Storage and non-payment: Persistent informalities within the formal water supply of Hubli-Dharwad, India

Zachary Burt
Energy and Resources Group, University of California at Berkeley, CA, USA; zzburt@gmail.com

Isha Ray
Energy and Resources Group, University of California at Berkeley, CA, USA; isharay@berkeley.edu

ABSTRACT: Urban water systems in Asia and Africa mostly provide intermittent rather than continuous water supplies; such systems compromise water quality and inconvenience the user. Starting in 2008, an upgrade to continuous (24/7) water services was provided for 10% of the twin cities of Hubli-Dharwad, India, through a process of privatisation and formalisation. The goals were to improve water quality, free consumers from collecting and storing water, and reduce non-revenue (i.e. unpaid for) water. Drawing on household surveys (n = 1986) conducted in 2010-2011 in the 24/7 zones, as well as on a range of interviews, we find that, even with 'formal' 24/7 water service, most consumers continue the supposedly 'informal' practices of in-home storage and water use without payment of bills. We argue that multiple unaccounted-for factors – including a history of distrust between the consumer and the utility, seemingly small infrastructural details, resistance to higher tariffs, and valuing convenience above water quality – have kept these informal practices embedded within the formalised delivery system. Our research contributes to understanding why formalisation may only partially supplant informal practices even when the formal system is functional and reliable.

KEYWORDS: Informality, water supply, drinking water storage, non-payment, quiet encroachment, continuous water supply, 24/7 water

Megan Peloso
Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada; mmpeloso@gmail.com

Cynthia Morinville
Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada; cynthia.morinville@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: Despite recent reports suggesting that access to improved sources of drinking water is rising in Ghana, water access remains a daily concern for many of those living in the capital region. Throughout the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA), the urban poor manage uncertainty and establish themselves in the city by leveraging a patchwork system of basic services that draws importantly from informal systems and supplies. This paper takes a case study approach, using evidence gathered from two-months of fieldwork in a peri-urban informal settlement on the fringe of Accra, to explore everyday practices involved in procuring water for daily needs that routinely lead residents outside of the official water supply system. Findings from this case study demonstrate that respondents make use of informal water services to supplement or 'patch up' gaps left by the sporadic water flow of the official service provider, currently Ghana Water Company Ltd. (GWCL). Basic water access is thus constructed through an assemblage of coping strategies and infrastructures. This analysis contributes to understandings of heterogeneity in water access by attending to the everyday practices by which informality is operationalised to meet the needs of the urban poor, in ways that may have previously been overshadowed. This research suggests, for example, that although water priced outside of the official service provider is generally higher per unit, greater security may be obtained from smaller repetitive transactions as well as having the flexibility to pursue multiple sources of water on a day-to-day basis.

KEYWORDS: Water supply, urbanisation, informality, everyday practice, urban poor, Ghana

Sebastian Zug
Department of Geosciences, Fribourg University, Fribourg, Switzerland; sebastian.zug@gmx.net

Olivier Graefe
Department of Geosciences, Fribourg University, Fribourg, Switzerland; olivier.graefe@unifr.ch

ABSTRACT: Water gifts are a common strategy to satisfy water needs in the absence of sufficiently performing water networks in Khartoum, but a widely ignored topic in urban political ecology of water. This article questions the exclusive focus of political ecologists on the capitalist waterscape of the city and argues for supplementing the perspective with an in-depth analysis of the neighbourly waterscape, where water gifts are carried out. Through the analysis of interconnected waterscapes on different scales a more holistic understanding of the social construction of water supply in the city can be achieved.The emergence of the gift of water in a city depends on heterogeneity of neighbours’ water access, the cost of the water to be gift, the relationship between donor and recipient, as well as the local social and moral framework. This article uses the example of Khartoum to explore and conceptualize the gift of water in the framework of political ecology.

