Water values and moral economic practices in Kunene, Namibia

Diego Augusto Menestrey Schwieger
University of Cologne, Department of Social & Cultural Anthropology, Cologne, Germany; diego.menestrey@uni-koeln.de

Richard Dimba Kiaka
Jaramogi Oginga Odinga of Science and Technology, Bondo, Kenya; rkiaka@jooust.ac.ke

Michael Schnegg
University of Hamburg, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Hamburg, Germany; michael.schnegg@uni-hamburg.de

ABSTRACT: In Namibia, the institutional framework for governing rural water infrastructure has changed profoundly over the last decades. Following a community-based water management (CBWM) strategy, post-independence policies transferred the responsibility for providing water from the state to local user groups. This turned water from a public good into a common good, and today all pastoral communities must collectively cover the costs of water. In this article, we explore the economic consequences of these developments in the Kunene region of north-western Namibia. Our analysis reveals that CBWM places a significant burden on all households but that, at the same time, the effects differ across the region. In the northern part of the research area the poor pay a high share, while in the south they find ways to resist. Our analysis reveals that 'moral economic practices' such as food sharing can account for those differences to a significant degree. Communities in the north are characterised by very strong reciprocal patron-client networks, which give the poor relatively little power to oppose pricing rules that are preferred by their wealthy neighbours. In the southern part of the Kunene region, by contrast, social networks are based on sharing norms and are much more egalitarian. Along with other factors, those differences help to explain why the poor in the north find it much more difficult to resist their wealthy neighbours than do the poor in the south. In the end, the actual price of water differs across the region as it intersects with different moral economic practices.

KEYWORDS: Pastoral communities, community-based water management, moral economic practices, institutional multiplexity, Kunene, Namibia

Viewpoint – The South African water sector: Municipal dysfunction, resistance and future pathways

Suraya Scheba
Environmental & Geographical Sciences, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa; suraya.scheba@uct.ac.za

ABSTRACT: In South Africa, local government is envisaged as a critical site of redistribution. This vision is laid out in the 1998 White Paper on Local Government. It imagined an entirely new kind of municipality, one that was focused on the delivery of services to all South Africans and was aimed at addressing historical injustices and reducing poverty and inequality. Now, however, more than two decades later, local government has become a site of systemic dysfunction. The financial and infrastructural state of municipalities is deeply troubling. This paper will unpack the influence and impact of privatisation and commercialisation principles on the South African water sector. The focus will be placed on the drivers of institutional and infrastructural dysfunction as they manifest themselves in the form of persistent inequality in water access. The systemic dimensions to municipal governance failure will be centred, as local government was envisioned as a critical site of redistribution. Thereafter, community responses and future pathways toward more just provisioning are considered.

KEYWORDS: South African water governance, cost recovery, service delivery, water rights, community resistance

Barriers to accessing emergency water infrastructure: Lessons from Flint, Michigan

Melissa Heil
Department of Geography, Geology, and the Environment, Illinois State University, Normal, IL, USA; mkheil@ilstu.edu

ABSTRACT: Several high-profile cases of water service interruption have occurred in United States communities over the last decade, halting the usual operations of water infrastructures. In these situations, governments and NGOs have created emergency water infrastructures, such as bottled water distribution sites, to meet residents' water needs. This paper examines the accessibility of such emergency water distribution sites by analysing the case of Flint, Michigan. Drawing on interviews with community leaders in Flint who administered the city's bottled water distribution programmes, this paper identifies barriers to access in the city's emergency water infrastructure that stem from and deepen pre-existing socio-spatial inequality. This research identifies the need for government emergency preparedness guidance to incorporate a more comprehensive notion of accessibility that considers the social, political, and economic factors that affect the usability of these sites.

