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: Ensuring adequate access to clean water remains a major challenge throughout the world, particularly in off-grid and low-income neighbourhoods in the Global South. Digital water infrastructure such as water ATMs (automated standpipes) has been a common policy response to this challenge, targeted particularly at off-grid citizens in urban and peri-urban areas. Despite growing implementation and interest, however, limited empirical research analysis has been devoted to a consideration of the ways in which water ATM infrastructures are being implemented and how they impact water access in off-grid locations. Drawing on a mix of qualitative methods and a situated sociotechnical approach, the paper addresses this gap by examining how water ATMs are implemented and deployed, and their impacts on water access in a peri-urban community in Ghana. We find water ATMs as incremental infrastructures delivering relatively limited operational-level value, with their deployment and operationalisation shaped through everyday realities, existing community infrastructures, and networks of actors and intermediaries. We highlight how water ATMs produce new sociomaterial realities of water access which are also contested. We argue that digital water infrastructures are not just technical, but that they are, rather, terrains that underlie and are embedded in social, technical and political dynamics. Given the increasing deployment of water ATMs and digital water systems in urban areas of the Global South, we conclude the paper with recommendations for off-grid digital water infrastructure implementation.

KEYWORDS: Water ATMs, digital water innovations, water access, off-grid water, infrastructure, Ghana

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lena Hommes
Water Resources Management (WRM) Group, Department of Environmental Sciences, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands; lena.hommes@wur.nl

ABSTRACT: This paper analyses the discussions surrounding dam removal in Spain and, specifically, ongoing contestations around the Toranes Dam. Engaging with scholarship about the temporalities of infrastructure and imaginaries, I show how dam removal is a trend that comes forth from temporally situated and shifting relations in the sociopolitical, technical, financial and environmental networks in which dams are embedded. More than simply a consequence of material decay and expiring use licences, dam removal is also intrinsically related to changing imaginaries about dams, rivers and nature. However, dam removal is contested. Central to it are debates about the definition of, and relations between, nature, society and cultural heritage in the past, present and future. People’s subjectivities – shaped by the dam and its intended and unintended effects on the environment and hydrosocial relations – are also a source of anti-removal mobilisation. The paper demonstrates how dam removal is a fascinating topic that draws attention to the different temporalities dams hold, including the stage of material and potentially also ideological ruin. Dam removal, however, does not (yet?) represent a clear paradigm shift; rather, the reality is messy, with dam construction and removal at times being promoted simultaneously.

KEYWORDS: Dams, dam removal, temporalities of infrastructure, imaginaries, Spain

Marco Immovilli
Wageningen University, Sociology of Development and Change Group, Wageningen, The Netherlands; marco.immovilli@wur.nl

Susanne Reitsma
Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, The Hague, The Netherlands; susanne.reitsma@icloud.com

Regine Roncucci
Independent researcher, Brussels, Belgium; regine.roncucci@cri-paris.org

Elisabet Dueholm Rasch
Wageningen University, Sociology of Development and Change Group, Wageningen, The Netherlands; elisabet.rasch@wur.nl

Dik Roth
Wageningen University, Sociology of Development and Change Group, Wageningen, The Netherlands; dik.roth@wur.nl

ABSTRACT: Rights of Nature (RoN) approaches as a tool to protect ecosystems and nature is gaining growing attention in academic and societal debates. Despite this new momentum, theoretical work is increasingly pointing out major problems and uncertainties related to such approaches. Inspired by this critical work, the paper considers RoN as a type of intervention that competes with those of other actors for the control of, and decision-making power over, natural resources. To understand the implications of such interventions, it is necessary to investigate how they shape, and are shaped by, local context. To that end, we look at Rights of Rivers (RoR) cases in New Zealand, Colombia and India. Investigating these well-researched cases, we aim to tease out the material and discursive contestations that emerge from the establishment and implementation of RoR interventions. We then propose an analytical approach that has emerged from our fieldwork and which can be useful in identifying the conflicts and contestations underpinning RoR.

