Fluid struggles over climate and water justice in the Peruvian Andes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amare Haileslassie
Africa Environmental Solutions, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania victor.kongo@gwpsaf.org

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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