Addressing intrahousehold dynamics, power and decision-making in household water portfolios

Marya Hillesland
Oxford Department of International Development, Oxford, UK; marya.hillesland@qeh.ox.ac.uk

Cheryl R. Doss
Tufts University, Boston, U.S; cheryl.doss@tufts.edu

ABSTRACT: Although an extensive literature focuses on gender and water, fewer studies focus explicitly on intrahousehold power dynamics and their consequences. This paper aims to understand the intrahousehold power dynamics that influence decisions such as who collects water from what source and how water is allocated across activities. Drawing on the rich intrahousehold literature from economics, we demonstrate how it would strengthen our understanding of the impacts of water policy and interventions. A review of intrahousehold bargaining models suggests that it is important to consider how policies and interventions in the water sector may affect the outside options of household members and thus shape their bargaining power. Social norms, property rights and water infrastructure all influence household members’ bargaining power and shape the context within which household decisions are made. Analysing intrahousehold dynamics for water needs to go beyond just considering the dynamic between the spouses; it also needs to consider others in the household who may provide labour for fetching water and who require water for their personal care and productive livelihoods.

KEYWORDS: Gender, intrahousehold dynamics, decision-making, household models, water choices

Hydrosolidarity: A socio-political reading of a moral concept

Maarten Loopmans
Division of Geography and Tourism, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium; maarten.loopmans@kuleuven.be

Jaime Hoogesteger
Water Resources Management Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands; and Associate researcher, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), Bonn, Germany; jaime.hoogesteger@wur.nl

ABSTRACT: Solidarity as a moral appeal has made a regular appearance in water policies, but the concept has rarely been theorised in relation to water governance from a socio-political perspective. As a consequence, the real-life sociological and political underpinnings of hydrosolidarity have remained underexplored. This has limited its conceptual elaboration, analytical use and practical applicability in critical water governance theory and practice. Recent developments in sociopolitical research on solidarity have the potential to make up for this gap. This literature broadly defines solidarity as the willingness or moral obligation to share and redistribute material and immaterial resources. It emphasises solidarity as a situated praxis that is influenced by, and simultaneously constitutive of, social structures. Drawing from this literature, we identify four perspectives through which theories of hydrosolidarity can be enriched: first, an exploration of the sociopolitical foundations of hydrosolidarity as situated praxis; second, an expansion of the spatial imaginaries of hydrosolidarity; third, a broader understanding of the role of infrastructures for hydrosolidarity; and, finally, a more thorough theorising of hydrosolidarity beyond the human. These four perspectives, we argue, open up new lines of empirical inquiry on collective water governance.

KEYWORDS: Solidarity, water, governance, sociopolitical theory

Citrus global production network in Western Cape, RSA: Strengthening of established commercial farming by bypassing water reforms

Ramsha Shahid
Water Resources Management Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands; ramsha.shahid@wur.nl

Gerardo van Halsema
Water Resources Management Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands; gerardo.vanhalsema@wur.nl

Saskia van der Kooij
Water Resources Management Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands; saskia.vanderkooij@wur.nl

Petra Hellegers
Water Resources Management Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands; petra.hellegers@wur.nl

ABSTRACT: In the Republic of South Africa (RSA), reforms to existing and new water allocations have been aimed mainly at redressing the racial injustice of the past. Such reforms, however, have failed to materialise in the citrus-producing region of the Western Cape. This paper argues that the emergence of a strong Global Production Network (GPN) of citrus export at the time of rolling out of the water reforms has contributed, and continues to do so, to the failure of these reforms. The high quality and quantity requirements imposed by the GPN, we argue, necessitated the use of precision fertigation, which acted as an entry barrier to Western Cape citrus products. With access to specialised precision fertigation networks, the landed (white) commercial farmers were able to forge long-lasting relationships of trust and quality with the retailers of the citrus GPN and thus gain and maintain privileged access to it. Their strong position in the citrus GPN enabled three strategies of new water access to emerge, that are exclusively available to the established (white) commercial farmers, namely: (1) using water illicitly; (2) attaining a controlling stake in Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) partnerships; and (3) through access to the network of water consultants. New water access consolidates existing positions of growers in the GPN, making the position in the GPN and water expansion a mutually reinforcing phenomena. High GPN entry barriers have advantaged established commercial farmers and effectively impeded the intended introduction of more equitable water reforms in the region.