KEYWORDS: Rights of Nature, Rights of Rivers, value of nature, ecocentrism, dimensions of contestation, water governance, socionature, Whanganui, Atrato, Ganga

Mohsen Nagheeby
School of Law, Northumbria University; and Water Security and Sustainable Development Hub, Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK; mohsen.nagheeby@newcastle.ac.uk

Jeroen Warner
Social Sciences Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands; jeroen.warner@wur.nl

ABSTRACT: Reports predict frighteningly serious escalations of the controversy between Afghanistan and its neighbours over transboundary waters. However, a postulated future is not empirical evidence. This paper focuses on Afghanistan’s relations with Iran. It aims to examine the evolution of the hydropolitical relations between Afghanistan and Iran over the Helmand River Basin and to identify where and how changes in the relationship occurred over the past century. The Transboundary Waters Interaction NexuS (TWINS) model is used to map the evolution of hydropolitical relations between the two riparian states. The paper also explores the dynamics of the political relations between the states in order to understand the potential for greater cooperation. While there is a complete disconnect between the two sides in terms of water management, the paper’s historical analysis shows that the frightening claims are not backed by facts on the ground and that they misrepresent the hydropolitical relations as they exist within the broader geopolitical context. The paper concludes that for both Afghanistan and Iran over the period of Western intervention and civil war, the water controversy has constantly been overshadowed by other priority concerns such as security, economy, and the quest for the stabilisation of Afghanistan. Enhanced water cooperation therefore depends on a change in the nature of geopolitical relations between the two countries and on the creation of a collective identity by Afghanistan and Iran over the Helmand River Basin.

KEYWORDS: Helmand/Hirmand River Basin, transboundary waters, cooperation, frozen conflict, Western interventions, geopolitics, Iran, Afghanistan

Sibyl Diver
Department of Earth System Science, Stanford University, Stanford, USA; sdiver@stanford.edu

M.V. Eitzel
Science and Justice Research Center, UC Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, USA; Center for Community and Citizen Science, UC Davis, Davis, USA; mveitzel@ucdavis.edu

Susan Fricke
Karuk Tribe Department of Natural Resources, Orleans, USA; susandfricke@gmail.com

Leaf Hillman
Karuk Tribe, Orleans, USA; leafhillman2@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: Water governance engages with complex collective action problems that typically involve a wide range of actors across multiple jurisdictions and large geographical areas. Scholars have conceptualised frameworks of collaborative and polycentric governance to reflect more democratic, devolved and diverse arrangements for governing complexity. What has often been overlooked, however, is the sociopolitical context of working with Indigenous nations and the distinct cultural and political perspectives they bring to polycentric water governance. Focusing on the Karuk Tribe in the Klamath Basin (western United States), this case study examines sovereignty and sustainability concerns that arise with collaborative, polycentric water governance initiatives that involve Indigenous nations. First, we leverage environmental justice frameworks to reveal tensions between collaborative, polycentric governance and social justice concerns. Second, using social network analysis, we examine Klamath water quality networks that involve the Karuk Tribe. Our analysis shows that the Karuk Tribe – as represented by five tribal natural resource managers – connected to 244 distinct organisations and 21 coalitions around water quality issues during the 2018/2019 study period. Social networks help us to visualise the labour required of tribal managers working on water quality issues across multiple centres of governance. Third, we develop the concept of networked sovereignty in water governance to consider both the opportunity and the burden that some Indigenous nations are taking on to advance self-determination in this moment of devolved governance – when tribal managers are building relationships with hundreds of agencies and organisations.

KEYWORDS: Collaborative governance, environmental justice, water quality, polycentric governance, Indigenous rights, Indigenous water governance, social network analysis, Klamath River Basin

Farhad Muktarov
International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Hague, the Netherlands; mukhtarov@iss.nl; Institute of Water Studies, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, Singapore; sppfarh@nus.edu.sg