KEYWORDS: Water gifts, water solidarity, neighbourly waterscape, scale, political ecology of water, moral geography, Khartoum, Sudan

Groundwater governance: A tale of three participatory models in Andhra Pradesh, India

V. Ratna Reddy
Livelihoods and Natural Resources Management Institute (LNRMI), Hyderabad, India; vratnareddy@lnrmi.ac.in

M. Srinivasa Reddy
Research Unit for Livelihoods and Natural Resources (RULNR), Centre for Economic and Social Studies (CESS), Hyderabad, India; sreenivasdrreddy@yahoo.com

Sanjit Kumar Rout
Livelihoods and Natural Resources Management Institute (LNRMI), Hyderabad, India; sanjitrout2003@yahoo.co.uk

ABSTRACT: This paper explores the possible options for community based groundwater management in India. The main focus of the study is to understand the functioning and efficiency of groundwater management institutions by comparing and contrasting three participatory groundwater models in Andhra Pradesh. The paper assesses the operational modalities and the impact of these institutions on access, equity and sustainability of groundwater use using the qualitative and quantitative information from three sample villages representing the institutional models.Social regulation approach is observed to work better for sustainable groundwater management when compared to the knowledge-intensive approach, as the latter is not designed to address equity. Water use and sharing through regulation has benefits like increased area under protective irrigation. In the absence of any regulations, formal or informal, and in the given policy environment, the farmers do not have any incentive to follow good practices. Thus, encouraging water sharing between well owners and others would contribute to achieving the twin objectives of conservation and improved access with equity. However, community-based groundwater management is neither simple nor easily forthcoming. It requires a lot of effort, working through complex rural dynamics at various levels, since appropriate policies to support or encourage such initiatives are not in place. It is argued that there is need for developing an integrated model drawing from these three models in order to make it more generic and applicable globally. Such a model should integrate scientific, socioeconomic and policy aspects that suit the local conditions.

KEYWORDS: Groundwater, governance, participatory management, social regulation, India

Equity, efficiency and sustainability in water allocation in the Andes: Trade-offs in a full world

María Cecilia Roa-García
Fundación Evaristo García, Cali, Colombia; croa09@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: Conflicts between water users are increasing, making evident the lack of a judicious, balanced and transparent procedure for water allocation. This is particularly apparent in regions where demand comes from users with a wide range of needs and different levels of power, and where human appropriation of water is reaching unsustainable levels. Allocation mechanisms with varying degrees of governmental intervention exist in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, and they reflect the priorities that these societies give to relevant normative principles governing water: equity, efficiency and sustainability. Water laws in these three countries indicate that 1) while efficiency has become the bastion of neo-liberalisation, equity and sustainability principles are either neglected or become subsidiary, 2) implicit definitions of equity fall short in promoting the interests of the disadvantaged, and 3) the complex definition, measurement and monitoring of what constitutes a sustainable scale of human water use, make it an impractical goal. Achieving a balance between equity, efficiency and sustainability appears unrealistic, suggesting the need to remove efficiency as a principle in water allocation and make it an important but subsidiary tool to equity and sustainability.

KEYWORDS: Water allocation, equity, efficiency, scale, sustainability, comparative law, Andes

Designing programme implementation strategies to increase the adoption and use of biosand water filters in rural India

Tommy K.K. Ngai
Centre for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology (CAWST), Calgary, Alberta, Canada; tngai@cawst.org

Richard A. Fenner
Centre for Sustainable Development, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England; raf37@cam.ac.uk

ABSTRACT: Low-cost household water treatment systems are innovations designed to improve the quality of drinking water at the point of use. This study investigates how an NGO can design appropriate programme strategies in order to increase the adoption and sustained use of household sand filters in rural India. A system dynamics computer model was developed and used to assess 18 potential programme strategies for their effectiveness in increasing filter use at two and ten years into the future, under seven scenarios of how the external context may plausibly evolve. The results showed that the optimal choice of strategy is influenced by the macroeconomic situation, donor funding, presence of alternative options, and the evaluation time frame. The analysis also revealed some key programme management challenges, including the trade-off between optimising short- or long-term gains, and counter-intuitive results, such as higher subsidy fund allocation leading to fewer filter distribution, and technology advances leading to fewer sales. This study outlines how an NGO can choose effective strategies in consideration of complex system interactions. This study demonstrated that small NGOs can dramatically increase their programme outcomes without necessarily increasing operational budget.

