Fluid struggles over climate and water justice in the Peruvian Andes

Anna Heikkinen
Global Development Studies, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; anna.heikkinen@helsinki.fi

ABSTRACT: Deepening climate change is rendering water injustices ever more visible and deepening disputes in Latin America’s socio-ecologically delicate rural landscapes. This article analyses the fluid and multi-scalar ways in which water injustices are articulated and contested in the Peruvian Andes, increasingly threatened by climate change. The analysis draws on ethnographic-oriented research, focusing on the Yanacocha reservoir conflict in the Cunas watershed. By combining ideas from the political ecology of water and scalar politics, the study pays particular attention to how diverse justice claims by residents, private sector actors, politicians, and state authorities become intertwined and reshaped through shifting power relations across multiple scales. The study shows that water injustices are enmeshed within broader struggles over climate justice and fair agrarian futures in climate-sensitive rural regions such as the remote Peruvian Andes. In the Cunas watershed, the residents, who increasingly experience climatic threats in their daily lives, participate in cross-scaled power struggles in order to advocate for their own plural views of water justice. The study demonstrates a need to build stronger analytical linkages between intertwining claims about agrarian, climate, and water justices on multiple scales. This helps to better illuminate the many factors driving uneven water access in rural regions affected by climate change across the Global South.

KEYWORDS: Political ecology, water justice, climate justice, scalar politics, Andes, Peru

River defence and restoration movements: A literature review

Jeroen Vos
Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands; jeroen.vos@wur.nl

ABSTRACT: Since the 1980s, scholars have been documenting protest movements against the building of large hydropower dams. These movements have arisen mainly in communities where people have experienced displacement and loss of livelihood without receiving proper compensation. Less attention has been paid to community action and environmental movements that promoted the restoration of canalised, diverted, depleted and/or polluted rivers. Since the beginning of the 2000s, however, more attention is being paid in academic literature to communities and social movements that propose to remove dams, stop pollution of rivers, restore fish ecosystems, or rewild rivers. There has also been increased interest in movements advocating for the granting of legal personhood to rivers and in those that are opposing dams because they want to protect free-flowing rivers for fish migration or tourism. A systematic literature review was undertaken in order to analyse scientific publications on diverse river defence and restoration movements. A relatively small number (104) of publications was retrieved, but these nevertheless showed a diversity in geographic spread and coverage of river issues and river movement strategies. The attention of the publications shifted from anti-dam protests to a variety of issues including especially river pollution, and to a minor degree issues like indigenous rights and rights of rivers. Most of the publications addressed river movements in the USA and India and the majority did not describe the movements’ activities in detail; several, however, described effective activism, advocacy, citizen science monitoring, and litigation. The review suggests that river movements contribute to democratic governance and environmental justice. It also shows that the scientific literature is focused mainly on large anti-dam protests and pays less attention to local river activism and its networks.

KEYWORDS: River activism, environmental movements, dams, social movements, protests

Tasting numbers: The numerical politics of Total Dissolved Solids and the privatisation of drinking water quality in Bhuj City, India

Amitangshu Acharya
Department of Water Governance, IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, the Netherlands; a.acharya@un-ihe.org

ABSTRACT: Critical water scholarship has acquired a sustained interest in the quantification of water flows to further agendas of control and commodification. However, these numerical politics receive greater attention in the areas of agricultural water and wastewater than that of drinking water quality. This paper explores the numerical politics of the water quality parameter of Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) and how it shapes the privatisation of drinking water quality in the small town of Bhuj in the western Indian state of Gujarat. TDS, which measures the total organic and inorganic substances dissolved in a specific volume of water, produces a numerically simplified engagement with the complex materiality of drinking water quality in Bhuj, supplanting a more embodied, experiential, and gustatory understanding of the same expressed through a rich lexicon of local terms. As TDS emerges as the sole legitimised indicator of water quality, the TDS meter functions like a clinical thermometer, digitally displaying the health of the drinking water in numbers. This numerical homogenisation of a diverse sensorial understanding of taste and quality serves to stabilise market demand for membrane-based reverse osmosis (RO) water purifiers – the only technology that promises to address the 'problem' of 'excess' TDS in drinking water. As TDS numbers become an indicator of contamination, it nudges the middle classes of Bhuj to seek mediation of public water supply through RO water purifiers, which are exclusively provided through private markets. As I go on to show, interrogating the numerical politics of drinking water quality is critical to understanding the diffused commodification of water in the majority world.

