Nate Millington
Department of Geography; and Manchester Urban Institute, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK; nate.millington@manchester.ac.uk

ABSTRACT: This paper analyses an ongoing paradigm shift in how engineers have responded to the persistent problem of flooding in São Paulo, Brazil. Until recently, civil engineers largely attempted to expel water from the landscape as fast as possible. Over the past three decades, however, engineers have begun to articulate new mechanisms for responding to flooding that store stormwater in the urban landscape. In this paper, I analyse the construction of what are commonly referred to as piscinões, large-scale detention ponds that pool stormwater in the event of heavy rain events. Drawing from literature in urban political ecology, I argue that piscinões attempt to correct for a complex and unequal landscape, but that they do so in a way that mainly prioritises large-scale engineering solutions to the problem of flooding. As such, in spite of being hailed as indicative of a paradigm shift in flood management, piscinões are instead a continuation of the city’s broader hydraulic and urban paradigms. In response, I consider alternative approaches to the development of multifunctional piscinões that could serve both social and ecological aims. Ultimately, however, I draw from urban political ecology to argue that flooding is fundamentally a political problem that requires a political solution.

KEYWORDS: Water, infrastructure, flooding, climate change, urban political ecology, São Paulo, Brazil

Sachin Tiwale
Centre for Water Policy and Governance, School of Habitat Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India; and Centre for Policy Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India; sachin.tiwale@tiss.edu

ABSTRACT: This paper examines the numbers associated with the water demand estimation process followed for the city of Mumbai, particularly focusing on the per capita water supply standard. The per capita standard is a critical figure for the planning, design, and operation of the entire urban water supply system from dam to household level tap. Historically, high per capita standards were consistently prescribed for Mumbai to overestimate water demand and construct number narratives of water shortages. These narratives were successfully used to appropriate a larger share of water by justifying a series of dams and keeping other urban centres and villages within the region water deprived. In colonial and post-colonial times Mumbai always received enough water, brought using higher per capita standards. However, these supply standards were never measured and monitored during actual service delivery within the city. The water demand of poor slum residents was overcounted by following universal per capita standards when bringing water to the city. However, the same slum residents were subtracted or underserved during actual service delivery. Analysing colonial and post-colonial practices of water resources development, this paper illustrates the limitations of the existing approach of water demand estimation using the prescribed per capita standard, which delinks the process of water resources development from water distribution within the city. The prescribed per capita standard does not reflect the conditions of access and status of supply provisioning and underplays the issues pertaining to the poor performance of the distribution network, which further marginalises the urban poor.

KEYWORDS: water demand estimation, water supply, standard, narratives, Mumbai, India

Manuel Franco-Torres
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway; m.franco.torres@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: The urban water sector in industrialised countries is transitioning towards a new paradigm, usually characterised by participatory approaches to governance, integrated modes of management, circular economies, partnership with nature, and green and distributed infrastructure. However, change in a prevailing paradigm is rarely seen in connection with shifts in the underlying societal beliefs, assumptions, and values of an epoch (that is, the cultural framework). In this paper, I review the alterations that the dominant urban water paradigm has experienced over the past 150 years, analysing them in relation to evolving cultural frameworks. I start with industrial modernity (mid-19th century to mid-20th century), followed by descriptions of postmodernism and reflexive modernisation (late 20th century). Finally, I provide an innovative analysis of the new urban water paradigm as a reflection of metamodernism, an emergent cultural framework recently described in the field of cultural studies. I show that metamodernism can be used to explain coherently how urban water systems in industrialised countries are responding to growing complexity and uncertainty. They do so by oscillating between principles associated with modernity, such as order, technological optimism and utopian development, and postmodern principles, such as eclecticism, partial views of reality and participation.

KEYWORDS: Urban water management, new paradigm, modernity, reflexive modernisation, metamodernism

Jason Alexandra
Alexandra and Associates, Melbourne, VIC 3095, Australia & RMIT University, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, Melbourne, VIC 3000, Australia; jason@alexandra-consulting.com

Lauren Rickards
Centre for Urban Research, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia; lauren.rickards@rmit.edu.au

ABSTRACT: Droughts are intensifying in many mid-latitude river basins due to climate change; therefore understanding the influence of droughts on water policy is crucial. This study of the politics of water reforms in Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) analyses contrasting discourses of water security during the Millennium Drought (1996-2010). The paper traces the historical evolution, mobilisation and effects of three discourses defined as 'drought-proofing', 'higher value use' and 'river restoration'. These are broadly aligned with engineering, economics and ecological perspectives, and while all discourses were integrated into government responses to the drought, the resurgence of drought-proofing significantly altered policy settings intended to shift MDB water management onto a more sustainable path. The paper illustrates the political and physical conditioning of water policy, placing drought responses in their historical context. The analysis demonstrates how policy actors used discourses of water security to define normative goals and legitimise policies, particularly when climatic extremes provide opportunities to influence policy outcomes. The paper provides three key insights for water governance and climate adaptation: first, drought responses can have far-reaching effects for water governance and policy trajectories; second, droughts pose challenges to positive climate adaptation when they revitalise heroic drought-proofing initiatives; and third, understanding the historical roots of contemporary drought responses is vital for effective climate adaptation.

