Folder Issue 3

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Viewpoint ─ Urban water conservation and sustainability in the Colorado River Basin

Tamee R. Albrecht
Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA; tamee.albrecht@colostate.edu

Andrea K. Gerlak
School of Geography, Development and Environment and Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA; agerlak@arizona.edu

Adriana A. Zuniga-Teran
School of Geography, Development and Environment and Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA; aazuniga@arizona.edu

ABSTRACT: Many cities around the world are facing the challenges of freshwater decline and groundwater degradation, compounded by population growth. In the southwestern United States, these challenges are amplified. In that region, many growing cities depend on water from the Colorado River Basin, which is faced with aridification and record-low surface water supplies. Despite these unprecedented trends in Colorado River flows, however, many basin cities are enhancing their water security through a combination of supply diversification and water conservation. We draw from key academic and practitioner studies to better understand which conservation strategies are employed, how water providers evaluate the effectiveness of these strategies, and what role urban water conservation has played in the Colorado River Basin. Our examination of the contributions and limitations of urban water conservation under Colorado River Basin drought conditions reveals how the political dimensions of urban water conservation influence the ability to fully realise the potential of conservation in broader basin governance and sustainability. We call for improved assessment and monitoring of conservation efforts, advancement of holistic approaches, and the addressing of key political and equity dimensions as ways to improve urban water conservation efforts and, more realistically, situate them in the context of basin wide sustainability.

KEYWORDS: Urban water conservation, Colorado River Basin, water governance, water demand management, transboundary water governance

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Water grabbing through infrastructures and institutions in Turkey

Adnan Mirhanoğlu
Institute of Geography, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany; adnanmirhanoglu@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: The contestation and appropriation of water are global issues. Capturing control of water sources determines how and by whom water will be used. This paper examines how water grabbing occurs through both water infrastructures and institutions. Building on the concepts of 'infrastructural violence' and 'accumulation by dispossession', I investigate the mechanisms employed by bottled-water companies to grab water and hide the scale of grabbing, resulting in the dispossession of local farmers from the water sources they have used for centuries. Drawing on ethnographic research in Ağlasun, a rural town in southwest Turkey, my findings reveal two main insights. First, water grabbing occurs through clientelism, bending of the rules, and ambiguities in water governance legislation. Second, water grabbing is facilitated by infrastructural changes, such as the fencing off of water sources and the forced imposition of water-saving agricultural technologies. Understanding the various institutional and infrastructural processes through which water grabbing occurs helps clarify the conditions necessary for more just and equitable water governance. The paper concludes by highlighting the crucial role of locally embedded institutions and collective action in securing access to water.

KEYWORDS: Water grabbing, accumulation by dispossession, infrastructural violence, irrigation governance, Turkey

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Navigating diverse visions of water justice within unlikely alliances

Sophia L. Borgias
School of Public Service, Boise State University, Boise, ID, USA; sophiaborgias@boisestate.edu

Kate A. Berry
University of Nevada, Reno, NV, USA; kberry@unr.edu

ABSTRACT: The notion of water justice is increasingly invoked by both scholars and activists working to address issues of inequity in water governance. However, water justice means different things to different people, which can present challenges when building alliances among diverse actors. In this paper, we examine these dynamics in the context of unlikely alliances formed among environmental, ranching, and Indigenous actors in response to rural-to-urban water transfer projects in the arid Great Basin region of the western United States. Through more than 60 interviews across two cases in eastern California and eastern Nevada, we find that though these actors aligned in their opposition to projects they viewed as unjust, they had different views of what justice would look like. We discuss their diverse visions of water justice in relation to notions of distributive, procedural, restorative, and transformative justice. While many of these visions overlapped and complemented each other, others were more starkly divided by their orientation towards the current state of water governance, with some seeking to protect it and others seeking to transform it. Building alliances thus required some to strategically focus on the common ground around protecting existing water allocations and systems of accountability, while separately pursuing broader visions of repairing past harms and transforming underlying systems. This research demonstrates that understandings of water justice are diverse and dynamic and that they shape and are shaped by alliance-building. It underscores the methodological value of asking people to articulate not only how they ally against injustices but also what they would consider a just outcome and how they approach collaboration when there are different visions of water justice.

KEYWORDS: Water justice, unlikely alliances, rural-urban water conflicts, Nevada, Owens Valley, western United States

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Ontological politics in river defence debates: Unpacking fields of contention in eco-centric and non-human turns

Rutgerd Boelens
Wageningen University, Department of Environmental Sciences, Wageningen, The Netherlands; and University of Amsterdam, CEDLA Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; rutgerd.boelens@wur.nl

Lena Hommes
University of Girona, Department of Geography and Institute of the Environment, Girona, Spain; lena.hommes@udg.edu

Jaime Hoogesteger
Wageningen University, Department of Environmental Sciences, Wageningen, The Netherlands; and IDOS German Institute of Development and Sustainability, Bonn, Germany; jaime.hoogesteger@wur.nl

ABSTRACT: In response to capitalist territorial transformations, humans’ predatory subjection of nature, and worldwide socio-environmental injustices, a diverse set of eco-centric, other-than-human, and indigenous worldview-inspired perspectives have emerged in water debates and practices. Rights of Nature (RoN) and Rights of Rivers (RoR) approaches are examples of this. But while these 'river ontological turns' hold exciting conceptual and political potential, they also invite critical reflection. Proponents often advance these new ontological perspectives and initiatives as being more 'real' and 'natural' than what came before. We challenge this notion by conceptualising such perspectives, similar to all ontological framings, as politically contested entrances to imagining and ordering the real. We argue that these new and alternative ontological understandings of the world – and their related initiatives – are politically produced, culturally enacted, and strategically mobilised. In effect, they contribute to the constitution (or contestation) of particular power relations. Focusing specifically on river debates, we identify and explore the following fields of contention that arise in and from alternative eco-centric and non-human ontological turns: the god-trick; naturalisation; de-centring the human; mystifying/essentialising indigeneity; and subjectification-through-recognition. By discussing these fields of contention, we call for a re-politicisation of the recent river (and other related) ontological turns, their underlying assumptions, and conceptual-political tendencies. Such critical scrutiny can contribute to enriching local/global struggles for riverine environmental justice.

KEYWORDS: Ontological politics, environmental justice, non-human turn, eco-centrism, subjectification, Rights of Rivers

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

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

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

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

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

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Hydrosolidarity: A socio-political reading of a moral concept

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

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

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

KEYWORDS: Solidarity, water, governance, sociopolitical theory

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

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

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

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

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

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

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