KEYWORDS: Water, Disaster Response, Infrastructure, Accessibility, Flint, USA

Drinking water quality assemblages: Scale, temporality and flexibility in Kaolack, Senegal

Elizabeth A. MacAfee
Faculty of Landscape and Society, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Ås, Norway; Department of Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands; elizabeth.macafee@ru.nl

ABSTRACT: In this article, I argue that drinking water quality is a sociomaterial phenomenon with scale and temporality; I argue further that the way in which actors in urban environments influence drinking water quality affects how people access water and the degree to which they are exposed to drinking-water–related hazards. Understanding the complexity of the multiple possible impacts on drinking water quality requires attentiveness to the heterogeneous social, political and technical relations that together constitute a 'drinking water quality assemblage'. Different problematisations of drinking water quality can also contribute to the emergence of multiple contested assemblages. Using a qualitative case study developed over eight months in Senegal including interviews, participation, observation and document review, I explore coexisting assemblages of drinking water quality in Kaolack, Senegal. I categorise the assemblages as state, implementer, provider and consumer. These vary in the degree to which each assemblage is flexible or rigid: they also exhibit differences in the scales and temporalities of concern for drinking water quality problems. I argue that this theorisation of drinking water quality relates better to the dynamic and multiple materiality of water and water quality than do the static and inflexible technical definitions that are more commonly found in policy and planning documents.

KEYWORDS: Drinking water quality, assemblage theory, urban water, Senegal

Hybridity in practice: Responding to water insecurity in São Paulo, Dhaka and Cairo

Sally Cawood
Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK; s.cawood1@lancaster.ac.uk

Noura Wahby
Department of Public Policy and Administration, The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt; noura.wahby@aucegypt.edu

Luciana Nicolau Ferrara
Center for Engineering, Modelling and Applied Social Sciences, Federal University of ABC São Paulo, Brazil; luciana.ferrara@ufabc.edu.br

ABSTRACT: This paper examines everyday practices of self-construction and connection, negotiation, and self-disconnection of, and from, formal and informal water infrastructure and services in three global cities – São Paulo, Dhaka, and Cairo. While each city has distinct histories and geographies, we show via detailed qualitative fieldwork in six low- and high-income neighbourhoods how residents face ongoing struggles to access quality, affordable, and sustainable water supply. We make two key contributions to the existing debate on urban water insecurity. First, we highlight that while residents continue to pursue water formalisation as a pathway towards neighbourhood regularisation and broader citizenship entitlements, they do not abandon the hybrid systems of infrastructure and provisioning they use to access water. Instead, these hybrid material, social, and political practices of self-connection and contestation of water services are the cornerstone of negotiating water in/security in everyday urban life for both high- and low-income groups. Second, we focus beyond the formalisation of water supply to highlight how residents maintain, repair, and/or disconnect from water infrastructure and services. We introduce the underexplored practice of 'self-disconnection' as a way in which residents respond to water insecurity in state or community systems, challenging notions of a linear, singular network ideal. The paper concludes by synthesising the diverse ways in which residents respond to water insecurity in their daily lives, across three distinct geographical contexts.

KEYWORDS: Water insecurity, hybrid infrastructures, formalisation, land tenure, urban political ecology

Promise of water abundance and the normalisation of water-intensive development in Cyprus

Serkan Karas
Department of Architecture, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus; karas.serkan@ucy.ac.cy

Panayiota Pyla
Department of Architecture, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus; pyla@ucy.ac.cy

ABSTRACT: Cyprus is the most water insecure of the European Union member countries. This is the case despite the fact that its water landscape – surface, underground and coastal – has been developed almost to its maximum, with large and costly dams, conveyors and desalination plants. This paper provides an historical and technopolitical perspective on this expensively built and precarious water supply regime. We demonstrate how water supply has been central to the formation of the Republic of Cyprus (RoC) from the end of colonialism in 1960, through to the 1974 division of the island, and then the 2004 integration of the RoC into the European Union. The paper exposes how, at critical turns, water infrastructure constituted a material practice that shaped the economy’s motive powers, that is, agriculture and tourism. We examine how state actors and international experts promoted these economic activities in ways that relied heavily on water-intensive practices. This led, in turn, to the normalisation of large-scale, capital-intensive water supply projects that consolidated the power of a precarious republic whose control over its population was only partial. Environmentally harmful practices came to be accepted as inevitable or even as crucial for the very existence of the Republic; examples of this include illegal drilling for irrigation in the south-eastern area of Kokkinokhoria and supply of hotel resorts in the village of Ayia Napa and, the supply of golf courses with subsidised agricultural. water. We conclude that, in effect, this material practice creates a long-term technopolitical dynamic that downplays or excludes demand-side water policies and ecological concerns.