KEYWORDS: Water quality, materiality, total dissolved solids, membranes, reverse osmosis, purifiers, privatisation, India

Water, finance and financialisation: A review

Nadine Reis
Centro de Estudios Demográficos, Urbanos y Ambientales (CEDUA), El Colegio de México, Mexico City; nreis@colmex.mx

Germán Vargas Magaña
Escuela Interdisciplinaria de Altos Estudios Sociales (EIDAES), Universidad de San Martín, Buenos Aires; gvargasmagana@estudiantes.unsam.edu.ar

Santiago Vélez Villegas
Centro de Estudios Demográficos, Urbanos y Ambientales (CEDUA), El Colegio de México, Mexico City; svelez@colmex.mx

ABSTRACT: This article reviews the literature on the financialisation of water. Water financialisation is generally defined as a global trend wherein financial actors, instruments and practices increasingly penetrate the water sector. Literature conveying a Marxist interpretation of the phenomenon of water financialisation emphasises the way in which financial profits in the water sector derive from the capturing of rents. We identify three sectors that correspond to different pathways of financialisation in the water sector: large water infrastructure, water utilities/water supply and sanitation (WSS) and water resources as such. The literature points out that water financialisation is leading to increasing socio-spatial fragmentation as water flows towards spaces where water can reap the highest benefits for financial investors. We conclude that there is evidence that financialisation is occurring in different water sectors and in different world regions, with the main driver being the general financialisation of the global economy and sectors relevant for the water sector such as energy and agriculture. There is little or no evidence, however, that private finance in the water sector has increased substantially since the 1990s, despite the promotion of blended finance policies by multilateral agencies and development actors. The literature points out that water financialisation often does not happen through the direct ownership of water-related businesses by finance capital, but rather through complex financial instruments such as water- or environment-focused investment funds that link water to financial gains. There is as yet little knowledge of how these processes function and what their impacts are on socio-spatial development and environmental sustainability.

KEYWORDS: Water finance, water financialisation, blended finance

Global water and its (anti)political consequences

Jamie Linton

Géolab UMR 6042 CNRS, Université de Limoges, Limoges, France; james.linton@unilim.fr

Myriam Saadé

NAVIER Laboratory, Ecole des Ponts Univ Gustave Eiffel CNRS, Marne-la-Vallée, France; myriam.saade@enpc.fr

ABSTRACT: This paper draws from the history and geography of science and from political ecology to trace the history of the idea that water can be conceived of, and quantified as, a global resource. We argue that this approach has contributed to the depoliticising of water-related problems by favouring technocratic and managerial responses. A method for calculating water balances was developed in Russia in the late 19th century and came to maturity in the Soviet Union in the 20th century. We begin by describing how this method was first adapted to calculating global-scale water balances in the 1960s. We then investigate how, in the 1990s, the quantification of what we call 'global water' came to be translated into popular international discourse and how this contributed to the construction of a 'global water crisis' in that decade. We also look at how it gave rise more recently to what is known as the 'planetary boundaries' approach. A particular research agenda and set of policy prescriptions follow from this way of conceiving of, and quantifying, water. They are oriented towards governance mechanisms that depoliticise water-related issues by defining and structuring water problems as essentially hydrological in nature. The recommended solutions are thus predisposed towards the technical optimisation of water use; they typically seek out demand-side management tools, and instruments that will ascribe greater economic value to water. Drawing from 'post-political' and 'anti-politics' theories, we argue that the political consequences of global water follow mainly from the way the matter-of-factness of such an approach authorises technocratic-managerial solutions. Discourses that define water problems in terms of quantity put the main focus on water per se, rather than on the social relations and realities that underlie such problems.