KEYWORDS: Water security, water politics, drought, climate change adaptation, discourse, Murray-Darling Basin, Australia

Danny Marks
School of Law and Government, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland; danny.marks@dcu.ie

Michael Breen
Anti-Corruption Research Centre, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland; michael.breen@dcu.ie

ABSTRACT: This article presents empirical information on experiences of corruption in the wastewater sector. Previous studies have examined the types and magnitude of corrupt behaviour that have been documented in water supply and sanitation services and have found that corruption in the sector is sophisticated and pervasive. Drawing on interviews with key stakeholders, we document a range of corrupt behaviours at the citizen–institution interface and in public financial management. Our findings underline the importance of contextual factors, including the rapid industrialisation and urbanisation taking place in the Extended Bangkok Metropolitan Region, as well as the existing institutional and regulatory weaknesses. Our findings also point to the environmental impact of corruption in the wastewater sector, a hitherto neglected factor which our respondents perceived as an immediate and direct threat to their communities and livelihoods.

KEYWORDS: Political economy of corruption, wastewater and sanitation sector, Khlong Dan wastewater plant, integrity failures, Extended Bangkok Metropolitan Region, Thailand

Michael H. Finewood
Pace University Department of Environmental Studies and Science, Pleasantville, New York, USA; mfinewood@pace.edu

Gretchen Sneegas
Texas A&M University Department of Geography, College Station, Texas, USA; gsneegas@tamu.edu

Chana Friedenberg
Pace University Department of Environmental Studies and Science, Pleasantville, New York, USA; cf06945w@pace.edu

Loraine Guevarez
Pace University Department of Environmental Studies and Science, Pleasantville, New York, USA; lguevarez@pace.edu

ABSTRACT: This paper presents a critically reflexive audit of research we conducted to explore perceptions of water resource governance and conditions. In 2018/19, we administered stakeholder perception surveys to people who were working in, or had contributed to, watershed governance in the Lower Hudson Valley, New York. Through an initial analysis we determined that participation was not representative of regional diversity. As a result, we took steps to address this disparity in participation by developing a mid-course correction and instituting a series of focused interviews with people from communities 'missed' in the surveys. We also conducted an audit of our methods to better understand where we went wrong. Here we discuss our research methods and experiences as well as how our positionalities and a 'colourblind' methodology introduced and maintained barriers to participation. We draw specifically on literature from watershed governance, participation, intersectionality, and critical race theory. We also draw on the responses of interview participants, which identified racialised barriers and lack of representation as key reasons for broader disengagement within the water governance community that we surveyed. We argue that our methods reproduced existing institutional modes of networking and reinforced existing barriers to participation, particularly for under-represented communities.

KEYWORDS: Watershed governance, methods, barriers to participation, critical reflexive audit, Hudson Valley, USA

Shashank Deora
Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas (CTARA), Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India; deora.shashank@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: The experience of watershed development and management in countries of the Global South highlights significant challenges to governance. Establishing the overlap between watershed and commons, this paper identifies some of the most critical challenges to watershed governance in India, which follow from the uneven power relations and politics among diverse watershed actors. Common issues are faced in the implementation of the adaptive, polycentric governance regimes that are recommended for governing complex social-ecological systems like watersheds. Popular approaches in the commons literature that are focused on institutional analysis, however, do not adequately engage with the power and politics in natural resource governance; indeed, power relations and politics around a watershed can be better analysed using a social constructionist approach to natural resource governance. As has been attempted in some recent commons scholarship, this should include perspectives from political ecology, feminist political ecology, and critical human geography. Such an approach can help explain the historical emergence of the watershed through multiple socially constructed processes. It can also facilitate investigation into the relationship between watershed governing institutions and the changing human subjectivities of watershed actors that underlie dynamic scalar commoning. This paper discusses the potential, challenges and limitations of a social constructionist approach to the comprehensive diagnosis of watersheds; it also highlights some key questions that can be addressed through future research.