ABSTRACT: This review provides a fresh look at the strengths and weaknesses of four distinct generations of research on water policy travels. Studies on policy diffusion explicate patterns of adoption across large-n units and are interested in tipping points, early and late adopters, and which policies spread more easily. Diffusion research privileges structural forces such as globalisation and competition over diffusion agents and national-level politics. Policy transfer scholarship is based mainly on small-n case studies and interrogates the 'what' and the 'who' of policy transfer as well as asks into what conditions a policy is transferred. The key premise of this school of research is that transfer decisions are made rationally based on voluntary learning, coercion, or some negotiated motivation. Policy translation scholarship developed as a critique of diffusion and transfer studies. It posits that policies undergo significant transformation when moving through various settings and that this process is intensely political and power-laden. Policy branding is an offshoot of policy translation research. It focuses on branding of policies and policy agents by establishing an explicit link with places and projects. The key focus is on the power of ideas and neoliberal underpinnings of policy travel. These four generations of research are based on contrasting premises about what travels, how and why it travels, and to what effect. The review offers an appraisal of this large and diverse literature and proposes potential complementarities.

KEYWORDS: Water policy, diffusion, transfer, translation, branding, review

Olivia Aubriot
CNRS-CEH (Centre for Himalayan Studies), Paris, France; olivia.aubriot@cnrs.fr

ABSTRACT:

Communal irrigation or user-managed irrigation – also long referred to as indigenous or traditional irrigation – has been the focus of interest for two main complementary reasons: 1) from a perspective of development practice (to learn lessons from customary management of these irrigation systems); and 2) from a theoretical perspective (to explore the relationship between irrigation and society). This paper reviews the main discourses through which the category of 'communal irrigation' is politically constructed. This is done through an historical reconstruction of the three main phases during which communal irrigation was the subject of discussion – namely, in the 19th century, the 1950s to 1980s, and from 1990 onwards. The review shows that while the definition of this category has evolved over these three periods it has always served the way the state positions itself in relation to the policies to be implemented. It underlines the adaptation, resistance or decline of the systems in the present context of growing competition over water, increasingly restrictive legislative frameworks, and more wide-ranging societal change. Finally, the review argues that the normative perspective and the universalistic principles that undergird most water policies conceal the diversity of knowledge and potentially weaken customary rules and historical communal systems.

KEYWORDS: Communal irrigation, indigenous irrigation, traditional irrigation, farmer-managed irrigation systems, common-pool resource, collective action, development paradigm, institution, water user association

Luke Whaley
Sheffield Global Sustainable Development Institute, University of Sheffield, UK; l.whaley@sheffield.ac.uk

ABSTRACT: Water governance research is confronted with a messy world that is difficult to make sense of. Mainstream policy approaches tend to simplify and standardise this messiness in ways that obscure complexity, power and politics. As a result, these approaches not only promise more than they can deliver but often end up reproducing unequal and iniquitous governance dynamics. A wealth of critical scholarship has attempted to address these limitations but with little impact. This review takes this dilemma as its central concern. The aim is to understand different ways that water governance scholarship has engaged with the messiness of the world, laying the groundwork for more fruitful dialogue with mainstream approaches. Firstly, the article recounts policy attempts to 'mainstream messiness' at the level of discourse. It notes salient features of these discourses, including integration, combination, and participation. Three sections follow that concern themselves with ways that critical water governance research has engaged with messiness. The first is messiness as 'scalar complexity'. A distinction is made between research that assumes that scales are fixed and pre-given and literature examining the politics and performativity of scale. Next, the review focuses on 'institutional diversity' and strands of literature that do a different job of articulating messy water governance arrangements, including neo-institutionalism, legal pluralism, and critical institutionalism. The third way of engaging with messiness is through the 'multiple meanings and practices' of water users and governance actors. The strands of literature reviewed are culture, values, and beliefs; narratives and discourse; and water ontologies. The penultimate section of the article proposes three broad interdisciplinary approaches that attempt to manage messiness by bringing together scalar complexity, institutional diversity, and multiple meanings and practices. The article concludes by revisiting the dilemma noted above: the failure of much critical water governance research to influence mainstream policy and practice.