KEYWORDS: Water, political ecology, quantification, water politics, water crisis, planetary boundaries

Sharing water between nature and humans: Environmental flows and the politics of quantification

François Molle
UMR G-Eau, IRD, Université de Montpellier, France; francois.molle@ird.fr

Anne-Laure Collard
UMR G-Eau, INRAE, Université de Montpellier, France; anne-laure.collard@inrae.fr

ABSTRACT: In 2008 the French government launched its Quantitative Water Management policy initiative, as part of which the Rhône-Méditerranée Corse Water Agency undertook studies to ascertain monthly environmental flows at key sub-basin control points and the corresponding 'allowable [water] withdrawals'. Despite simplification, uncertainties, and insufficient data, the studies produced environmental-flow (e-flow) targets endowed with the power of allocating water between humans and nature. We analyse the fluctuation of the e-flow target at Point T6 in the Têt river basin, in the South of France, and show that, rather than an objective, quantitative ecological threshold dictated by science, it can be seen as a boundary number that embodies imaginaries, values, ideologies and interests. Science, but also law, appear to be selectively mobilized, massaged or contested. As a 'slider', the e-flow target reflects the state’s political will and/or capacity to impose change and a reduction in water abstraction. Although the e-flow at Point T6 so far failed to play its role as a 'boundary number' and to achieve a settlement, it both exposed the limits of the pre-existing status quo and reshuffled the cards, legitimizing in particular the entry of environmental actors.

KEYWORDS: Quantification, environmental flow, uncertainty, indicator, boundary object, science/policy interface, France

Corporate engagement in water policy and governance: A literature review on water stewardship and water security

Suvi Sojamo
Finnish Environment Institute, Helsinki, Finland; suvi.sojamo@syke.fi

Thérèse Rudebeck
WaterAid, Stockholm, Sweden; therese.rudebeck@wateraid.se

ABSTRACT: Water is a central ingredient of all economic activities. Even so, water-using corporations were long absent from the theoretical and practical developments of water management, governance and policy. The past 15 years, however, have seen the emergence, proliferation and gradual maturation of global initiatives, guidelines and tools that focus on the role of business and their value chains under the banners of corporate water stewardship and water security. This article takes stock of the available literature and reviews the development to date. It traces the origins of key concepts and initiatives that are part of this new corporate engagement in water policy and governance, and looks at the landscape and corporate-level drivers of the phenomena. The paper reviews the evolution of the associated theory and practice; it also examines the impact of corporate engagement in water on business strategies and actions, and observes the influence it has had on stakeholders and settings from the national to the global level. While the available evidence base is still fragmented, the review findings confirm the previously documented controversies of operating at the public–private interface of water. Among water-using companies, the water stewardship approach is increasingly positioned as a means of achieving collective water security, merging these two fields; in practice, however, the results indicate still-narrow gains. The article concludes with a call for a comprehensive evaluation of corporate water initiatives and for a transdisciplinary research agenda that steers the engagement towards more equitable and sustainable outcomes.

KEYWORDS: Water stewardship, water security, water governance, water policy, business, value chains

Water and the politics of quantification: A programmatic review

François Molle
UMR G-Eau, IRD, Université de Montpellier, France; francois.molle@ird.fr

Bruce Lankford
Emeritus Professor of Water and Irrigation Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK; b.lankford@uea.ac.uk

Rebecca Lave
Department of Geography, University of Indiana, Bloomington, Indiana, USA; rlave@indiana.edu

ABSTRACT: Quantification of states, corporations, nature or self has become pervasive in the past 40 years. The water world’s struggles are rife with, and shaped by, numbers, indicators, metrics and models. This review explores how the production, promotion and use of 'water numbers' conceals deeply political processes, hypotheses, worldviews, intents, old habits and new fashions. Whether embodied in scientific or expert practices, or in indicators, thresholds, water accounts or cost–benefit analyses, water numbers promote specific values and interests; they also obfuscate complexity, heterogeneities and uncertainties, they manufacture legitimacy and authority, and they act as control devices to shape behaviour We offer a more detailed analysis of water indicators that describe water scarcity, ecological status, progress towards SDG 6, and embody New Public Management principles. We end with a call for critical water studies to more forcefully engage with these debates, in line with the centrality of quantification in water management and policy.

