh
University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA; cwalsh@ucsb.edu

ABSTRACT: This Special Issue explores the politics of heterogeneous waters. Modern technoscientific water management regimes have driven the consolidation of power over water and those who use it through a material, cultural, and political process of centralisation and homogenisation. Despite this expanding uniformity, numerous scholars have called attention to the thriving heterogeneity of waters and water cultures. How do we reconcile these two views? In this introduction to the special issue, we propose that the relationship between water and waters is not either/or, as water/waters, but rather something more simultaneous and conjoined: water-waters. This approach displaces conceptual and temporal (before/after, premodern/modern) dichotomies and recognises that the processes through which water is made homogenous or heterogeneous (or both) are distinctly political. We conclude by introducing the anthropological and historical contributions to this special issue, which examine the political effects exercised by various kinds of waters and how people deal with the manifold permutations of water’s multiplicity. The articles assembled here show how uniform 'water' rarely fully replaces or displaces 'waters' materially or ontologically, but rather that they coexist in a tense and dynamic political balance.

KEYWORDS: Multiple waters, modern water, water cultures; dialectics

Barriers to drinking water security in rural Ghana: The vulnerability of people with disabilities

Benjamin Dosu
Department of Geography and Environment, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Canada; dosu@uleth.ca

Maura Hanrahan
Department of Geography and Environment, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Canada; maura.hanrahan@uleth.ca

ABSTRACT: Because it is a life-giving substance and one of the crucial components of good health and human survival, access to potable water has been recognised globally as a human rights issue. The current development paradigm also endorses inclusivity in development interventions, calling on leaders of countries to leave no one behind. In most developing countries, however, there seems to be a dilemma as to whether governments can achieve the 'all-inclusive agenda'. Among the most marginalised people are those with disabilities; in terms of access to potable water, this group is likely to face some of the greatest inequalities. Using a qualitative approach that employs in-depth interviews with members of three rural communities in Ghana, this study assesses the water security experiences of persons with disabilities (PWDs). The study identifies barriers such as social exclusion, stigma, distance and water costs, all of which make it difficult for PWDs to collect a sufficient quantity of potable water. Considering the need to achieve universal access to clean water globally, understanding access barriers is essential for rural water management policy decisions. We conclude that in order to enhance access to potable water by PWDs, it is imperative that their needs are assessed, that members of this group are included in rural water management decision-making, and that they are involved in the day-to-day management of drinking water facilities.

KEYWORDS: Water security, water access, water access barriers, rural Ghana, persons with disabilities

Institutional bricolage in irrigation governance in rural northwest China: Diversity, legitimacy, and persistence

Raymond Yu Wang
Center for Social Sciences, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China; wangy63@sustech.edu.cn

Tipeng Chen
School of Government, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China; chentp@mail2.sysu.edu.cn

Oscar Bin Wang
Department of Politics and Public Administration, the University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China; wangb79@hku.hk

ABSTRACT: The emergence and development of diverse institutions is an important yet understudied subject in community-based irrigation governance. Drawing on empirical evidence gathered from 30 administrative villages located in the upstream Yellow River, northwest China, this paper builds on the theoretical perspective of institutional bricolage and adopts an interpretative approach to examining diversity, legitimacy and the persistence of different institutional modalities in the case-study area. It is shown that monocentric, polycentric, bureaucratic and individualised institutions emerge and co-exist in a relatively small area and have been sustained by various sources of legitimacy. Moreover, the process of legitimisation is heterogeneous, as the various institutional modalities have drawn their legitimacy from different sources. These may be both internal and external, synthesise and contradict simultaneously, and change as the irrigation institutions initiate, operate and evolve. The findings connect irrigation institutions with everyday practices, which are non-linear and uncertain, thus bringing about a more nuanced understanding of institutional bricolage and offering more in-depth explanations for the puzzles of why institutions demonstrate different characteristics in similar contexts and why some institutions persist when faced with challenges and tension.