KEYWORDS: Water regime, tourism, agriculture, direction, state, infrastructure, Cyprus

The impact of ICTs on social actions for mapping and restoring rivers and streams in the city of São Paulo

Dayana K. Melo da Silva
School of Communications and Arts, University of São Paulo; and Institute of Advanced Studies, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; dayanamelo@usp.br

ABSTRACT: As the city of São Paulo grew and developed during the latter part of the 19th century and in the course of the 20th, its approximately 300 rivers were gradually built over, causing them to fade from use and public awareness. Various collectives and social initiatives are now engaged in the rediscovery of these watercourses. Using participant observation and document analysis, we investigated their activities and the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on the process. Our research showed that, in addition to producing, distributing, storing and retrieving information in the digital environment, collectives and social initiatives also play a role in the creation and development of tools and platforms that reveal São Paulo’s hydrographic network. We conclude that ICTs allow these activist groups to provide São Paulo’s citizens with concrete tools for noticing channelised and buried rivers and streams. We also observe that hybridisation of the physical and digital-informational territories suggests a new way of seeing and occupying the city.

KEYWORDS: Urban rivers, urban collectives, information and communications technology, hybrid territories, São Paulo, Brazil

Watermelons in the desert in Morocco: Struggles around a groundwater commons-in-the-making

Lisa Bossenbroek
iES Institute for Environmental Sciences, RPTU (Rhineland-Palatinate Technical University) Kaiserslautern-Landau, Germany; lisabossenbroek@gmail.com

Hind Ftouhi
Centre de Recherches et d’Études sur les Sociétés Contemporaines (CRESC), Rabat, Morocco; hindftouhi@gmail.com

Zakaria Kadiri
Hassan II University of Casablanca, Casablanca, Morocco; zakariaa.kadiri@gmail.com

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

ABSTRACT: Groundwater is essential for early-season agriculture in many arid regions. In such regions, however, groundwater recharge is generally low, leading to groundwater degradation. State responses are seldom effective in addressing this issue, which leads to fatalist narratives of the unsustainability of profitable agricultural growth and the collapse of aquifers. We argue that such narratives make it difficult to recognise more promising instances in which communities find solutions to groundwater degradation. We call for a fine-grained analysis of the social practices around the use of groundwater, which, we argue, represent a process of commoning. We do so while recognising that the collective action of communities is embedded in an intricate set of relations with other stakeholders including the state, and that the positive environmental and transformative social change that is often associated with commoning cannot be taken for granted at the outset. Building on the case of the arid Drâa Valley in Morocco where watermelon production has expanded rapidly, we illustrate how the process of commoning evolves through different social practices, including: 1) the use of new farming practices that reveal the potential of the aquifer; 2) the representation of the aquifer as severely degraded and the development of a narrative around it being a collective good to be protected against outsiders; 3) the defining and negotiating of rules to control groundwater access and use; and 4) the engagement in negotiations and the resolving of conflicts. Our analysis shows that commoning, as performed by young local farmers, is about extending the lifespan of the aquifer for agricultural production rather than preserving it indefinitely; however, an examination of commoning practices also reveals the capacity of the community to change the course of the future.

KEYWORDS: Commoning, groundwater, collective action, arid regions, social practices, Drâa Valley, Morocco

The coloniality of modern water: Global groundwater extraction in California, Palestine and Peru

Vivian Underhill
Postdoctoral Researcher, Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute, Northeastern University, MA, USA; v.underhill@northeastern.edu

Linnea Beckett
Assistant Adjunct Professor, John R. Lewis College, UC Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95061, USA; lbeckett@ucsc.edu

Muna Dajani
Senior Research Associate, Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, UK; m.dajani@lancaster.ac.uk

Maria Teresa Oré
Assistant Professor on the Water Resources Master’s Program, in the Social Sciences Department at Pontifical Catholic University in Peru. Visiting Professor on the Water Resources Master’s Program at National Agrarian University, Lima, Peru; teresa.ore@pucp.pe

Sheeva Sabati
Assistant Professor, Doctorate in Educational Leadership, California State University, Sacramento, USA; s.sabati@csus.edu