KEYWORDS: Sociology of quantification, indicators, legitimacy, reductionism, ontologies, NPM, science-policy interface, commensuration, modelling, numbers

Relative deprivation, a silent driver in hydropolitics: Evidence from Afghanistan-Iran water diplomacy

Paria Mamasani
Department of Water Engineering and Management, Faculty of Agriculture, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran; pariamamasani@modares.ac.ir

Milad Jafari
Department of Water Engineering and Management, Faculty of Agriculture, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran; milad.jafari@modares.ac.ir

Behnam Andik
Department of Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Environment, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran; andik@ut.ac.ir

Hojjat Mianabadi
Department of Water Engineering and Management, Faculty of Agriculture, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran; hmianabadi@modares.ac.ir

Bahareh Arvin
Department of Sociology, Faculty of Humanities, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran; bahare.arvin@modares.ac.ir

Seyedeh Zahra Ghoreishi
Responsible Innovation Lab, Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia; seyedehzahra.ghoreishi@anu.edu.au

ABSTRACT: This paper aims to unpack the affective factors in Afghanistan–Iran water conflict dynamics. It examines the role played by the feeling of relative deprivation (RD) (that is, riparian states’ subjective perception of their relative position) in conflicts over shared water resources. The model of RD-mediated hydropolitics is conceptualised through its application to Afghanistan-Iran water diplomacy by conducting process tracing and content analysis. The results reveal that Afghanistan’s domestic issues have led to a feeling of RD in its water sharing relations with Iran. Afghans’ feeling of RD has led to negative emotions and responses, which have in turn influenced decisions regarding their domestic use of transboundary waters and their withholding of water from downstream users. The RD feeling within Afghan society has a contributory role in hydro-infrastructural developments and the resultant desire on the part of government to meet societal expectations, notably within the Helmand/Hirmand River Basin. These responses aim to alleviate the RD feeling but have evoked social and political reactions as well as emotionally charged verbal disputes and water conflicts between riparian states. The research findings emphasise that RD feeling as a subjective and affective factor can subtly influence transboundary water behaviours, politics and diplomacy.

KEYWORDS: Hydraulic mission, hydropolitics, water diplomacy, Iran, Afghanistan, Harirud, Helmand

Monitored but not metered: How groundwater pumping has evaded accounting (and accountability) in the Western United States

Adrianne C. Kroepsch
Department of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Hydrologic Science and Engineering Program, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO, US; akroepsch@mines.edu

ABSTRACT: The metering of individual groundwater use has become a common feature of recent interventions in groundwater governance in many parts of the world, though its actual implementation has been largely unsuccessful (Molle and Closas, 2021). Such metering efforts aim to curb groundwater over-extraction by quantifying – usually for the first time ever – who is pumping groundwater, how much, when, and where. This analysis takes a step back from these management interventions and asks how we got here. How did groundwater pumping become such a 'black box' and individual metering become the exception? And what are the consequences of this data gap? This paper explores these questions in the western United States where the close accounting of surface water diversions makes for a useful foil to largely unquantified individual groundwater pumping. I synthesise biophysical, political economic, and epistemic aspects of groundwater development to examine groundwater pumping’s un-quantification and I argue that attention must be paid to all three of these categories if we are to understand why groundwater metering is not more prevalent. I elaborate on these three dimensions – groundwater materiality, knowledge production, and power/profit – as I trace how groundwater’s un-metering has been produced, widened and maintained in the region over the last 140-plus years.

KEYWORDS: Groundwater, metering, politics of water quantification, inscrutable spaces and circulations, Western US

The water crisis by the Global Commission on the Economics of Water: A totalising narrative built on shaky numbers

Arnald Puy
School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK; a.puy@bham.ac.uk

Bruce Lankford
Emeritus Professor of Water and Irrigation Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK; b.lankford@uea.ac.uk

ABSTRACT: Reports by the 2023 Global Commission on the Economics of Water (GCEW) claim that a global water crisis is underway because the world is close to its upper planetary boundary for water. We contend that these reports are flawed in two distinct ways: 1) their use of the planetary boundaries framework as a sweeping narrative lacks justification, ignores alternative framings and disregards scale; and 2) their numeracy is substandard, with arithmetic errors and overstated numerical accuracy. These flaws cast a shadow on the GCEW’s capacity to convey robust knowledge about the water cycle and water scarcity. Rather than acting as an honest broker to explore potential policy scenarios based on our best available water science, the GCEW resembles an instrument to further the planetary boundaries framework and its associated scientific, political and economic interests.