KEYWORDS: Irrigation governance, institutions, bricolage, legitimacy, China

Seasonal land fallowing policy in response to groundwater overdraft in the north China Plain

Hongbo Deng
Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; denghb.16b@igsnrr.ac.cn

Baozhu Guan
China Centre for Agricultural Policy, School of Advanced Agricultural Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China; guanbaozhu@pku.edu.cn

Jinxia Wang
China Centre for Agricultural Policy, School of Advanced Agricultural Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China; jxwang.ccap@pku.edu.cn

Alec Zuo
Centre for Global Food and Resources, School of Economics and Public Policy, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide SA, Australia ; alec.zuo@adelaide.edu.au

Zhuanlin Wang
China Centre for Agricultural Policy, School of Advanced Agricultural Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China; zhuanlinwang@pku.edu.cn

Tianhe Sun
Collaborative Innovation Centre for Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Integrated Development, Hebei University of Economics and Business, Shijiazhuang, China; sunth.13b@igsnrr.ac.cn

ABSTRACT: The Seasonal Land Fallowing Policy (SLFP), designed to mitigate serious groundwater overdraft in the North China Plain, was introduced in Hebei Province in 2014. This paper offers a comprehensive review and assessment of its implementation status, effectiveness and challenges. Based on data at both macro and micro levels, we witnessed the rapid expansion of the SLFP from 2014 to 2019. With a high targeting efficiency, the SLFP reduced groundwater consumption and contributed to real water saving. However, further analysis is needed on the influence of the SLFP on water levels. As a means of payment for ecosystem services, the current subsidy offered by the SLFP is not sufficiently flexible to reflect the heterogeneity in farmers’ opportunity cost. Obstacles to the effective and sustainable implementation of the SLFP include unstable and ineligible participants, insufficient incentive for farmers to shift surplus labour to off-farm jobs, and underuse of fallowed land. Based on these challenges, this paper offers policy suggestions to further aid the SLFP’s effective and sustainable implementation in the future.

KEYWORDS: Seasonal Land Fallowing Policy, Implementation, Groundwater Overdraft, Conservation of Groundwater Irrigation, North China Plain

Adaptation to quantitative regulation of agricultural water resources: Mosaic cropping pattern and rotational irrigation in China

Ying Chai
Economic School, Guangdong University of Finance and Economics, Guangzhou, China; chaiying19@163.com

Yunmin Zeng
Institute of Environment and Development, Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences, Guangzhou, China; amao1604@163.com

ABSTRACT: Quantitative regulation of agricultural water resources (QRW) is an effective means of reducing water demand and sustaining water development. Few studies, however, have investigated the mechanism underlying a region’s adaptation to QRW. In this study, we first establish an adaptive mechanism framework which incorporates rotational irrigation and cropping patterns a means of solving the problems of inefficiency, inequality and costly coordination that result from adaptation to QRW. Next, in order to examine the applicability of the theoretical framework, we refer to the case study of Xuwen County, Guangdong Province, China, where QRW was implemented by the Central Government in 2011. We find that a mosaic cropping pattern can enable rotational irrigation on a regional scale, which can cost-effectively mitigate the problems of inefficiency and inequitable allocation caused by QRW. We find that a diverse cropping pattern can provide a form of spatial rotational irrigation that requires less water than the temporal rotational irrigation required for a heterogeneous cropping pattern. Our findings have implications for irrigated agriculture and water resource conservation; they reveal that it is possible to decouple agricultural water supplies from crop growth through the implementation of QRW.

KEYWORDS: Quantitative regulation, cropping pattern, agricultural water resource management, rotational irrigation, China

Japanese irrigation management at the crossroads

Masayoshi Satoh
University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan; satoh.masayoshi@gmail.com

Atsushi Ishii
University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan; ishii.atsushi.fu@u.tsukuba.ac.jp

ABSTRACT: To achieve the goals of irrigation projects, governments need to ensure appropriate operations and maintenance. The Japanese government has established a national-level participatory irrigation management (PIM) approach since 17th century and the Japanese farmers presently operate and maintain entire irrigation systems at their own cost under the Land Improvement Act enacted in 1949. However, whether this Japanese system is relevant to other countries remains unclear. This paper aims to characterise the PIM system in detail; it analyses its background conditions and extracts implications for successful PIM methodology. To that end, we mobilised and compared all relevant information regarding legal aspects, practices and statistics. We concluded that: 1) farmers’ involvement from the initial planning stages – which is a requirement of the Japanese government’s application system for irrigation projects – is critical if projects are to succeed; 2) resolving farmers’ conflicts and coordination in advance are the key to success; 3) while transferring all facility management to the farmer irrigation association known as the Land Improvement District (LID), the government must constantly supervise and support the LID; 4) the experiences of Japan are relevant to countries that have small-scale farming systems; and 5) there is a rapid shift underway in the primary actors of Japanese agriculture in rural villages, from many small-scale farmers to a limited number of large-scale farmers. This transformation may require reshaping the Japanese model to adapt to new circumstances.