KEYWORDS: Precision agriculture, precision fertigation, water reforms, global production networks, entry barriers, technology, network, market access, citrus, South Africa

Paradiplomacy and the Governors’ Forum: Rethinking transboundary water governance in the Lake Chad Basin

Ifeanyichukwu Azuka Aniyie
Faculty of Business, University of New Brunswick, Canada; Ifeanyichukwu.aniyie@unb.ca

Ohiocheoya Omiunu
Kent Law School, University of Kent, United Kingdom; o.omiunu@kent.ac.uk

ABSTRACT: The paper investigates the Lake Chad Basin’s complex multilevel water governance framework. It highlights the involvement of subnational governments in this framework as a notable deviation from traditional international relations practices. While arguing that the involvement of subnational governments, facilitated by the Lake Chad Basin Governors’ Forum, can enhance regional cooperation and sustainable water resource utilisation, the paper suggests that the resulting change in thinking has significant implications for the theoretical foundations of international relations. Although exploratory, the paper offers a few recommendations that could help combat the possible negative consequences of this development on statehood and the interaction within the water governance framework in the Chad Basin area.

KEYWORDS: Lake Chad Basin governance, paradiplomacy, transboundary resource management, regional cooperation, sovereignty, Lake Chad Basin

The Deep-Sea Discharge Project and the failure of environmental conservation in the Ergene Basin, Turkey

Semra Ocak
Boğaziçi University, Institute of Environmental Sciences, Istanbul, Turkey; semra.ocak@std.bogazici.edu.tr

Ali Kerem Saysel
University of Bergen, Department of Geography, System Dynamics Group, Norway; & Boğaziçi University, Institute of Environmental Sciences, Istanbul, Turkey; ali.saysel@bogazici.edu.tr

ABSTRACT: The success of environmental conservation programmes depends partly on governance mechanisms. Top-down governance can hinder participation and thus increase the likelihood that programmes will fail. In this paper, we argue that there is a strong link between the failure of environmental conservation in the Ergene Basin and Turkey’s centralised, top-down environmental governance. Focusing on environmental planning processes, we discuss the conservation efforts aimed at remedying intense pollution, the reactions to ongoing environmental degradation, and the programmes that were designed to control pollution. To understand the main causes of the environmental conservation failure, we investigated the pollution control efforts of both local professionals and the central authorities. We analysed the environmental planning process, which emphasised regional sustainable development, and we examined the action plan for pollution control that was designed by the central authority and included the partial implementation of a flagship Deep-Sea Discharge project. We found that – in neoliberal Turkey where environmental issues are deprioritised – there had been a deliberate shift in power from local to central authorities. We suggest that this shift had hindered comprehensive participation in planning and thus had played a crucial role in the failure of environmental conservation in the Ergene Basin.

KEYWORDS: Water governance, environmental conservation failure, democratic participation, environmental planning, Ergene River, Turkey

Karen Bakker: Honouring a sharp mind, fierce intellect, thought pioneer, heart-led scientist and friend

Michelle Kooy
PhD student of Karen Bakker from 2002-2008 at the University of British Columbia; IHE-Institute of Water Education, Delft, The Netherlands; m.kooy@un-ihe.org

Leila M. Harris
Co-Director with Karen of the Program on Water Governance, 2010-2023; University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada; lharris@ires.ubc.ca

Rutgerd Boelens
Colleague of Karen in the Water Justice Alliance / Alianza Justicia Hídrica; University of Amsterdam & Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands; rutgerd.boelens@wur.nl

Tom Perreault
Colleague of Karen’s on Geoforum editorial board and general admirer of her work; Syracuse University, Syracuse, United States; taperrea@syr.edu

Erik Swyngedouw
Former PhD supervisor of Karen’s doctoral dissertation at Oxford University; University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom; erik.swyngedouw@manchester.ac.uk

Rational and relational paradigms: A case study of the Indus Basin

Medha Bisht
Associate Professor, Department of International Relations, South Asian University, New Delhi, India; medhabisht@sau.ac.in