KEYWORDS: Planetary boundaries, irrigation, water cycle, modelling, uncertainty

Obscuring Complexity and Performing Progress: Unpacking SDG Indicator 6.5.1 and the Implementation of IWRM

Anna Mdee
School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK a.l.mdee@leeds.ac.uk

Alesia D. Ofori
Centre for Water, Environment and Development, School of Water, Energy and Environment, Cranfield University, Cranfield, UK alesia.ofori@cranfield.ac.uk

Joshua Cohen
School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK j.b.cohen@leeds.ac.uk

Marianne Kjellén
Independent Technical Advisory Panel, Green Climate Fund, Stockholm, Sweden kjellenmarianne@gmail.com

Elliot Rooney
UKRI–GCRF Water Security and Sustainable Development Hub, Newcastle University, UK e.rooney2@newcastle.ac.uk

Shivani Singhal
School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK ipissi@leeds.ac.uk

Jaime Amezaga
Centre for Water, Newcastle University, School of Engineering, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK jaime.amezaga@newcastle.ac.uk

Ankush
Department of Physical Planning, School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, India ankush.ra@spa.ac.in

Alejandro Figueroa-Benítez
Universidad del Cauca, Doctorado Interinstitucional en Ciencias Ambientales, Popayán, Colombia alemagnoprimero@unicauca.edu.co

Shambavi Gupta
Department of Physical Planning, School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, India guptashambhavi5@gmail.com

Alemseged Tamiru Haile
International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia a.t.haile@cgiar.org

Amare Haileslassie
Water and Land Resource Centre, Addis Ababa University; and College of Development Studies, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia amare.b@wlrc-eth.org

Victor Kongo
Africa Environmental Solutions, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania victor.kongo@gwpsaf.org

Ashok Kumar
Department of Physical Planning, School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, India a.kumar@spa.ac.in

Samy Andrés Mafla Noguera
CINARA Institute, Universidad del Valle, Calle, Colombia samy.mafla@correounivalle.edu.co

Mohsen Nagheeby
UKRI–GCRF Water Security and Sustainable Development Hub, Newcastle University, Centre for Water, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK mohsen.nagheeby@newcastle.ac.uk

Zainura Zainon Noor
Center for Environmental Sustainability and Water Security (IPASA), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia zainurazn@utm.my

Xanthe Polaine
UKRI–GCRF Water Security and Sustainable Development Hub, Newcastle University, UK x.polaine1@newcastle.ac.uk

Nitin Singh
Department of Physical Planning, School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, India urpnitin@gmail.com

Ruth Sylvester
School of Civil Engineering, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK; cnres@leeds.ac.uk

Wan Asiah Nurjannah Wan Ahmad Tajuddin
Centre for Environmental Sustainability and Water Security (IPASA), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia; wanasiahnurjannah@graduate.utm.my

Zulkifli Bin Yusop
Centre for Environmental Sustainability and Water Security (IPASA), Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), 81310, Skudai, Johor, Malaysia; zulyusop@utm.my

Julián Zúñiga-Barragán
Universidad del Valle, Colombia; julian.zuniga@correounivalle.edu.co

ABSTRACT: At a rhetorical level, the SDGs provide a unified global agenda, and their targets and indicators are believed to drive action for social and environmental transformation. However, what if the SDGs (and their specific goals and indicators) are more of a problem than a solution? What if they create the illusion of action through a depoliticised and technical approach that fails to address fundamental dilemmas of politics and power? What if this illusion continues to reproduce poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation? This paper addresses these questions through a focus on SDG 6.5.1 – the implementation of integrated water resources management (IWRM), measured on a 0-100 scale through a composite indicator. The paper presents an empirical analysis of SDG 6.5.1 reporting in Colombia, Ethiopia, India, Malaysia, and the UK, drawing on research from the Water Security and Sustainable Development Hub. An evidence review and series of expert interviews are used to interrogate the local politics of IWRM measurement, specifically three dilemmas of global composite indicator construction: (1) reductive quantification of normative and contested processes; (2) weak analysis of actually existing institutional capability, politics, and power; and (3) distracting performativity dynamics in reporting. The paper concludes that SDG 6.5.1 is an example of a 'fantasy artefact', and that in all countries in this study, IWRM institutions are failing to address fundamental and 'wicked' problems in water resources management. We find little evidence that these numbers, or the survey that gives rise to them, drive meaningful reflection on the aims or outcomes of IWRM. Instead, they tend to hide the actually-existing political and institutional dynamics that sit behind the complexity of the global water crisis.