KEYWORDS: Participatory irrigation management, mura (a feudal village of Japan), farmer cooperation, indirect government intervention, large-scale farmers, Japan

Bureaucratising co-production: Institutional adaptation of irrigation associations in Taiwan

Wai-Fung Lam
The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong; dwflam@hkucc.hku.hk

Ching-Ping Tang
National Chengchi University, Taiwan; cptang@nccu.edu.tw

Shih-Ko Tang
National Chengchi University, Taiwan; 109259006@nccu.edu.tw

ABSTRACT: In 2020, Taiwan’s 17 irrigation associations were bureaucratised to become management offices of the Irrigation Agency under the government’s Council of Agriculture. This change marked the end of the parastatal mode of irrigation management that has in past decades played an important role in fostering Taiwan’s agricultural and economic development. As these parastatals have always been hailed by the international water research community as exemplars of co-production and state-community synergy, the change is baffling. While irrigation management in many places around the world has been moving towards a higher degree of decentralisation and self-governance, Taiwan seems to be moving in the opposite direction. How can we make sense of this change? What are the driving forces behind it? Does the bureaucratisation of the irrigation associations signify a failure of the co-production model? By tracing the evolution of irrigation institutions in Taiwan, this study examines the dynamic of institutional change as a response to the island’s changing political economy. The study shows that changes in the macropolitical-economic context prompted the Taiwanese government to reconsider two imperatives that underlie the institutional design of irrigation associations: robustness trade-offs and the modus operandi of co-production. The bureaucratisation of irrigation associations was an institutional manifestation of the adjustment of the two imperatives in adapting to the changing political economy.

KEYWORDS: Irrigation associations, robustness trade-offs, co-production, institutional change, Taiwan

Digital innovations and water services in cities of the global South: A systematic literature review

Godfred Amankwaa
Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, UK; godfred.amankwaa@manchester.ac.uk

Richard Heeks
Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, UK; richard.heeks@manchester.ac.uk

Alison L Browne
Department of Geography, University of Manchester, UK; alison.browne@manchester.ac.uk

ABSTRACT: Increasing implementation of digital water innovations in cities of the Global South has been accompanied by a growth in research on this topic. This paper presents a first systematic literature review of this domain, analysing a total of 43 papers using a range of thematic categorisations. Overall profiling finds literature to be recent, limited in its engagement with theorisation or methodology, and with some disciplinary, geographic and method gaps. Research has been conservative with regards to the technologies covered, with a provider-centric, rather than a user- or government-centric leaning. Impact findings are skewed towards benefits more than disbenefits, and towards impacts on providers and users rather than towards the broader socio-environmental impacts. The paper ends by laying out a future research agenda that particularly emphasises the value of more contextualised sociotechnical and sociopolitical research.

KEYWORDS: Digital technologies, digital water innovations, urban water, Global South, systematic literature review

Source-to-sea river journeys and their politics of scale and knowledge production: Examining Colorado River expeditions from the United States through Mexico

Adrianne C. Kroepsch
Division of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO, US; akroepsch@mines.edu

Caleb Ring
Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO, US; calebmring@gmail.com

Joanna Clark
Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO, US; jojoc3563@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: In this article we examine an increasingly popular form of water activism – the source-to-sea river journey and its associated narrative – in order to understand its proliferation and implications for water discourse. We focus on source-to-sea journeys on the Colorado River because of the robust dataset that this river provides. On the Colorado, we find that, in addition to producing a compelling adventure tale, the source-to-sea journey has evolved to become an unofficial methodology for assessing the cumulative environmental impacts of human development on the river. This bootstrapped methodology challenges the epistemological status quo in the Colorado River Basin by establishing an alternative way of knowing the river and a new type of river expert. It does this by repositioning the observational scale at which the river is known: downscaling the resolution of environmental knowledge production to the scale of the individual body, while also upscaling it in extent to the scale of the full river basin. We discuss the implications of these journeys and narratives for water discourse, with an emphasis on what they render visible and what they leave invisible.