KEYWORDS: Watershed governance, watershed and commons, scalar dynamics, power and politics, socially constructed commons, human subjectivities, India

Gabriela Cuadrado-Quesada
IHE-Delft Institute for Water Education, Delft, the Netherlands; g.quesada@un-ihe.org

K.J. Joy
Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management (SOPPECOM), Pune, India; joykjjoy2@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: With groundwater becoming the mainstay for meeting water requirements for life and livelihoods, countries around the world are experimenting with law reforms in order to establish some guiding rules for its use, distribution and protection. A fundamental question about law reforms is the degree to which they incorporate justice and sustainability. This article, in responding to this question, focuses on Maharashtra, India. We base our response on a content analysis of the 2009 Maharashtra Groundwater (Development and Management) Act; the 2018 Maharashtra Groundwater (Development and Management Draft Groundwater Rules; and a village case study. Primary data was collected in Pune, Mumbai, and Hivre Bazar village; this included an empirical analysis of 47 in-depth interviews, participation in a number of village meetings and open-ended discussions, and direct observations of groundwater practices. Our analysis led to three conclusions. First, the 2009 Groundwater Act and the 2018 Draft Groundwater Rules are primarily driven by concern for sustainability of the resource, especially in areas where the water table is steadily declining, but when it comes to groundwater justice, no proactive measures are suggested in either the 2009 Groundwater Act or the 2018 Draft Groundwater Rules. Second, there are certain core factors identified at the local level that we believe to be fundamental in facilitating sustainability and – to a lesser extent – groundwater justice. These factors include a community’s ability to: (1) acknowledge that there is a crisis and display a willingness to engage with it; (2) create a rule-bound community groundwater resource; (3) demonstrate leadership and the feeling of community; and (4) utilise awareness, information and knowledge. Our third conclusion is that there is a need for the co-evolution of community practices and state-led groundwater law; such a co-evolution has the potential to put in place arrangements around groundwater that can support both groundwater justice and sustainability.

KEYWORDS: Groundwater justice, sustainability, groundwater law, practices, India

Tavengwa Chitata
The University of Sheffield, Department of Geography, Sheffield, United Kingdom; tchitata1@sheffield.ac.uk

Jeltsje Sanne Kemerink-Seyoum
University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Delft, The Netherlands; and IHE-Delft Institute for Water Education, Delft, The Netherlands; j.kemerink@un-ihe.org

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

ABSTRACT: In this paper, we focus on changes made in the form and materiality of water infrastructure in a smallholder irrigation scheme in Zimbabwe. We use this focus on sociotechnical tinkering as a practical entry point to exploring how these changes matter in shaping knowledges and relationships in irrigated agriculture. Drawing on data collected through ethnographic methods, we show how history and politics matter in shaping the possibilities of rearranging infrastructure. Equally important are the knowledge-laden, embodied and discursive practices of the farmers, operators and engineers who engage with infrastructure. We argue that through the knowledges, creativity and agency of people interacting with irrigation infrastructure, water as well as power are (re)defined and (re)distributed in subtle and often unexpected, yet significant, ways.

KEYWORDS: Groundwater, irrigation infrastructure, smallholder farming, knowledge, Zimbabwe

David W. Walker
JSPS International Research Fellow, Faculty of Design, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan; and Water Resources Management Group, Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands; david.walker@wur.nl

Masakazu Tani
Faculty of Design, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan; tani@design.kyushu-u.ac.jp

Narayan Gyawali
Lutheran World Relief (LWR) Nepal, Kathmandu, Nepal; ngyawali@lwr.org

Prem Sagar Chapagain
Central Department of Geography, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal; ps.chapagain@gmail.com

Jeffrey C. Davids
California State University, Chico; and SmartPhones4Water (S4W), Chico, California, USA; jcdavids@csuchico.edu

Alisha Ghimire
Community Resilience and Humanitarian practitioner, Kathmandu, Nepal; ghimire.ali@gmail.com

Makhan Maharjan
Urban Environment Management Society (UEMS), Lalitpur, Nepal; maharjan.makhan@gmail.com

binod.parajuli@adpc.net
Binod Prasad Parajuli Practical Action, Kathmandu, Nepal;

Rajaram Prajapati
Smartphones For Water Nepal (S4W-Nepal), Lalitpur, Nepal; rajaram@smartphones4water.org

Santosh Regmi
Nepal Hydrological and Meteorological Research Center, Kathmandu, Nepal; sregmi11@yahoo.com

Rakesh Kumar Shah
Lutheran World Relief (LWR) Nepal, Kathmandu, Nepal; rshah@lwr.org

Puja Shakya
Practical Action, Kathmandu, Nepal; puja.shakya@practicalaction.org.np