ABSTRACT: While water scholars have critiqued the social and political work of 'modern water' (Linton, 2010), lineages of critical water scholarship have yet to meaningfully engage with decolonial and Indigenous scholars’ insights on the global architecture of coloniality/modernity as it relates to our understandings of water. We argue that this engagement is necessary because it further elaborates the political work done by modern water: not only propelling modern projects and their associated inequities but, more fundamentally, expanding and normalising global coloniality and racial capitalism as structuring forces that endure even as they transform (Robinson, 1983). Drawing on the interrelated histories, present situations, and possible futures of land and water development in California, Palestine and Peru, we explore how the development and persistence of modern water across these sites likewise illuminates the development and persistence of varying modes of coloniality. We present each country as a 'case' with a focus on what Oré and Rap (2009) call 'critical junctures': that is, political, social, technological, and economic shifts that, together, bring into sharp relief the global structure of colonial/modern water. Ultimately, this paper draws critical water scholarship and decolonial thought into closer conversation to re-place and particularise what has been produced as a universal (and universalising) concept and to highlight the consistent presence of alternatives and waters otherwise.

KEYWORDS: Coloniality, modern water, settler colonialism, California, Peru, Palestine

From divine to design: Unearthing groundwater practices in Tamil Nadu, India

Andres Verzijl
IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, Delft, the Netherlands; a.verzijl@un-ihe.org

Vivek M.
Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bangalore, India; vivek.m@atree.org

Ankita Prayag
IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, Aurangabad, Maharashtra, India; prayagankita@gmail.com

Veena Srinivasan
Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bangalore, India; veena.srinivasan@atree.org

Carolina Domínguez-Guzmán
University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; c.dominguezguzman@uva.nl

Margreet Zwarteveen
IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, Delft, the Netherlands; m.zwarteveen@un-ihe.org

ABSTRACT: This paper describes two common groundwater logics in Tamil Nadu: that of dowsing and that of modelling. Both rely on intimate knowledge and great dedication but have legitimacy and status in different communities. Groundwater experts celebrate and value modelling for assessing well and aquifer conditions, but – at least when among peers – dismiss dowsing logics for being 'non-scientific'. Farmers and others interested in digging and drilling wells, on the other hand, routinely call in the help of dowsers, or water diviners, for determining well locations (and often depths). Rather than entering the science-dowsing controversy, this paper starts from the observation that modellers indubitably make use of the wisdom of dowsers: they use known well locations and depths to make their predictions more accurate and sensitive. This is why we think it is worthwhile to assess the practices of both in a more symmetrical way. For this we engage in a care-ful comparison of these two ways of knowing, showing that despite their differences, modelling and dowsing have many things in common. Both require years of education and training, and both modellers and dowsers take pride in being meticulous and insist on the need for repetition and fine-tuning to perfect their routines – that is, to mathematically represent aquifers or magnetically sense groundwater flows. So, does dowsing or divining as a 'beyond scientific' form of knowing have something to offer when it comes to sustainable groundwater governance? The ways in which a water diviner practises care – seeks to improve farmer livelihoods, gets compensated, and senses the right place for a well (which is not about whether you could, but also whether you should dig at a certain location) – suggests that this may be so.

KEYWORDS: Groundwater knowledge, dowsing, modelling, care, prediction, Tamil Nadu, India

Conjunctive use of canal water and groundwater: An analysis based on farmers’ practices in Ravangaon, Maharashtra

Sneha Bhat
Society for Promoting Participative Eco-System Management (SOPPECOM), Pune, India; bhatsneha@gmail.com

Seema Kulkarni
Society for Promoting Participative Eco-System Management (SOPPECOM), Pune, India; seemakulkarni2@gmail.com

Rucha Deshmukh
Advanced Center for Water Resources Development and Management (ACWADAM), Pune, Maharashtra, India; ruchadeshmukh@gmail.com

Sachin Bhopal
Society for Promoting Participative Eco-System Management (SOPPECOM), Pune, India; svbhopal99@gmail.com

Margreet Zwarteveen
Water Governance Department, IHE-Delft, Delft, and Geography, Planning and Inclusive Development, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands; m.zwarteveen@un-ihe.org