ABSTRACT: Much has been written about the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty and the role played by the World Bank. This article, however, seeks to revisit the absence, limits and challenges of social learning in state-based interventions on water diplomacy. Terming the Indus Waters Treaty a case of thin mediation, the paper questions water diplomacy interactions at two levels. By juxtaposing the case of the Indus Waters Treaty with the Indus Basin Initiative (launched in 2013 and supported by the Upper Indus Basin Network), the paper (1) highlights intersections around negotiation models and social learning, and (2) draws attention to two policy paradigms – rational and relational – that become significant frames for deliberation and for defining water diplomacy. Using the example of the Indus Waters Treaty, I also emphasise that any reliance on distributive tactics – which block social learning only perpetuates trust deficits and, in the long term, invoke water nationalism and water securitisation. The paper contributes to the investigation of social learning mechanisms, which can help further our understanding of the relational paradigms associated with water policy and diplomacy.

KEYWORDS: Negotiation analysis, water diplomacy, social learning, Upper Indus Basin Network, Upper Indus Basin Initiative, Indus Waters Treaty

From cooling water war to cooling towers: Transnational water diplomacy around the allocation of nuclear cooling on the Aare and Rhine Rivers, 1965-1972

Alicia Gutting
Department of History, School of Humanities, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; and Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden; alicia.gutting@ntu.edu.sg

ABSTRACT: This article explores the efforts of Germany and Switzerland, from 1965 to 1972, to mitigate thermal pollution caused by nuclear power plants along the Aare and Rhine Rivers. Despite the initial promise of nuclear energy, concerns about its environmental impact, specifically on water quality, led both countries to collaboratively set temperature limits for cooling water discharge from nuclear power plants. In contrast to the predominant focus on anti-nuclear protests in the existing literature, this article highlights the cooperative aspects of cross-border management, revealing a concerted effort to balance the utilisation of river cooling capacities while safeguarding water quality. The article contributes to the evolving field of water diplomacy, challenging the notion of inevitable conflicts by showcasing a joint approach to addressing shared environmental challenges.

KEYWORDS: Nuclear energy, Rhine River, thermal pollution, water diplomacy, cooling water

Fluid authority: Exploring hydraulic social contracts in Nairobi’s water provision

Maja Dahl Jeppesen
Department of Anthropology, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark; majakdjeppesen@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: This paper aims to expand our understanding of the diverse relationships in water provision in cities such as Nairobi, where urban water is provided through heterogeneous actors and through piped and non-piped systems. The paper contributes to the study of authority and urban infrastructure by examining how interactions between urban water systems, their providers, and the people who depend on them shape forms of authority emerging around urban water. The paper draws on insights from an ethnographic study conducted in an informal settlement named Kibera and in Langata, another residential area of Nairobi, Kenya. It examines the forms of authority that are created around water service providers and whether the concept of “hydraulic social contracts” adds to our understanding of relations of authority in service provision. The fluid materiality of water, fragile material infrastructures, and their social embeddedness tie into fluid relations of authority where water service providers embody seemingly contradictory roles defined by exploitation and solidarity. The paper concludes that hydraulic social contracts are particularly precarious and that relations of authority based on water are difficult to fix into static conceptualisations.

KEYWORDS: Authority, water provision, social contracts, infrastructures, Nairobi, Kenya

The new Tower of Babel: Divergent water quantification in the southwestern United States

Juan Camilo Perdomo Marin
Independent Scholar; juancamilo.perdomo@utah.edu

ABSTRACT: This research contributes to the academic discussions on the politics of water quantification by analysing the factors that generate divergent water figures in the southwestern United States. The controversies surrounding the construction of the Lake Powell Pipeline (LPP) are the case of study as its proponents and opponents use conflicting water data. This analysis associates four kinds of contradictory data related to the LPP with epistemological questions (value, ranking, perspective and delimitation) to explain why having more data does not solve conflicts. Since having adequate data is essential to making informed decisions, this study concludes by calling for a critical review of water figures that considers the logical limits of quantification and the political factors influencing its production and use.