KEYWORDS: Knowledge production, scale, narrative, activism, Colorado River

South Asian dams at a tipping point? The case of Tipaimukh Dam in Manipur, India

Thounaojam Somokanta
Department of Geography, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel; somocug@gmail.com

Eran Feitelson
Department of Geography, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel; efeitelson@gmail.com

Amit Tubi
Department of Geography, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel; amit.tubi@mail.huji.ac.il

ABSTRACT: While dam building has declined in most developed economies, it has seen an increase in emerging economies, particularly in East and South Asia. Even there, however, such dams are facing mounting opposition. This raises the prospect that dam building is nearing a global tipping point. In this study, we examine the case of the Tipaimukh Dam in Manipur, one of the states in India's peripheral northeast. We ask how such a major project was stopped despite support from powerful national- and regional-level actors. To analyse this case, we build on the Advocacy Coalition Framework and the analytical concepts of growth coalitions and discourse coalitions. The joint application of these concepts enables us to link global advocacy coalitions with local pro- and anti-growth coalitions through the storylines they advance, thereby formulating multiscalar discourse coalitions. This allows us to follow the struggles between pro-dam and anti-dam coalitions, as well as trace the shifts in the composition and focus of coalitions over the 75 years since the Tipaimukh Dam was first proposed.

KEYWORDS: Water, emerging economies, discourse coalitions, storylines, Indigenous people, India

Disadvantaged unincorporated communities and the struggle for water justice in California

Jonathan K. London
Department of Human Ecology, University of California Davis, Davis, USA; jklondon@ucdavis.edu

Amanda L. Fencl
Department of Geography, Texas A&M University, College Station, USA; alfencl@tamu.edu

Sara Watterson
Center for Regional Change, University of California Davis, Davis USA; swatterson@ucdavis.edu

Yasmina Choueiri
Geography Graduate Group, University of California Davis, Davis, USA; ynchoueiri@ucdavis.edu

Phoebe Seaton
Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, Sacramento, USA; pseaton@leadershipcounsel.org

Jennifer Jarin
School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, USA; jjarin@berkeley.edu

Mia Dawson
Geography Graduate Group, University of California Davis, Davis, USA; mkdawson@ucdavis.edu

Alfonso Aranda
Geography Graduate Group, University of California Davis, Davis, USA; aaaranda@ucdavis.edu

Aaron King
Luhdorff and Scalmanini Consulting Engineers Davis, USA; aking@lsce.com

Peter Nguyen
Geography Graduate Group, University of California Davis, Davis, USA; pvtnguyen@ucdavis.edu

Camille Pannu
Water Justice Clinic, Aoki Center for Critical Race and Nation Studies, UC Davis School of Law, Davis, USA; camille.pannu@gmail.com

Laurel Firestone
Community Water Center, Sacramento, USA; laurel.firestone@gmail.com

Colin Bailey
Consultant, Sacramento, USA; colinbailey@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: This article maps a meshwork of formal and informal elements of places called Disadvantaged Unincorporated Communities (DUCs) to understand the role of informality in producing unjust access to safe drinking water in California’s San Joaquin Valley. It examines the spatial, racial, and class-based dimensions of informality. The paper aims to both enrich the literature on informality studies and use the concept of informality to expand research on DUCs and water access. We use socio-spatial analyses of the relationships between informality and water justice to reach the following conclusions: DUCs face severe problems in access to safe drinking water; disparities in access have a spatial dimension; inequities in water access are racialised; the proximity of DUCs to safe drinking water offers good potential for improved water access; and the challenges of informality are targeted through water justice advocacy and public policy.