KEYWORDS: Biosand water filter, household water treatment, innovation diffusion, project management, India

The imposition of participation? The case of participatory water management in coastal Bangladesh

Camelia Dewan
Department of Social Anthropology, SOAS, University of London, London; c_dewan@soas.ac.uk

Marie-Charlotte Buisson
International Water Management Institute, New Delhi, India; m.buisson@cgiar.org

Aditi Mukherji
The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, Kathmandu, Nepal; amukherji@icimod.org

ABSTRACT: Community-based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM) has been promoted as part of the development discourse on sustainable natural resources management since the mid-1980s. It has influenced recent water policy in Bangladesh through the Guidelines for Participatory Water Management (GPWM) where community-based organisations are to participate in the management of water resources. This paper reviews the extent of success of such participatory water management. It does so by first discussing the changing discourses of participation in Bangladesh’s water policy from social mobilisation to decentralised CBNRM. Second, Bangladesh is used as a case study to draw attention to how the creation of separate water management organisations has been unable to promote inclusive participation. It argues that the current form of decentralisation through a CBNRM framework has not resulted in its stated aims of equitable, efficient, and sustainable management of natural resources; rather it has duplicated existing local government institutions. Finally, it questions the current investments into community-based organisations and recommends that the role of local government in water management be formally recognised.

KEYWORDS: Community-based natural resources management, participatory water management, local government institutions, Bangladesh

Watershed governance: Transcending boundaries

Seanna L. Davidson
Water Policy and Governance Group, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada; seanna.davidson@uwaterloo.ca

Rob C. de Loë
Department of Environment and Resource Studies, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada; rdeloe@uwaterloo.ca

ABSTRACT: Watershed boundaries are widely accepted by many water practitioners and researchers as the de facto ideal boundary for both water management and governance activities. In governance, watershed boundaries are typically considered an effective way to integrate the social, political, and environmental systems they encompass. However, the utility and authenticity of the watershed boundary for water governance should not be assumed. Instead, both scholars and practitioners ought to carefully consider the circumstances under which watershed boundaries provide an appropriate frame for governance. The purpose of this paper is to identify how water governance can transcend the watershed boundary. An empirical case study of governance for water in Ontario, Canada, reveals boundary-related challenges. In this case, issues relating to boundary selection, accountability, participation and empowerment, policysheds and problemsheds reveal the strengths and weaknesses of relying on watershed boundaries as a frame of reference for governance. The case also highlights promising alternatives that are being used to transcend the watershed boundary.

KEYWORDS: Water governance, watershed boundaries, Lake Simcoe, Ontario, Canada

Water scarcity in England and Wales as a failure of (meta)governance

Gareth Walker
School of Geography and Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; garethlwalker@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: The water crisis is often said to be a crisis of governance failure rather than of availability per se; yet the sources of this failure are poorly understood. This paper examines contemporary water scarcity in England and Wales as a failure of ecological modernity, in which technical and institutional innovation is promoted as a means of increasing economic efficiency in the allocation and use of water resources. The role of the state in fostering this innovation is explored through exploring a shift from ‘government’ to ‘governance’. The paper employs Jessop’s theory of meta-governance to examine governance failure. Meta-governance represents the capacity of the state to flank or support the emergence of specific forms of governance through mobilising material or symbolic resources. Three sources of governance failure are explored: (1) the nature of capitalist exchange and its resulting production of nature, (2) the political dimensions implicit in meta-governance, and (3) the nature of governance as a task of self-organisation. The model is then applied to the rise of water scarcity in England and Wales from the 1970s to the present day. The utility of the model in analysing governance failure is discussed.