Simran Sumbre
Advanced Center for Water Resources Development and Management (ACWADAM), Pune, Maharashtra, India; sumbresimran@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: This article examines what happens when canal water is combined with groundwater. It does so by documenting the complex web of practices that are emerging around accessing, storing and transferring water in the command area of irrigation systems in Ravangaon, a village in Maharashtra, India. From mainly accessing water through field channels that are fed by the public surface irrigation system, farmers have moved to using pumps and siphons to transport water from the canal either directly to their fields or to wells and ponds for storage. Their practices are shaped by hydrogeology – most notably the location and storage capacity of the aquifer in relation to canals and farmers’ plots - as well by the political economy – most notably their relative dependence on water-intensive crops like sugarcane. Access to water has largely become a function of one’s ability to invest in advanced pumping, transporting and storage facilities. In line with other scholars, we conclude that the conjunctive use of canal water and groundwater makes it difficult, if not impossible, to trace and monitor actual water use patterns. This means that water distribution increasingly escapes formal and public forms of regulation and control. The article ends with a reflection on what this means to the advancement of water sustainability and justice.

KEYWORDS: Conjunctive use, tinkering, canal irrigation, water governance, Maharashtra, India

Transformation as practice: Learning from everyday dealings with groundwater

Carolina Domínguez-Guzmán
University of Amsterdam (UvA), Amsterdam, the Netherlands c.dominguezguzman@uva.nl

Margreet Zwarteveen
IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, Water Governance Department, Delft, the Netherlands; University of Amsterdam (UvA), Amsterdam, the Netherlands; m.zwarteveen@un-ihe.org

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

ABSTRACT: This article provides a theoretical introduction to the Special Issue and briefly presents the various contributions. It starts with a general plea for inserting the analysis of groundwater and its gradual depletion into a broader critical analysis of 'development'; it does so in order to trace how particular forms of groundwater use and management are intrinsic to distinct – gendered and racialised – processes of differentiation and exploitation such as settler colonialism and capitalism. We go on to argue, however, that too much insistence on explaining empirical realities in terms of such structural processes has its limitations. It risks strengthening their overwhelming power and reconfirming the oppression and marginalisation that they create. We therefore suggest that methodological and ethnographic attention to practices may help identify less predictable and sometimes surprising trajectories of change. Our foregrounding of practices implies treating terms such as transformation and sustainability as fluid, the discussion of which needs to be anchored in the situated and always-specific practical work of using, accessing, caring for, sharing and knowing groundwater. Theoretical insights about how the world is patterned or structured then serve not as the framework in which to insert empirical findings, but as entry points for further analysis, reflection and conversation, fuelling forms of experimentation and joint learning about how to think and do transformations to groundwater sustainability.

KEYWORDS: Transformations, caring, groundwater governance, ethnography of practice

Storylines and imaginaries of wastewater reuse and desalination: The rise of local discourses on the Swedish islands of Öland and Gotland

Maria Takman
Lund University, Department of Chemical Engineering, Lund, Sweden; maria.takman@chemeng.lth.se

Michael Cimbritz
Lund University, Department of Chemical Engineering, Lund, Sweden; michael.cimbritz@chemeng.lth.se

Åsa Davidsson
Lund University, Department of Chemical Engineering, Lund, Sweden; asa.davidsson@chemeng.lth.se

Lea Fünfschilling
Lund University, Department of Design Sciences, Lund, Sweden; lea.funfschilling@circle.lu.se

ABSTRACT: Increased pressure on existing freshwater resources has given rise to interest in new raw water sources. Wastewater reuse and desalination are two alternatives that are frequently compared and discussed in the literature. In this study, local discourses in the form of storylines and imaginaries were identified on the Swedish islands of Öland and Gotland. These local storylines and imaginaries were then compared to those found in the literature on wastewater reuse and desalination; in the process, overlaps and variations were identified. On Gotland, a controversy over desalination was observed where arguments were raised for and against 'natural' (nature-based and therefore 'good') solutions and 'unnatural' or engineered solutions (desalination). Such a controversy was not observed on Öland. The controversy on Gotland arose out of competing imaginaries of the future. Such discourses can affect the transitions of water systems. Understanding local discourses may thus be crucial to our understanding of the larger transitions underway in the water sector and may figure importantly in the acceptance of new water sources.