KEYWORDS: IWRM, indicators, politics of data, SDG 6.5.1, Colombia, Ethiopia, India, Malaysia, UK

The politics of performance benchmarking in urban water supply: Sacrificing equity on the altar of efficiency

Jigar D. Bhatt
Independent scholar, Metuchen, NJ, USA; jdb2171@columbia.edu

ABSTRACT: This study excavates the experts, ideas and methods behind the earliest water utility performance benchmarking efforts initiated in the 1990s using archive materials and secondary sources. The results contend that benchmarking is public sector reform by other means. Quantification allows performance benchmarking to escape the scrutiny and controversy that follows market-led reform, even though both privilege economic efficiency at the expense of distributional equity. Benchmarking experts advance economisation, a process that, through economic reasoning, metrics and quantitative comparisons, transforms water utilities into calculative Pareto-maximising entities that privilege existing consumers to the detriment of the unserved. Economisation is not inevitable, however. Heterodox experts can choose different benchmarking methods to advance alternative values. Two professors in India, for instance, introduced explicitly equity-focused indicators into the country’s water utility benchmarking system, challenging the prevailing orthodoxy. Nonetheless, while fairer benchmarking systems have the potential to reduce resource inequities, they also risk domesticating power relations.

KEYWORDS: Quantification; economisation; Pareto efficiency; expertise; utilities; India

Rights and relationality: A review of the role of law in the human/water relationship

Erin O’Donnell
University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia; erin.odonnell@unimelb.edu.au

Cristy Clark
University of Canberra, Canberra, Australia; cristy.clark@csls.ox.ac.uk

Rachel Killean
University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia; rachel.killean@sydney.edu.au

ABSTRACT: In this review, we use legal scholarship to explore the way that the law constructs and maintains discourses on both water rights and water relationality. Water rights and water relationality can be constructed as opposite ends of a spectrum of legal modalities for defining and regulating the human/water relationship. However, when considered through the lens of law, rights and relationality can also be seen as intertwined. The legal instruments that create individual rights to take and use water situate those rights within frameworks that regulate the relationship between humans (both collectively and individually) and between humans and the water ecosystem. We begin with an identification and exploration of three water rights discourses in legal scholarship: water as a private right (to take and use), the human right to water, and the rights of rivers. We then consider emerging legal scholarship on the more complex reality of water relationality, focusing on the role of law in water commoning, Indigenous laws, and environmental restorative justice. In doing so, we identify points of intersection between these discourses as mediated through law. We also identify critiques of both water rights and water relationality discourses in law and the ways in which they shape our ability to respond to water crises.

KEYWORDS: Water law, water market, water rights, human right to water, rights of Nature, water commons, Indigenous water rights, relationality, environmental restorative justice, water justice

Extracting ore, mining groundwater: Governmental indicators and the politics of water rights for the mining industry in Nevada, USA

Kate A. Berry
University of Nevada, Reno, NV, USA; kberry@unr.edu

Noel Vineyard
University of Nevada, Reno, NV, USA; nvineyard@unr.edu

Kassandra Lisenbee
Outreach & Just Energy Transition Director, Great Basin Resource Watch, Reno, NV, USA; kassandra@gbrw.org

John Hadder
Great Basin Resource Watch, Reno, NV, USA; john@gbrw.org

Matthew Tanager
Environmental Analyst, Great Basin Resource Watch, Reno, NV, USA; richardsmatthew047@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: In this paper we address governmentality and the politics of water rights by examining the Nevada Division of Water Resources (the Division)’s governance associated with water indicators and accounting practices. We are specifically interested in the political work of water indicators and accounting practices as they are produced, applied, and contested – work that generates advantages for Nevada’s mining industry. We focus on perennial yield, an important indicator used by the Division, and examine accounting practices in which mining water rights are designated as temporary and nonconsumptive. We examine how these water indicators and accounting practices are deployed in ways that 1) make groundwater legible and apportionable in ways that advantage the mining industry; 2) reduce the visibility of mining access to groundwater; and 3) enhance the resource state’s objectivity and legitimacy.