KEYWORDS: Quantification, metrics, comparison, perspective, delimitation, standardisation, Lake Powell Pipeline, United States

Consequences for Maasai pastoralists of changing water access regimes in the Greater Amboseli ecosystem, Kenya

Arthur Bostvironnois
Department of Geography, CNRS 5600 EVS, University Lumière Lyon 2, Bron, France; arthur.bostvironnois@univ-lyon2.fr

François Mialhe
Department of Geography, CNRS 5600 EVS, University Lumière Lyon 2, Bron, France; francois.mialhe@univ-lyon2.fr

Yanni Gunnell
Department of Geography, CNRS 5600 EVS, University Lumière Lyon 2, Bron, France; yanni.gunnell@univ-lyon2.fr

Oldrich Navratil
Department of Geography, CNRS 5600 EVS, University Lumière Lyon 2, Bron, France; oldrich.navratil@univ-lyon2.fr

ABSTRACT: Among the Maasai group ranches surrounding Amboseli National Park in southern Kenya, perennial springwater from the foothills of Mt. Kilimanjaro generates an oasis effect in an otherwise water-scarce landscape; it underpins pastoral livelihoods, agricultural productivity, and wildlife conservation economics. This resource, however, is increasingly under pressure from these competing interests. Based on semi-structured interviews, waterscape mapping workshops with Maasai pastoralists, field observations, and visual interpretations of high-resolution satellite images, we map, describe and analyse how 70 years of uncoordinated proliferation of water extraction, conveyance, and storage features across the semi-arid savanna rangelands has altered the local water cycle and changed power dynamics around water resources. A succession of externally driven rural development, land reform and conservation policies has contributed to the reshaping of patterns and regimes of access to water by modifying land ownership and attracting new activities such as crop irrigation and safari tourism. As a result, the status of water is shifting from a common-property resource with a tradition of sharing, to a commodified resource that is controlled privately and redistributed according to individualistic strategies. Our focus on three hydrosocial territories from a Maasai perspective examines how high densities of private structures such as wells and small runoff- and pipeline-fed storage reservoirs are pushing the livestock-based, semi-nomadic economy towards intensive, sedentary agriculture. Inequalities in access to water have deepened, with water users associations and other water management organisations also experiencing or generating new forms of conflict between resident communities.

KEYWORDS: Political ecology, resource ownership, commons, privatisation, water management, water use, pastoralism, conflict

Viewpoint - From shallow to transformative water justice

Benji Reade-Malagueño
Department of Environmental Science, Policy, & Management, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA; benjirm@berkeley.edu

Kieren Rudge
Department of Environmental Science, Policy, & Management, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA; kieren.rudge@berkeley.edu

Sydney Moss
Department of Environmental Science, Policy, & Management, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA; snmoss@berkeley.edu

Paolo D’Odorico
Department of Environmental Science, Policy, & Management, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA; paolododo@berkeley.edu

ABSTRACT: Water systems across the world are being disrupted, and marginalised communities face compounding harms. In recognising inequities, policy-makers and prominent intergovernmental institutions increasingly draw on environmental justice frameworks to guide their priorities and decision-making. However, much of the discourse, planning and policy-making that targets inequitable relationships to water fails to address the underlying processes and structures that reproduce injustice; rather, they solely target inequitable conditions using status quo mechanisms. We introduce the concept of 'shallow water justice' to explain and critique such phenomena, which are not only insufficient for achieving water justice but also reinforce the power of marginalising structures. We demonstrate how shallow water justice has been furthered through multiple processes in international water policy spheres and we propose that, instead, transformative water justice be prioritised by challenging dominant structures, primarily legal and economic systems. Transitioning from shallow to transformative water justice enables policy-makers, researchers and communities to foster more equitable, diverse and sustainable relationships with water.

KEYWORDS: Shallow water justice, transformative justice, colonialism, market economies, water access

Rupture and its temporalities at Indonesia’s Jatigede Dam

Brooke Wilmsen
La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia; b.wilmsen@latrobe.edu.au

Ardhitya Eduard Yeremia
Universitas Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia; yerehi@ui.ac.id

Sarah Rogers
The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia; rogerssm@unimelb.edu.au

Suraya Abdulwahab Afiff
Universitas Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia; suraya.afiff@ui.ac.id