KEYWORDS: Water scarcity, water governance, meta-governance, water privatisation, England and Wales

Organisational modalities of farmer-led irrigation development in Tsangano District, Mozambique

Francis Nkoka
World Bank, Lilongwe, Malawi; fnkoka@gmail.com

Gert Jan Veldwisch
Water Resources Management Group of Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands; gertjan.veldwisch@wur.nl

Alex Bolding
Water Resources Management Group of Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands; alex.bolding@wur.nl

ABSTRACT: This paper examines the organisational modalities of farmer-led irrigation systems in Tsangano, Mozambique, which has expanded over large areas with minimal external support. By looking at their historic development trajectories and the integrated nature of land and water resources, technological objects, and people three organisational modalities of irrigation system O&M are distinguished for furrow systems in Tsangano: communal systems, former Portuguese systems, and family systems. Each organisational modality is based on a particular development/investment history through which hydraulic property relations have been established and sustained.The findings cast serious doubts on the central tenets of neo-institutional policy prescriptions. This is particularly relevant as there is a renewed interest in large-scale irrigation development in Africa through public investment, after very limited investments between 1985 and 2005. Public irrigation investment in Africa has been widely perceived to have performed poorly. Farmer-led irrigation development, as studied in this paper, could be the basis for a cost-effective alternative to scale investments that can result in sustainable and pro-poor smallholder irrigation.The findings in this paper show how investments in infrastructure can create, recreate or extinguish hydraulic property and ownership relations, which can lead to collapse. Interveners should carefully investigate prior investment patterns and context-specific cultural logics that inform the sustainability of farmer-led irrigation development.

KEYWORDS: Irrigation, FMIS, farmer-led development, hydraulic property, institutional design principles, Mozambique

Bureaucratic reform in irrigation: A review of four case studies

Diana Suhardiman
International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Vientiane, Lao PDR; d.suhardiman@cgiar.org

Mark Giordano
Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, USA; mg1382@georgetown.edu

Edwin Rap
International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Cairo, Egypt; e.rap@cgiar.org

Kai Wegerich
International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Tashkent, Uzbekistan; k.wegerich@cgiar.org

ABSTRACT: Poor performance of government-managed irrigation systems persists globally. This paper argues that addressing performance requires not simply more investment or different policy approaches, but reform of the bureaucracies responsible for irrigation management. Based on reform experiences in The Philippines, Mexico, Indonesia, and Uzbekistan, we argue that irrigation (policy) reform cannot be treated in isolation from the overall functioning of government bureaucracies and the wider political structure of the states. Understanding of how and why government bureaucracies shape reform processes and outcomes is crucial to increase the actual significance of reforms. To demonstrate this, the paper links reform processes in the irrigation sector with the wider discourse of bureaucratic reform in the political science, public administration, and organisational science literature. Doing so brings to light the need for systematic comparative research on the organisational characteristic of the irrigation bureaucracies, their bureaucratic identities, and how these are shaped by various segments within the bureaucracies to provide the insights needed to improve irrigation systems performance.

KEYWORDS: Irrigation development, irrigation bureaucracies, policy reform, poor systems performance, bureaucratic reform

Inside matters of facts: Reopening dams and debates in the Netherlands

Arjen Zegwaard
Institute for Environmental Studies, Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences, VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Water Resources Management Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands; arjen.zegwaard@wur.nl

Philippus Wester
International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Kathmandu, Nepal; pwester@icimod.org, and Water Resources Management Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands; flip.wester@wur.nlstrong>

ABSTRACT: Both civil engineering and environmentalism strongly influenced the development of water governance in the Netherlands in the 20th century. Much research has focused on these aspects separately. This article maps the interaction between governance, technology and ecological systems in the Netherlands, to provide insights into how these are co-evolving. The analysis is based on a combination of a literature study and an empirical case study on the debates concerning the reopening of the Philipsdam, in the Southwest Delta of the Netherlands. It shows how the negotiations that took place in constructing facts in the Philipsdam case both increased the complexity of decision-making concerning the dam itself and radiated outwards to affect other parts of the Dutch water system. We conclude that the process of constructing facts and the way these are framed once they have been established as facts are both intrinsically political and reflect the multiplicity of views of how the lake works and what the problem is, and how these views are incompatible at times. As such, ontological complexity is ingrained in what is represented as facts and severely complicates an apparently matter of fact decision to reopen a dam.