KEYWORDS: Groundwater, governmentality, water rights, mining industry, Nevada, USA

How metrics shape water politics in New Mexico: From quantifying governance to active monitoring

Eric Perramond
Southwest Studies and Environmental Studies Programs, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO, USA; eperramond@coloradocollege.edu

ABSTRACT: The politics of quantifying water are nothing new to the state of New Mexico. Indigenous views of water as integral, holistic, and bound to the land were shaken by Spanish Colonial norms of water infrastructure, metrics, and institutions. A second abrupt shift into Anglo-American water metrics tied to western homesteading emerged at the start of the 20th century. The Anglo-American system of assigning private use rights to water has resulted in more bureaucratic metrics far removed from either indigenous or ─ understandings of water. Interestingly, Spanish and Anglo-American forms of settler-colonial water metrics were not completely incommensurate in their intent despite their qualitative and quantitative differences. Surcos, a qualitative metric of water for the Spanish, and American acre feet both measure the amount of water needed to cover an area of land and were employed for active land settlement. It was not in the award phase of settler-colonial water rights that water metrics became most problematic. Based on over a decade of ethnographic work in the state, I argue here that the current politics and contestation of water quantification in the state of New Mexico are driven by changes to water governance when new technologies and policy measures are used to govern and monitor water users less transparently.

KEYWORDS: Water metrics, politics, water governance, New Mexico, USA

Viewpoint ─ Urban water conservation and sustainability in the Colorado River Basin

Tamee R. Albrecht
Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA; tamee.albrecht@colostate.edu

Andrea K. Gerlak
School of Geography, Development and Environment and Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA; agerlak@arizona.edu

Adriana A. Zuniga-Teran
School of Geography, Development and Environment and Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA; aazuniga@arizona.edu

ABSTRACT: Many cities around the world are facing the challenges of freshwater decline and groundwater degradation, compounded by population growth. In the southwestern United States, these challenges are amplified. In that region, many growing cities depend on water from the Colorado River Basin, which is faced with aridification and record-low surface water supplies. Despite these unprecedented trends in Colorado River flows, however, many basin cities are enhancing their water security through a combination of supply diversification and water conservation. We draw from key academic and practitioner studies to better understand which conservation strategies are employed, how water providers evaluate the effectiveness of these strategies, and what role urban water conservation has played in the Colorado River Basin. Our examination of the contributions and limitations of urban water conservation under Colorado River Basin drought conditions reveals how the political dimensions of urban water conservation influence the ability to fully realise the potential of conservation in broader basin governance and sustainability. We call for improved assessment and monitoring of conservation efforts, advancement of holistic approaches, and the addressing of key political and equity dimensions as ways to improve urban water conservation efforts and, more realistically, situate them in the context of basin wide sustainability.

KEYWORDS: Urban water conservation, Colorado River Basin, water governance, water demand management, transboundary water governance

Water grabbing through infrastructures and institutions in Turkey

Adnan Mirhanoğlu
Institute of Geography, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany; adnanmirhanoglu@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: The contestation and appropriation of water are global issues. Capturing control of water sources determines how and by whom water will be used. This paper examines how water grabbing occurs through both water infrastructures and institutions. Building on the concepts of 'infrastructural violence' and 'accumulation by dispossession', I investigate the mechanisms employed by bottled-water companies to grab water and hide the scale of grabbing, resulting in the dispossession of local farmers from the water sources they have used for centuries. Drawing on ethnographic research in Ağlasun, a rural town in southwest Turkey, my findings reveal two main insights. First, water grabbing occurs through clientelism, bending of the rules, and ambiguities in water governance legislation. Second, water grabbing is facilitated by infrastructural changes, such as the fencing off of water sources and the forced imposition of water-saving agricultural technologies. Understanding the various institutional and infrastructural processes through which water grabbing occurs helps clarify the conditions necessary for more just and equitable water governance. The paper concludes by highlighting the crucial role of locally embedded institutions and collective action in securing access to water.