ABSTRACT: In 2015, a long-proposed dam project was finally completed in West Java, Indonesia. Ultimately financed and built by Chinese actors, Jatigede Dam entailed a series of drawn-out processes of proposal, land acquisition, withdrawal, finance, and compensation. While the social impacts of dams are usually observed within fixed temporal boundaries, in this article we argue that a focus on 'project time', strictly bounded by planning and construction timeframes, obscures the broader conditions that render people displaceable and that disrupt nature-society relations. To better illuminate the lived experience of displacement and resettlement at Jatigede we engage Mahanty and colleagues’ (2023) analytic of rupture, which provides an extended temporal and spatial frame. Through analysis of 24 interviews in the dam area, observation, and secondary data we detail the particular contours of rupture at Jatigede Dam and the crises that preceded and followed its construction. Our analysis understands dam construction to be embedded in broader processes of colonisation, transmigration, regime change, persecution, poor planning and governance, and inequality of opportunity. We conclude that the extended temporal frame of the rupture analytic captures the non-linear but interrelated, long-term processes that shape dam construction, displacement and resettlement to provide a richer understanding of nature-society disruption. By deepening the temporal dimension of rupture through the voices of those impacted by the Jatigede Dam, we provide a richer, socio-culturally contextualised understanding of time and its implications in hydropower developments.

KEYWORDS: Rupture, hydropower dams, displacement, resettlement, social impacts, Sinohydro, project time, Indonesia

Modelling as intervention technology: Science, politics, and water conflicts

Ehsan Nabavi
Responsible Innovation Lab, The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, The Australian National University; and Käte Hamburger Kolleg, Cultures of Research, RWTH, Aachen, Germany; ehsan.nabavi@anu.edu.au

ABSTRACT: In water conflicts, models and their creators are often seen as guides that help public and policy actors make sense of controversies and formulate responses. In such contexts, it is tempting for both modellers and decision-makers to adopt the narrative that models are neutral and that, by extension, they present objective insights. This assumption, however, overlooks two critical issues. First, many choices made by modellers, which significantly shape a model’s outcome, are subjective and context-dependent. Second, water conflicts are inherently sociopolitical processes, and models themselves actively shape how these conflicts unfold. This paper argues that within hydropolitical dynamics, water models become the 'focal points' of a convergence of scientific expertise, political priorities and societal values and expectations. They become 'intervention technologies' that actively shape the very water realities they seek to describe. Drawing on ethnographic research and on insights from Science and Technology Studies, this paper explores this argument through the case of a water transfer controversy in the Zayandeh-Rood River Basin in central Iran. By unpacking how modelling (and countermodelling) practices are entangled with broader sociopolitical dynamics, the paper traces how models intervene in the making of the common resource, common sense and common good, while themselves being in turn shaped by these contested arenas.

KEYWORDS: Politics of modelling, water conflict, co-production, intervention, imaginary, countermodel, common sense, common good, Zayandeh-Rood River

Social relations of water access among the poor in urban Malawi

Andy Kusi-Appiah
Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada; andykusiappiah@cmail.carleton.ca

Paul Mkandawire
Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies, Human Rights and Social Justice Program, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada; paul.mkandawire@carleton.ca

ABSTRACT: This paper examines some intimate ways that water constitutes and is constitutive of social relations in urban Malawi in a context where the government-sponsored water supply system has left a large section of the population off the municipal supply grid. Specifically, the paper focuses on the ambiguous role of ganyu, an informal and ad hoc form of labour with deep roots in Malawi’s colonial history. Based on qualitative research (n = 30) and grounded in perspectives rooted in urban political ecology, our findings indicate that ganyu helps poor households cope with acute water shortages. On the other hand, it also binds them to problematic and often exploitative social relationships. Specifically, the findings show that ganyu relations give rise to usufruct rights through which the urban poor can obtain potable water on a day-to-day basis from the homes of the individuals for whom they work. However, material control over potable water by those who own it fosters indentured relations, as it allows these individuals to wield enormous control over the productive labour of the people who work for them. And as these providers of ganyu hold all the cards, they also sometimes weave sexual demands into these ad hoc contracts, locking poor women into a cycle of both labour exploitation and sexual servitude. Underscoring the relational nature of water, overall, these findings contradict simplistic notions of water as a market commodity and show that in urban Malawi water is a mechanism for the generation and exercise of social power, a marker of social differentiation, a force for material reproduction for the well-off, and an instrument for further subordination of women.