KEYWORDS: Wastewater reuse, desalination, discourses, imaginaries, storylines, Sweden

Sharing difficult waters: Community-based groundwater recharge and use in Algeria and India

M. Amine Saidani
Center for Research in Applied Economics for Development (CREAD), Algiers, Algeria; UMR G-Eau, CIRAD, Montpellier, France; Institute of Agronomic and Veterinary Institute Hassan II, Rabat, Morocco; am.saidani@gmail.com

Uma Aslekar
Advanced Center for Water Resources Development and Management (ACWADAM), Pune, Maharashtra, India; uma.aslekar@gmail.com

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

Jeltsje Kemerink-Seyoum
Water Governance Department, IHE-Delft, Delft, The Netherlands; j.kemerink@un-ihe.org

ABSTRACT: The intentional recharge and use of aquifers for drinking, domestic use and irrigation is one of the most elaborate community initiatives in groundwater governance. Communities deal with difficult waters like flash floods and runoff for short periods, and for more prolonged periods with dry spells that prompt frugality in water use. These collective systems have been challenged in recent decades by the massive development of individual boreholes; these have emerged in connection with intensive groundwater-based agriculture and have led to unsustainable groundwater exploitation. This article analyses how communities have been confronted with, and have resisted, such challenges in recent times. It focuses on two long-standing and functional community aquifer recharge and use systems, one in Algeria (M’Zab Valley) and the other in India (Randullabad, in the state of Maharashtra). We show that sharing such difficult waters requires, first, practice-based and shared knowledge of the complex interactions between the surface and groundwater that is collectively owned by the community; second, robust collective action to maintain and operate the common infrastructure that is undergoing continuous adaptation to the particular socionatural conditions of a specific area; and, third, adaptive institutions to carefully balance available water resources and their frugal use. Our analysis shows that community governance of groundwater is embedded in social norms and meanings and that these are expressed in the frugal use of scarce resources and/or the continuous challenging of irresponsible water use when it threatens domestic water supply. These community initiatives can represent sources of inspiration for ecologically sustainable and socially equitable forms of groundwater governance, even in very challenging situations.

KEYWORDS: Water sharing, irrigation, knowledge, institutions, infrastructure, Algeria, India

Irrigation systems management in Nepal: Women’s strategies in response to migration-induced challenges

Diana Suhardiman
International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Vientiane, Lao PDR; suhardiman@gmail.com

Manita Raut
International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Kathmandu, Nepal; m.raut@cgiar.org

Prachanda Pradhan
Farmer Managed Irrigation Systems Promotion Trust (FMIST), Kathmandu, Nepal; pprachanda@gmail.com

Ruth Meinzen-Dick
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Washington DC, USA; r.meinzen-dick@cgiar.org

ABSTRACT: Large-scale male outmigration has placed new pressures on both men and women, especially regarding labour division in farm households and involvement in Water Users Associations (WUAs). This paper illustrates how the interplay between existing gender norms, male migration, remittances, and alternative sources of male labour influence women’s agency and WUA decision-making processes in Nepal. Despite official quotas aimed at promoting women’s participation in WUAs, some women prefer to monetise membership contributions rather than actively engage with the organisation. Others pursue strategic interests through changing WUA rules and, in the process, bringing about an adjustment of cultural norms. Women’s agency is derived not only from their knowledge of irrigation systems features and their ability to manage them; it is also related to their ability to learn new organisational skills and to apply them in the WUA context to negotiate and mobilise rules and resources. Women (re)shape their WUA involvement in conjunction with their farming strategies, their view of the WUA’s functionality, and whether they perceive the involvement as either an opportunity for productive engagement or as merely an increase in their already heavy workload.