KEYWORDS: Uncertainty, constructing facts, modelling through, Delta Works, the Netherlands

The productive use of rural piped water in Senegal

Ralph P. Hall
School of Public and International Affairs, Urban Affairs and Planning Program, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA; rphall@vt.edu

Eric A. Vance
Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Statistical Analysis (LISA), Department of Statistics, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA; ervance@vt.edu

Emily van Houweling
Women and Gender in International Development, Office of International Research, Education, and Development (OIRED), Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA; evh@vt.edu

ABSTRACT: Over the past decade there has been a growing interest in the potential benefits related to the productive use of rural piped water around the homestead. However, there is limited empirical research on the extent to which, and conditions under which, this activity occurs. Using data obtained from a comprehensive study of 47 rural piped water systems in Senegal, this paper reveals the extent of piped-water-based productive activity occurring and identifies important system-level variables associated with this activity. Three-quarters (74%) of the households surveyed depend on water for their livelihoods with around one-half (54%) relying on piped water. High levels of piped-water-based productive activity were found to be associated with shorter distances from a community to a city or paved road (i.e. markets), more capable water system operators and water committees, and communities that contributed to the construction of the piped water system. Further, access to electricity was associated with higher productive incomes from water-based productive activities, highlighting the role that non-water-related inputs have on the extent of productive activities undertaken. Finally, an analysis of the technical performance of piped water systems found no statistically significant association between high vs. low levels of productive activity and system performance; however, a positive relationship was found between system performance and the percentage of households engaged in productive activities.

KEYWORDS: Multiple-use water services, domestic plus, technical performance, water committee capacity, rural piped water, Senegal

Water, cities and peri-urban communities: Geographies of power in the context of drought in northwest Mexico

Rolando E. Díaz-Caravantes
El Colegio de Sonora, Hermosillo, Sonora, México; rdiaz@colson.edu.mx

Margaret Wilder
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA; mwilder@u.arizona.edu

ABSTRACT: The urban-peri-urban interaction is frequently studied with a focus on the necessities of urban expansion, chronicling the concerns of land annexation, housing construction and infrastructure. However, in arid regions such as Mexicoʼs drought-prone northwest, the research on peri-urban issues must increasingly focus on the under-examined issue of the power geometries that are reshaping the contours of access to water in fast-growing areas. This paper examines geographies of power of the urban-rural interface in Sonora, Mexico. Focused in the political ecology framework, we compare the success of Hermosilloʼs water supply projects while analysing some cases of peri-urban water users and grouping them into three general types: negotiation, passiveness and resistance, with large powerful water users, referred to in this paper as 'counterpoint cases'. We argue that urban water augmentation strategies reveal a distinct set of urban-peri-urban relations of unequal social power where peri-urban water resources are transferred to urban areas; reflecting, over the last three decades (1981-2010), the demands of powerful, politically connected urban populations and large irrigation districts. While during the same period, peri-urban small-scale communal farmers or ejidatarios lost access to their water as it was moved or used to supply the needs of Hermosilloʼs expansion.