KEYWORDS: ganyu, potable water, social relations, gender, political ecology, Malawi

The changing meaning of wild rivers: A review

Régis Barraud
Professor in Geography, ER MIMMOC, University of Poitiers, Poitiers, France; regis.barraud@univ-poitiers.fr

ABSTRACT: Environmental activism has been instrumental in the adoption of public policies to protect the last remaining free-flowing rivers. In this regard, the passage of the 1968 Wild and Scenic Rivers Act in the United States is an internationally recognised milestone. This legislation continues to inspire both other campaigns to protect wild rivers and the development of new conservation measures. The primary objective of this review is to provide a reconstruction of the trajectory of wild rivers as scientific subject matter. This approach allows us to study the processes of diffusion and adaptation of the American Wild and Scenic Rivers Act in other geographical contexts. It also aims to help us better understand the social and political effects of public policies that are geared towards the preservation of wild rivers. To this end, 106 scientific articles on wild rivers covering the period 1967 to 2024 were subjected to a lexical analysis (Step 1), a thematic analysis (Step 2) and a discussion of key issues based on an in-depth reading (Step 3). This review shows that the recreational, cultural and emotional values associated with wild rivers are increasingly being replaced in the scientific literature with the ecological values of free-flowing rivers. Furthermore, while the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act still largely guides scientific research on the subject, this review identifies the controversies underlying its adoption/adaptation in other colonial contexts where the idea of wilderness plays a key role in conservation. Underlying these conflicts is the need to rethink river conservation initiatives based on Indigenous people’s ontologies.

KEYWORDS: Wild rivers, environmental movements, nature conservation policy, nature-culture ontologies

Modelling water worlds

Rossella Alba
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Geography Department and Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems (IRI THESys), Berlin, Germany; rossella.alba@hu-berlin.de

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

Lieke Melsen
Hydrology and Environmental Hydraulics, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, the Netherlands; lieke.melsen@wur.nl

Jean-Philippe Venot
UMR G-EAU, IRD, University of Montpellier, Montpellier, France; jean-philippe.venot@ird.fr

ABSTRACT: Modelling and models influence how water and its flows are understood and governed. It is thus essential to critically explore the roles that models play in producing or addressing uneven water distribution. In this introduction to the Special Issue, we discuss approaches to analysing models and modelling practices. We start by establishing that they deserve special attention because they produce knowledge of another nature that gained from observations and measurements – knowledge that abstracts, generalises and offers access to potential futures and remote places. The paper outlines the ways in which models can appear to have universal relevance because of how they are able to travel between contexts; it also stresses that the rationalisation they offer aligns with the idea of control that underpins the modern water paradigm and related techno-managerial interventions. Despite their widespread appeal and use, the paper stress that models remain rather opaque, difficult to understand and navigate for non-experts and even sometimes for experts. The paper goes on to show how, in the context of water research and governance, models derive authority from the networks and discourses that surround them as well as from the epistemic and non-epistemic values that are shared by particular modelling communities. We present three complementary entry points for engaging with models: first, by interrogating their function as tools of representation; second, by exploring how they are produced and operated within constellations of actors, practices, discourses and material artefacts; and third, by analysing how models are deployed to legitimise water governance decisions that are inherently political. We then expand our critical engagement with water modelling, placing it in the broader context of attacks on science and scientists, particularly in the context of rising post-truth politics. Finally, by discussing the papers in this Special Issue, we conclude that models not only contribute to reproducing water inequalities but that they can also be mobilised to understand and address them. We suggest that future critical water research on modelling should continue to ground models and modelling in local realities, while also being invested in models as knowledge practices. Future research would benefit from bringing the diverse approaches that are showcased in this Special Issue into conversation as they enable rich and plural accounts of the worlds of water modelling.