KEYWORDS: Drinking water, human right to water, Disadvantaged Unincorporated Communities, informality, California

Below the radar: Data, narratives and the politics of irrigation in sub-Saharan Africa

Jean-Philippe Venot
Institut de Recherche pour le Développement and University of Montpellier, Montpellier, France; jean-philippe.venot@ird.fr

Samuel Bowers
School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK; sam.bowers@ed.ac.uk

Dan Brockington
Sheffield Institute for International Development, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK; d.brockington@sheffield.ac.uk

Hans Komakech
Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology, Arusha, United Republic of Tanzania; hans.komakech@nm-aist.ac.tz

Casey Ryan
School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK; casey.ryan@ed.ac.uk

Gert Jan Veldwisch
Wageningen University, Wageningen, Netherlands; gertjan.veldwisch@wur.nl

Philip Woodhouse
Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK; phil.woodhouse@manchester.ac.uk

ABSTRACT: Emerging narratives call for recognising and engaging constructively with small-scale farmers who have a leading role in shaping the current irrigation dynamics in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper explores whether new irrigation data can usefully inform these narratives. It argues that, for a variety of reasons, official irrigation data in sub-Saharan Africa fails to capture the full extent and diverse nature of irrigation and its rapid distributed growth over the last two decades. The paper investigates recent trends in the use of remote sensing methods to generate irrigation data; it examines the associated expectation that these techniques enable a better understanding of current irrigation developments and small-scale farmers’ roles. It reports on a pilot study that uses radar-based imagery and analysis to provide what are indeed new insights into the extent of rice irrigated agriculture in three regions of Tanzania. We further stress that such mapping exercises remain grounded in a binary logic that separates 'irrigation' from other 'non-irrigated' landscape features. They can stem from, and buttress, a conventional understanding of irrigation that is still influenced by colonial legacies of engineering design and agricultural modernisation. As farmers’ initiatives question this dominant view of irrigation, and in a policy context that is dominated by narratives of water scarcity, this means that new data may improve the visibility of water use by small-scale irrigators but may also leave them more exposed to restrictions favouring more powerful water users. The paper thus calls for moving away from a narrow debate on irrigation data and monitoring, and towards a holistic discussion of the nature of irrigation development in sub-Saharan Africa. This discussion is necessary to support a constructive engagement with farmer-led irrigation development; it is also challenging in that it involves facing entrenched vested interests and requires changes in development practices.

KEYWORDS: Irrigation, small-scale farming, remote sensing, water resource governance, data politics, narratives, sub-Saharan Africa, Tanzania

A 'drought-free' Maharashtra? Politicising water conservation for rain-dependent agriculture

Sameer H. Shah
Institute for Resources, Environment & Sustainability (IRES), The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada; sameer.shah@alumni.ubc.ca

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

Mark S. Johnson
Institute for Resources, Environment & Sustainability (IRES) and the Department of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada; mark.johnson@ubc.ca

Hannah Wittman
Institute for Resources, Environment & Sustainability (IRES) and the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada; hannah.wittman@ubc.ca

ABSTRACT: Soil moisture conservation ('green water') and runoff capture ('blue water') can reduce agricultural risks to rainfall variation. However, little is known about how such conjoined initiatives articulate with social inequity when up-scaled into formal government programmes. In 2014, the Government of Maharashtra institutionalised an integrative green-blue water conservation campaign to make 5000 new villages drought-free each year (2015-2019). This paper analyses the extent to which the campaign, Jalyukt Shivar Abhiyan, enhanced the capture, equity, and sustainability of water for agricultural risk reduction. We find government interests to demonstrate villages as 'drought-free' affected the character and implementation of this integrative campaign. First, drainage-line and waterbody initiatives were disproportionately implemented over land-based adaptations to redress water scarcity. Second, initiatives were concentrated on public land – and less so on agricultural plots – to achieve drought-free targets. Third, the campaign conflated raising overall village water availability with improvements in water access. These dynamics: 1) limited the potential impact of water conservation; 2) excluded residents, including members of historically disadvantaged groups, who did not possess the key endowments and entitlements needed to acquire the benefits associated with drought-relief initiatives; and 3) fuelled additional groundwater extraction, undermining water conservation efforts. Villages will not be drought-free unless water conservation benefits are widespread, accessible, and long-term.

KEYWORDS: Agriculture, drought, water conservation, inequity, Jalyukt Shivar Abhiyan, India