KEYWORDS: Water, geography, power, peri-urban, ejidos, Mexico

Desalination and water security: The promise and perils of a technological fix to the water crisis in Baja California Sur, Mexico

Jamie McEvoy
Department of Earth Sciences, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, USA; jamie.mcevoy@montana.edu

ABSTRACT: Across the globe, desalination is increasingly being considered as a new water supply source. This article examines how the introduction of desalinated water into the municipal water supply portfolio has affected water security in the coastal tourist city of Cabo San Lucas in Baja California Sur (BCS), Mexico. It also analyses the competing discourses surrounding desalination in the region and discusses alternative water management options for achieving water security. This article challenges the notion that desalination is an appropriate and sufficient technological solution for arid regions. The findings provide evidence of increased yet delimited water security at a neighbourhood scale while identifying new vulnerabilities related to desalination, particularly in the context of the global South. This article concludes that implementing a technological fix on top of a water management system that is plagued with more systemic and structural problems does little to improve long-term water management and is likely to foreclose or forestall other water management options. This multi-scalar analysis contributes to the emerging literature on water security by considering both a narrow and broad framing of water security and identifying a range of factors that influence water security.

KEYWORDS: Water security, desalination, adaptive water management, Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, Mexico

Coyotes, concessions and construction companies: Illegal water markets and legally constructed water scarcity in central Mexico

Nadine Reis
Department of Geography, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany; nreis@uni-bonn.de

ABSTRACT: Many regions of (semi)arid Mexico, such as the Valley of Toluca, face challenges due to rapid growth and the simultaneous overexploitation of groundwater. The water reform of the 1990s introduced individual water rights concessions granted through the National Water Commission (Comisión Nacional del Agua, or CONAGUA). Since then, acquiring new water rights in officially 'water-scarce' aquifers is only possible through official rights transmissions from users ceding their rights. With the law prohibiting the sale of water rights, a profitable illegal market for these rights has emerged. The key actor in the water rights allocation network is the coyote, functioning as a broker between a) people wanting to cede water rights and those needing them, and b) the formal and informal spheres of water rights allocation. Actors benefitting from water rights trading include the coyote and his 'working brigades', water users selling surplus rights, and (senior and lower-level) staff in the water bureaucracy. The paper concludes that legally constructed water scarcity is key to the reproduction of illegal water rights trading. This has important implications regarding the current push for expanding regularisation of groundwater extraction in Mexico. Currently, regularisation does not counter overexploitation, while possibly leading to a de facto privatisation of groundwater.

KEYWORDS: Water rights, water markets, groundwater concessions, water scarcity, Mexico

New arenas of engagement at the water governance-climate finance nexus? An analysis of the boom and bust of hydropower CDM projects in Vietnam

Mattijs Smits
Environmental Policy Group, Wageningen University; Wageningen, the Netherlands; mattijs.smits@wur.nl

Carl Middleton
MA in International Development Studies Program, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand; carl.chulalongkorn@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: This article explores whether new arenas of engagement for water governance have been created and utilised following the implementation of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) in large hydropower projects in Vietnam. Initial optimism for climate finance – in particular amongst Northern aid providers and private CDM consultants – resulted in a boom in registration of CDM hydropower projects in Vietnam. These plans, however, have since then busted. The article utilises a multi-scale and multi-place network governance analysis of the water governance-climate finance nexus, based on interviews with government officials, consultants, developers, NGOs, multilateral and international banks, and project-affected people at the Song Bung 2 and Song Bung 4 hydropower projects in Central Vietnam. Particular attention is paid to how the place-based nature of organisations shapes the ability of these actors to participate in decision-making. The article concludes that the CDM has had little impact on water governance in Vietnam at the project level in terms of carbon reduction (additionality) or attaining sustainable development objectives. Furthermore, whilst climate finance has the potential to open new, more transparent and more accountable arenas of water governance, current arenas of the water governance-climate finance nexus are 'rendered technical', and therefore often underutilised and inaccessible to civil society and project-affected people.