KEYWORDS: Institutional arrangements, women’s strategies, gender, migration, irrigation, Nepal

A citizen science approach to the characterisation and modelling of urban pluvial flooding

Koorosh Azizi
Department of Civil Engineering, University of Memphis, 3720 Alumni Ave, Memphis, TN 38152, USA; kazizi@memphis.edu

Stephen Kofi Diko
Assistant Professor, Department of City & Regional Planning, University of Memphis, 3720 Alumni Ave, Memphis, TN 38152; skdiko@memphis.edu

Claudio I. Meier
Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Memphis, 3815 Central Ave, Memphis, TN 38111, USA; cimeier@memphis.edu

ABSTRACT: Urban pluvial flooding (UPF), a growing challenge across cities worldwide that is expected to worsen due to climate change and urbanisation, requires comprehensive response strategies. However, the characterisation and simulation of UPF is more complex than traditional catchment hydrological modelling because UPF is driven by a complex set of interconnected factors and modelling constraints. Different integrated approaches have attempted to address UPF by coupling humans and environmental systems and reflecting on the possible outcomes from the interactions among varied disciplines. Nonetheless, it is argued that current integrated approaches are insufficient. To further improve the characterisation and modelling of UPF, this study advances a citizen science approach that integrates local knowledge with the understanding and interpretation of UPF. The proposed framework provides an avenue to couple quantitative and qualitative community-based observations with traditional sources of hydro-information. This approach allows researchers and practitioners to fill spatial and temporal data gaps in urban catchments and hydrologic/hydrodynamic models, thus yielding a more accurate characterisation of local catchment response and improving rainfall-runoff modelling of UPF. The results of applying this framework indicate how community-based practices provide a bi-directional learning context between experts and residents, which can contribute to resilience building by providing UPF knowledge necessary for risk reduction and response to extreme flooding events.

KEYWORDS: Urban pluvial flooding, citizen science, flood modelling, participatory mapping, catchment characterisation, Tennessee, USA

The persistent appeal of the California agricultural dream in North Africa

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

Pierre-Louis Mayaux
University of Montpellier, Cirad, UMR G-Eau, Montpellier, France; pierre-louis.mayaux@cirad.fr

Ahmed Benmihoub
Center of Research in Applied Economics for Development (CREAD), Algiers, Algeria; ben_mihou@yahoo.fr

ABSTRACT: The development of intensive irrigated agriculture in arid California has inspired many governments and people around the world. In the paper, we show how 'California' as a social imaginary influenced North Africa’s irrigation policies. We trace the influence of this imaginary at two very different and critical junctures: in Morocco under the French Protectorate from the 1930s to the 1950s and in the contemporary Algerian Sahara. We argue that the influence of the 'California' imaginary persisted because of how it appeared to be the perfect embodiment of capitalist modernity while at the same time exhibiting two crucial sociopolitical ambiguities; the first ambiguity concerned the proper role of the state and the second had to do with the California imaginary’s overall implications in terms of social equity. These ambiguities enabled governing actors to naturalise and routinise this imported imaginary even as they used it to forge distinct types of political settlements that were in line with local historical circumstances. We thus argue that the notion of imaginary, inherently visual and polysemic, is usefully distinguished from alternative notions such as paradigms, narratives and frames. We also contend that imaginaries do not function independently from other social forces, but rather that they are embedded in the wider political economy. This leads us to conclude that any transformation of agricultural policies in North Africa will require the diffusion of an alternative imaginary that is as effective in forging powerful social coalitions as the Californian dream proved to be.

KEYWORDS: Social imaginary, ambiguities, irrigation policies, Algeria, Morocco

Remaking of wetlands and coping with vulnerabilities in Mexico and Indonesia

Anja Nygren
Global Development Studies, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; anja.nygren@helsinki.fi

Anu Lounela
Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; anu.lounela@helsinki.fi

ABSTRACT: This article analyses people’s water-land relations in transformed wetlands through a lens that conceptualises aquatic and terrestrial aspects in wetland-dwellers’ living spaces as blurred and shifting. By drawing on empirical research in Tabasco, Mexico, and Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, we examine how wetlands have been recurrently remade amidst multifaceted development interventions and how local people perceive and experience waterscape changes in their lives and livelihoods. There has been a strong emphasis on wetness and fluidity in research on riverine, deltaic, and other amphibious environments; however, we argue that privileging water as an analytical concept makes it hard to understand changing water-land fluctuations in wetlands as wet-lands. By combining ideas from political ecology, critical geography, and anthropology of water, our analysis shows how local people engage in making watery areas more solid in order to get their land rights recognised and to cope with socially differentiated vulnerabilities within multifaceted state territorialisations and corporate resource-makings.