KEYWORDS: Water governance, messiness, scale, institutions, meaning, practices

Carl Middleton
Center of Excellence on Resource Politics for Social Development, Center for Social Development Studies, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand; carl.m@chula.ac.th

ABSTRACT: Since the early 1990s, the Mekong basin has been transformed from a largely free-flowing basin to one that is increasingly impounded by large hydropower dams, impacting river hydrology, ecology, riparian livelihoods, and water governance. This comprehensive review organises and assesses political ecology literature on large dams in the basin. Following a conceptual scoping of the political ecology of large dams, the review covers: the biophysical impacts of hydropower in the Mekong basin and how the scientific studies that research them relate to political ecology literature; relational hydrosocial approaches, including hydrosocial ordering and networked political ecologies; the ontological multiplicity of the Mekong(s) and associated ontological politics; the political economy of large dams in the Mekong basin and its relationship to transboundary water governance and hydropolitics; the discourses and knowledge production about large dams, including those regarding water data politics, 'international best practices', impact assessments, and public participation; and livelihoods, the commons, and water justice. The review details how some large hydropower dams in the Mekong basin have taken on global salience, including the Pak Mun dam, the Nam Theun 2 dam, and the Xayaburi dam. The review argues that political ecology research has revealed the fundamentally political character of large dams’ planning, construction, operation, ownership, and financing and has significantly widened the scope of how large hydropower dams are understood and acted upon, especially by those challenging their realisation. This includes how large hydropower dams’ political processes and outcomes are shaped by asymmetrical power relations with consequences for social and ecological justice. Recognising that a substantial portion of political ecology research to date has been conducted as extensive plans for large dams were being materialised and contested, the review concludes by outlining future priority research areas that cover existing gaps and posing new questions that are arising as the river basin becomes progressively more impounded.

KEYWORDS: Political ecology of large hydropower dams, hydrosocial ordering, critical hydropolitics, commons, water justice, Mekong-Lancang River

David Sampedro-Sánchez
University of Seville, Department of Human Geography, Seville, Spain; sampedro@us.es

ABSTRACT: Numerous institutions and governments have opted to increase irrigation efficiency to tackle water problems, especially water scarcity. The purpose of this research is to analyse the effects that the introduction of new irrigation technologies has in closed basins with high water reuse and where most of the water is used for agriculture. We analyse the evolution in the water supply, the irrigated area and the crops in three irrigation communities in different sections of the Guadalquivir River Basin. The results are compared with irrigation areas where traditional irrigation systems are still in use as control groups. The new irrigation systems have triggered a wide range of responses in the irrigated areas, including increases in the size of the irrigated areas, the introduction of crops with greater water requirements, and the production of two harvests per year. Such intensification features have been enabled by the exploitation of resources that previously returned to the system. The analysis of the water balances shows that appropriate measures need to be implemented to reduce rather than increase pressure on resources, most prominently including a revision of water rights and devoting the savings to improving the quality of water ecosystems and/or to urban supply.

KEYWORDS: Irrigation efficiency, closed basins, drip irrigation adoption, water conservation, rebound effect, water rights, Guadalquivir, Spain

Joe Williams
Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom; williamsj168@cardiff.ac.uk

ABSTRACT: Desalination – or the creation of 'new' water by removing salt and impurities from saline, brackish or contaminated water – has transformed water resource management in many parts of the world. This technology is likely to continue to reshape the practices, politics and political economy of water throughout the 21st century. Desalination has long been a focus of research in techno-managerial and techno-triumphalist circles, but as global capacity has grown and as new water infrastructures have developed in more diverse and contested contexts, it has increasingly attracted debate in the critical social sciences and humanities. This paper offers a critical review of the current state of the desalination debate. The paper proceeds in three parts. First, it sketches out the contours of desalination’s uneven global emergence as a game changer in water resource management, briefly introducing the reader to its technical aspects and highlighting key trends. Second, the paper examines differing interpretations of the drivers of this phenomenon. The paper challenges dominant and reductionist explanations that tend to highlight water scarcity as an external factor, population growth and industrialisation. Instead, it foregrounds four alternative explanations for the extraordinary growth of desalination as: 1) a tool for fixing insoluble political issues in water management; 2) a technological adaptation that reflects and reinforces processes of decentralisation in water management; 3) a source of reliable long-term revenue for increasingly financialised models of water service provision; and 4) a driver of growth in particular industries and economic sectors. Finally, the paper suggests some future directions for critical desalination research.