KEYWORDS: Water governance, Clean Development Mechanism, hydropower, arenas of engagement, Vietnam

Spatial displacement and temporal deferral: Toward an alternative explanation of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint Basin water conflict

Johnny King Alaziz Wong
College of Geosciences, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, US; jwong@mail.usf.edu

M. Martin Bosman
College of Geosciences, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, US; bosman@usf.edu

ABSTRACT: The Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) River Basin conflict officially began in 1989 and despite ongoing declarations of readiness to seek a negotiated outcome to the conflict, there is still no end in sight. In fact, 2014 marks the 25th anniversary of this conflict. In this paper, we depart from conventional explanations of the crisis and propose an alternative theoretical point of entry to draw attention to the key structural forces driving water accumulation strategies in the basin. In doing so, we turn to David Harvey’s theoretical framework of capitalist growth and crisis to present an alternative understanding of the water conflict. By adopting this framework, we will reveal how the most dominant political and economic actor in the conflict, metro-Atlanta, has devised a series of spatial and temporal strategies to delay and displace a resolution while simultaneously using the impasse to entrench its economic and territorial interests to secure as much water as possible from the ACF water basin. The paper emphasises the crisis of capitalism in the form of suburbanisation in metro-Atlanta as the primary context in which the water conflict exists.

KEYWORDS: Water conflicts, capitalism, spatiotemporal fix, switching crisis, accumulation by dispossession, ACF conflict

Technical veil, hidden politics: Interrogating the power linkages behind the nexus

Jeremy Allouche
Institute of Development Studies, STEPS Centre, Brighton, UK; j.allouche@ids.ac.uk

Carl Middleton
MA in International Development Studies Program, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand; carl.chulalongkorn@gmail.com

Dipak Gyawali
Nepal Academy of Science and Technology, Kathmandu, Nepal; dipakgyawali@ntc.net.np

ABSTRACT: The nexus is still very much an immature concept. Although it is difficult to disagree with a vision of integration between water, food and energy systems, there are fewer consensuses about what it means in reality. While some consider its framing to be too restrictive (excluding climate change and nature), particular actors see it as linked to green economy and poverty reduction, while others emphasise global scarcity and value chain management. The nexus debates, however, mask a bigger debate on resource inequality and access, contributing to social instability. Indeed, the market-technical framing of the nexus by the World Economic Forum, located in international business imperatives and global neoliberal policy hides political issues such as inequality, the manufacture of scarcity and international political economy and geopolitics. By addressing these, we then propose a new framing of the nexus.

KEYWORDS: Nexus, scarcity, politics, technology, systems approach

Competition, conflict, and compromise: Three discourses used by irrigators in England and their implications for the co-management of water resources

Luke Whaley
Cranfield Water Science Institute, Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, UK; l.whaley@cranfield.ac.uk

Edward K. Weatherhead
Cranfield Water Science Institute, Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, UK; k.weatherhead@cranfield.ac.uk

ABSTRACT: In this paper we use discourse analysis to explore the current dynamic that exists among farmer irrigators in England, and between irrigators and water managers in order to understand the potential for co-management to develop. To do this we employ two concepts from the field of critical discursive psychology – 'interpretive repertoires' and 'subject positions' – and apply them to a qualitative analysis of 20 interviews with farmers who are members of irrigator groups and two focus group discussions with farmers thinking about forming an irrigator group. The findings reveal that the participants drew upon three interpretive repertoires when talking about the relationship between farming and water resources management, namely the 'competition', 'conflict', and 'compromise' repertoires, with the latter being the least dominant. We situate the repertoires in their wider historical context to reveal the ideological forces at play, and conclude that the relative dominance of the competition and conflict repertoires serve as a barrier to co-management. In particular, this is because they engender low levels of trust and reinforce a power dynamic that favours individualism and opposition. At the same time, the less-dominant compromise repertoire challenges the power of the other two, providing some hope of achieving more participatory forms of water resources management in the future. To this end, we discuss how the restructuring of current agri-environment schemes and government water programmes may be used to promote the adoption and institutionalisation of the compromise repertoire in order to facilitate the emergence of co-management.

KEYWORDS: Water resources, co-management, farming, discourse, power, England