KEYWORDS: Development interventions, political ecology, vulnerability, water, wetlands, Indonesia, Mexico

Knowing groundwater: Embodied encounters with a lively resource

Frances Cleaver
Lancaster University, Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster, United Kingdom; f.cleaver@lancaster.ac.uk

Tavengwa Chitata
Grantham Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK; IHE-Delft Institute for Water Education, Delft, Netherlands; t.chitata@un-ihe.org

Chris de Bont
Independent researcher, Arusha, Tanzania; chrisdebont1@gmail.com

Kerstin Joseph
Independent researcher, Arusha , Tanzania; kerstinjoseph1@gmail.com

Lowe Börjeson
Stockholm University, Department of Human Geography, Stockholm, Sweden; lowe.borjeson@humangeo.su.se

Jeltsje Kemerink-Seyoum
IHE-Delft Institute for Water Education, Delft, Netherlands; j.kemerink@un-ihe.org

ABSTRACT: This paper is concerned with how water prospectors, well diggers, and irrigation farmers come to know groundwater. Drawing on cases from Tanzania and Zimbabwe, the paper shows that much knowledge is derived from the close encounters with groundwater that occur through hard physical work, mediated by the use of low-cost tools and technologies. In this paper we show how this knowledge is embedded in everyday livelihoods, landscapes, and moral ecological rationalities. Through empirical material of such close encounters with groundwater, we make two interrelated points. Firstly, we draw attention to the importance of embodied forms of knowledge in shaping engagements with groundwater. Frequent close physical interactions with groundwater generate rich and intimate understandings of the changing quality and quantity of water flows. These understandings become primary ways in which people in communities know water, which is lively and sometimes invisible. Secondly, we argue that, though apparently mundane, reliant on low-cost technology, and highly localised, these encounters significantly shape broader socio-natural relationships in emerging groundwater economies. Amongst other examples, our data show groundwater prospectors monitoring the depth of borehole drilling in a shared aquifer in an attempt to ensure equitable access for different users. In concluding the paper, we reflect on the extent to which the knowledge and relationships formed through close physical encounters with groundwater have the potential to shape trajectories of groundwater management.

KEYWORDS: Embodied knowledge, farmers, groundwater economies, prospectors, well diggers, Tanzania, Zimbabwe

A feminist analysis of women farmers navigating groundwater qualities in Maharashtra, India

Irene Leonardelli
IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, Water Governance Department, Delft, the Netherlands; University of Amsterdam (UvA), Amsterdam, the Netherlands; i.leonardelli@un-ihe.org

Jeltsje Kemerink-Seyoum
IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, Water Governance Department, Delft, the Netherlands; University of Amsterdam (UvA), Amsterdam, the Netherlands; j.kemerink@un-ihe.org

Seema Kulkarni
Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management (SOPPECOM), Pune, India; seemakulkarni2@gmail.com

Sneha Bhat
Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management (SOPPECOM), Pune, India; bhatsneha@gmail.com

Margreet Zwarteveen
IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, Water Governance Department, Delft, the Netherlands; University of Amsterdam (UvA), Amsterdam, the Netherlands; m.zwarteveen@un-ihe.org

ABSTRACT: It matters whose practices and knowledges are foregrounded in understanding and managing groundwater. This paper presents the findings of an ethnographic study of a relatively recent irrigation scheme that brings polluted water to farmers’ fields in a drought-prone area of Maharashtra, India. After establishing that women farmers are the de facto water managers at household, field, and community levels, we use these findings to compare women farmers’ ways of doing groundwater with the dominant techno-managerial versions. Techno-managerial versions of groundwater make it appear to be either an optimizable input for crop production or a source for drinking and domestic uses. Women’s practices reveal that groundwater resists such classifications. Because of how it flows, seeps, and percolates, the polluted water earmarked for irrigation contaminates groundwater destined for other purposes. Rather than coming in neatly separated flows or containers, separating waters entails hard work and detailed knowledge. This is work that largely falls on women: they need to learn to appreciate and distinguish between water qualities as the basis for deciding which water to use for which purpose. Our analysis underscores the importance of valuing this unremunerated and invisibilised work in water management. It also shows how feminist analyses contribute to and expand understandings of justice and sustainability in groundwater.

KEYWORDS: Groundwater quality, women farmers, knowledges, feminist theory, Maharashtra, India