KEYWORDS: Models, hydrology, politics, ontologies, practices, post-truth, situated knowledges

A colonial discourse on 'urban water': A case study of Hesaraghatta Waterworks in Bangalore, India

Akash Jash
Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru, India; akash@isec.ac.in

ABSTRACT: This paper examines the Hesaraghatta Waterworks project as a case study of urban water governance in colonial Bangalore, now called Bengaluru. The study investigates how the project’s administrative and institutional dimensions sought to reshape the relationship between water and urban populations. The findings demonstrate that the introduction of piped water through the new waterworks coincided with the emergence of a modern water governance framework. This framework was marked by new rules and legal instruments that attempted to alter the dynamics of water-people interactions in the urban context; in the process, however, it also led to unequal access and distribution of water. Based on these findings, the paper argues that the Hesaraghatta project represented a broad transformation in the social construction of urban water, whereby water shifted from being a shared ecological resource to a centrally governed urban utility, which was characterised by an association with institutional governance, legal control, and commodification. The paper further contends that these administrative and infrastructural changes operated as strategies through which the colonial administration sought to exercise its governmental rationality, rendering water not only a material necessity but also a potential tool for population management and social ordering.

KEYWORDS: Urban water, Hesaraghatta Waterworks, Urban Political Ecology, colonial governance, governmental rationality, Bengaluru, India

Water models as geographical chimera: Precipitation interception routines as an example of 'patchwork empiricism'

John T. Van Stan II
Biological, Geological, and Environmental Sciences, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA; j.vanstan@csuohio.edu

Jack Simmons
Philosophy and Religious Studies, Georgia Southern University, Savannah, GA, USA; jacksimmons@georgiasouthern.edu

ABSTRACT: In constructing global 'water worlds', modellers stitch together data and theories from disparate locales, weaving them into seemingly universal hydrological frameworks. This approach offers immense scientific efficiencies, enabling planetary-scale predictions of water availability and related ecological, biogeochemical and atmospheric responses. As this paper shows, however, it risks creating 'geographical chimera' of mismatched empirical parts where, for example, British leaves define rainwater storage, fresh-cut Idaho conifers define snow interception, and blotting‐paper bark substitutes for stem evaporation. Each localised study, once transplanted into a global model, can become disconnected from its site‐bound context, potentially distorting science, management actions, and policy. Focusing on forest canopy precipitation interception – the first step in the precipitation‐to‐discharge pathway – this paper reveals how (excellent) decades-old, narrowly framed experiments now anchor universal equations in cutting-edge land surface models. These inherited formulas and parameters risk obscuring local phenomena, devaluing in situ data, and fostering equifinality whereby different configurations yield similar outputs while masking real biophysical processes. In this paper, scientific review is complemented by philosophical critiques, reminding us that abstractions detached from place may become preserved in models through methodological inertia, forming self‐justifying 'mathematical mummies'. We need not abandon universality, but this work aims to reinforce the standing call to embed water models in diverse, site-grounded observations, re-examine entrenched analogies, and embrace pluralistic parameter development. A place-sensitive methodology can prevent 'chimeric' routines from eclipsing the hydrological realities they aim to illuminate, enabling models to better reflect the richly varied planet they represent.

KEYWORDS: Hydrological modelling, precipitation partitioning, canopy interception, ecohydrology, empiricism, place, science philosophy

Predicting floods to protect property regimes: Situating flood modelling in the River Poddle Catchment, Dublin

Laure de Tymowski
Maynooth University, Maynooth, Ireland; laure.detymowski.2021@mumail.ie

Elliot Hurst
Independent researcher, Canberra, Australia; ehurst@posteo.net

ABSTRACT: Water models are world-making devices that stabilise or remake social structures and power relations. This has spurred calls for deeper explorations of how models are situated within historical and political contexts. The paper examines the flood model used for flood management planning in the River Poddle catchment in Dublin, Ireland. Starting from the death of Celia de Jesus during a 2011 flood in this catchment, we argue that Dublin’s neoliberal property regime is an essential context for situating this model. Using a method grounded in discourse analysis and interdisciplinary dialogue, our situating approach follows the modelling process across two levels: the policy context and the model outputs and outcomes. Irish flood management policy sets strong boundaries for modelling, while embedding property assumptions in the model’s aims, scenarios and maps. Model outputs are shown to effectively serve the interests of real estate actors while negatively impacting those marginalised in property relations. Our critical situating has important implications for those hoping to use or critique models in order to challenge injustice.

KEYWORDS: Flood modelling, situated knowledge, property regime, land justice, Dublin, Ireland