KEYWORDS: Desalination, political ecology, water security, hydropolitics, transitions

Alberto Quintavalla
Erasmus University Rotterdam; quintavalla@law.eur.nl

ABSTRACT: Is there a relationship between the conceptualisation of water and its regulation? There is no simple or obvious answer to this question. This paper contends that the Roman regulatory framework mirrored the fragmented conceptualisation of water that was dominant in pre-modern times. The paper aims to show that water regulation is sensitive to the particular conceptualisation of water that a society adopts, which in turn reflects the specific historical period in which it is embedded. It also aims to show that there may be a way to deal with local hydrography differently from the paradigm currently promoted by the integrated water resource management framework. These considerations are not moot in today’s discussions on water resource management.

KEYWORDS: Water law, Roman law, water conceptualisation, ownership categories, water history

Evelyn C.G. Lukat
Institute of Geography, Osnabrück University, Osnabrück, Germany; evelyn.lukat@uos.de

Mirja Schoderer
German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik, Bonn, Germany; and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), the Netherlands; mirja.schoderer@die-gdi.de

Sofia Castro Salvador
Institute for Nature, Earth and Energy (INTE)-PUCP, Lima, Peru; and Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, France; castro.sa@pucp.pe

ABSTRACT: International targets such as the Sustainable Development Goals or those that are set as part of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) programmes are, on the whole, universally accepted; however, they are often shaped mainly in the Global North. As a result, when these institutionally set targets conflict with pre-existing rules and norms in implementing states, implementation difficulties may result, as one can currently observe with regard to IWRM and SDG 6.5. Governance challenges that result from implementation gaps are often filled at the local level, where actors arrange for functional management processes despite institutional insecurity. Applying institutional bricolage theory, we investigate such processes for South Africa, Mongolia and Peru, focusing on how horizontal and vertical coordination, as well as participation, are achieved as key aspects of IWRM. By adopting an analytical frame focusing on institutions, discourses and power relations based on Frances Cleaver’s bricolage dimensions, we show how their governance and management arrangements have evolved. In the process of comparing the three cases, we consider what conclusions can be drawn from these arrangements with regard to facilitating institutional transfer processes. Our study shows that informal aspects of governance systems powerfully influence the interpretation of newly introduced policies. We find that efforts to implement international blueprints that neglect institutional legacies, sociocultural dynamics, and pre-existing inequalities are unlikely to result in arrangements that are suited to local realities.

KEYWORDS: Institutional bricolage, informal institutions, Integrated Water Resources Management, participation, horizontal coordination, vertical coordination, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, Latin America

Bénédicte Rulleau
INRAE, UR ETTIS, Cestas, France; benedicte.rulleau@inrae.fr

Kevin Caillaud
INRAE, UR ETTIS, Cestas, France; kevin.caillaud@inrae.fr

Denis Salles
INRAE, UR ETTIS, Cestas, France; denis.salles@inrae.fr

ABSTRACT: In France, the performance indicators applied to drinking water supply systems tend to be service-oriented, making no distinction between residential and non-residential users. In this paper, we seek to test our working hypothesis that these different groups of consumers each have their own sets of expectations, constraints, and vulnerabilities and would thus constitute distinct actors in case of a service failure. Three water utilities located in southwestern France serve as a case study. Results show that non-residential users’ perceptions of service performance can differ significantly from those of residential consumers. Our findings indicate that non-residential users tend to focus more intensely on certain subjects, i.e. the balance of remaining comfortable while not wasting time, trade-offs between restrictions and profitability, etc. Furthermore, non-residential users do not form a homogeneous category. Within non-residential users, three rationales can be distinguished: 'productive', which relates to users who are highly dependant on the current model of drinking water supply; 'routine', in which use of water from the tap seems to continue out of habit, convenience, and/or safety reasons; and 'economic optimization' or 'moderation'. This additional performance-related knowledge could prove invaluable in designing effective strategies for water infrastructure asset management as it allows utilities to prioritise sectors for improvement and be more efficient. It helps utilities better serve their customers by addressing their specific needs. It also helps target communication on less familiar or understood topics. Finally, our work contributes to the debate on management through indicators as it questions their meaning and scope.

KEYWORDS: Water supply, global change, performance, interviews, perceptions, asset management, France