Surabhi Upadhyay
Smartphones For Water Nepal (S4W-Nepal), Lalitpur, Nepal; surabhi@smartphones4water.org

ABSTRACT: Citizen science is blossoming in the water sciences and benefits to the scientific community are well reported. The experiences of involved citizens are less well researched, however, particularly in the Global South. To address this knowledge gap, we investigated the participant motivations of citizen science water projects in Nepal and the benefits and negative impacts of involvement. Semi-structured interviews and questionnaires were utilised with 74 participants and 15 project organisers, mainly from 5 projects. Participant responses yielded evidence of most of the commonly reported potential benefits of involvement in citizen science, including knowledge gain, increased scientific literacy, and empowerment. Not all benefits were experienced by all participants, however, and there was evidence – albeit minimal – of negative impacts, with some participants reporting the net effect of involvement as being burdensome or disappointing. Participant motivations matched those typically observed among Global North citizen scientists; most commonly, contributing to scientific research, having the opportunity to learn, and helping the community. While this study indicated that involvement in the investigated projects was mostly beneficial, further Global South citizen scientist assessments are needed to enable benefits to be maximised, negative impacts to be avoided, and motivations to be understood for improved participant targeting and retention.

KEYWORDS: Citizen science, Global South, water resources, water quality, disaster risk reduction, participant assessment, Nepal

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

Luke Whaley
Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK; l.whaley@sheffield.ac.uk

Evance Mwathunga
Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, Chancellor College, University of Malawi, Zomba, Malawi; emwathunga@cc.ac.mw

ABSTRACT: This article highlights one important reason why attempts to achieve sustainable development through community management often fail – the neglect of worldviews. It addresses a gap in existing research on institutional bricolage by focussing on the core role that beliefs and rationales play in resource governance. Our research into rural water supply in Malawi and Uganda was conducted through a variety of ethnographic methods including year-long community diaries. Drawing on this, we demonstrate how worldviews shape local water management arrangements and their outcomes. We unpick three dimensions of the work that worldviews do In (1) making sense of socio-natural events and processes, (2) maintaining unequal social orders, and (3) serving as resources for institutional arrangements. The article concludes with a reflection on how our approach meaningfully furthers critical water studies, and on the challenges faced by development initiatives in operationalising such insights.

KEYWORDS: Worldviews, critical institutionalism, institutional bricolage, community management, Malawi, Uganda

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yahua Wang
School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China; wangyahua@tsinghua.edu.cn

Mengdi Cao
School of Government, Peking University, Beijing, China; caomengdi868@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: Irrigation is key for agricultural production and public affairs in China. Canal irrigation has been the dominant form of irrigation in China for over two thousand years, but this is changing dramatically in contemporary China. Official government data and observational studies prove that canal irrigation has sharply declined in China in the past several decades. This paper explores the causes and influences associated with this decline. We use the social-ecological systems (SES) framework to diagnose the causes of the decline of canal irrigation and identify the significant influences on it. The broader contextual variables of industrialisation, urbanisation, policy, marketisation and technological progress influence resource systems, farmers and governance systems, which, in turn, have jointly led to the decline of canal irrigation. This study also considers the economic, social and ecological consequences of such a shift in irrigation pattern. The decline of canal irrigation may be inevitable in the transformation from a rural to a modern society. However, we must be aware of its costs and risks. To maintain the effectiveness of rural irrigation during the transformation to a modern society, we propose three implications of the decline of canal irrigation.

KEYWORDS: Irrigation transformation, commons, social-ecological systems (SES) framework, rural governance, public systems, China

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

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

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

ABSTRACT: Irrigation management encapsulates human capacity for building and sustaining collective cooperation, which is directed at the allocation and utilisation of water as a common-pool resource. Although rooted in rural communities, irrigation management is also subject to macro socio-economic and ecological settings that mediate micro human-nature relations. In East Asia, the long-established tradition of irrigation management has been confronting a series of new challenges such as an ageing and decreasing rural populations, increasing regional and sectoral competition for water, the growing influence of neoliberalism, and shifting public policies that reshape state-society-market interactions. This Special Issue aims at revisiting irrigation management in East Asia against the backdrop of rapid socio-economic transformation. In this introductory article, we set the scene by illustrating why the understanding of irrigation management should be situated in a broader socio-economic and political context. We then briefly summarise the key findings of the collection of papers in this Special Issue. It is shown that external challenges do not necessarily lead to the failure of irrigation management. New features of irrigation practices (for example, institutional reinvention and restructuring) may emerge as public, communal and private actors who co-manage irrigation systems respond and adapt to societal and environmental changes.

KEYWORDS: Irrigation, institutions, socio-economic transformation, adaptation, East Asia

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

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

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

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

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

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