KEYWORDS: Water grabbing, accumulation by dispossession, infrastructural violence, irrigation governance, Turkey

Navigating diverse visions of water justice within unlikely alliances

Sophia L. Borgias
School of Public Service, Boise State University, Boise, ID, USA; sophiaborgias@boisestate.edu

Kate A. Berry
University of Nevada, Reno, NV, USA; kberry@unr.edu

ABSTRACT: The notion of water justice is increasingly invoked by both scholars and activists working to address issues of inequity in water governance. However, water justice means different things to different people, which can present challenges when building alliances among diverse actors. In this paper, we examine these dynamics in the context of unlikely alliances formed among environmental, ranching, and Indigenous actors in response to rural-to-urban water transfer projects in the arid Great Basin region of the western United States. Through more than 60 interviews across two cases in eastern California and eastern Nevada, we find that though these actors aligned in their opposition to projects they viewed as unjust, they had different views of what justice would look like. We discuss their diverse visions of water justice in relation to notions of distributive, procedural, restorative, and transformative justice. While many of these visions overlapped and complemented each other, others were more starkly divided by their orientation towards the current state of water governance, with some seeking to protect it and others seeking to transform it. Building alliances thus required some to strategically focus on the common ground around protecting existing water allocations and systems of accountability, while separately pursuing broader visions of repairing past harms and transforming underlying systems. This research demonstrates that understandings of water justice are diverse and dynamic and that they shape and are shaped by alliance-building. It underscores the methodological value of asking people to articulate not only how they ally against injustices but also what they would consider a just outcome and how they approach collaboration when there are different visions of water justice.

KEYWORDS: Water justice, unlikely alliances, rural-urban water conflicts, Nevada, Owens Valley, western United States

Ontological politics in river defence debates: Unpacking fields of contention in eco-centric and non-human turns

Rutgerd Boelens
Wageningen University, Department of Environmental Sciences, Wageningen, The Netherlands; and University of Amsterdam, CEDLA Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; rutgerd.boelens@wur.nl

Lena Hommes
University of Girona, Department of Geography and Institute of the Environment, Girona, Spain; lena.hommes@udg.edu

Jaime Hoogesteger
Wageningen University, Department of Environmental Sciences, Wageningen, The Netherlands; and IDOS German Institute of Development and Sustainability, Bonn, Germany; jaime.hoogesteger@wur.nl

ABSTRACT: In response to capitalist territorial transformations, humans’ predatory subjection of nature, and worldwide socio-environmental injustices, a diverse set of eco-centric, other-than-human, and indigenous worldview-inspired perspectives have emerged in water debates and practices. Rights of Nature (RoN) and Rights of Rivers (RoR) approaches are examples of this. But while these 'river ontological turns' hold exciting conceptual and political potential, they also invite critical reflection. Proponents often advance these new ontological perspectives and initiatives as being more 'real' and 'natural' than what came before. We challenge this notion by conceptualising such perspectives, similar to all ontological framings, as politically contested entrances to imagining and ordering the real. We argue that these new and alternative ontological understandings of the world – and their related initiatives – are politically produced, culturally enacted, and strategically mobilised. In effect, they contribute to the constitution (or contestation) of particular power relations. Focusing specifically on river debates, we identify and explore the following fields of contention that arise in and from alternative eco-centric and non-human ontological turns: the god-trick; naturalisation; de-centring the human; mystifying/essentialising indigeneity; and subjectification-through-recognition. By discussing these fields of contention, we call for a re-politicisation of the recent river (and other related) ontological turns, their underlying assumptions, and conceptual-political tendencies. Such critical scrutiny can contribute to enriching local/global struggles for riverine environmental justice.

KEYWORDS: Ontological politics, environmental justice, non-human turn, eco-centrism, subjectification, Rights of Rivers