Rossella Alba
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Geography Department and Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems (IRI THESys), Berlin, Germany; rossella.alba@hu-berlin.de

Tobias Krueger
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Geography Department and Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems (IRI THESys), Berlin, Germany; tobias.krueger@hu-berlin.de

Lieke Melsen
Hydrology and Environmental Hydraulics, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, the Netherlands; lieke.melsen@wur.nl

Jean-Philippe Venot
UMR G-EAU, IRD, University of Montpellier, Montpellier, France; jean-philippe.venot@ird.fr

ABSTRACT: Modelling and models influence how water and its flows are understood and governed. It is thus essential to critically explore the roles that models play in producing or addressing uneven water distribution. In this introduction to the Special Issue, we discuss approaches to analysing models and modelling practices. We start by establishing that they deserve special attention because they produce knowledge of another nature that gained from observations and measurements – knowledge that abstracts, generalises and offers access to potential futures and remote places. The paper outlines the ways in which models can appear to have universal relevance because of how they are able to travel between contexts; it also stresses that the rationalisation they offer aligns with the idea of control that underpins the modern water paradigm and related techno-managerial interventions. Despite their widespread appeal and use, the paper stress that models remain rather opaque, difficult to understand and navigate for non-experts and even sometimes for experts. The paper goes on to show how, in the context of water research and governance, models derive authority from the networks and discourses that surround them as well as from the epistemic and non-epistemic values that are shared by particular modelling communities. We present three complementary entry points for engaging with models: first, by interrogating their function as tools of representation; second, by exploring how they are produced and operated within constellations of actors, practices, discourses and material artefacts; and third, by analysing how models are deployed to legitimise water governance decisions that are inherently political. We then expand our critical engagement with water modelling, placing it in the broader context of attacks on science and scientists, particularly in the context of rising post-truth politics. Finally, by discussing the papers in this Special Issue, we conclude that models not only contribute to reproducing water inequalities but that they can also be mobilised to understand and address them. We suggest that future critical water research on modelling should continue to ground models and modelling in local realities, while also being invested in models as knowledge practices. Future research would benefit from bringing the diverse approaches that are showcased in this Special Issue into conversation as they enable rich and plural accounts of the worlds of water modelling.

KEYWORDS: Models, hydrology, politics, ontologies, practices, post-truth, situated knowledges

Andy Kusi-Appiah
Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada; andykusiappiah@cmail.carleton.ca

Paul Mkandawire
Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies, Human Rights and Social Justice Program, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada; paul.mkandawire@carleton.ca

ABSTRACT: This paper examines some intimate ways that water constitutes and is constitutive of social relations in urban Malawi in a context where the government-sponsored water supply system has left a large section of the population off the municipal supply grid. Specifically, the paper focuses on the ambiguous role of ganyu, an informal and ad hoc form of labour with deep roots in Malawi’s colonial history. Based on qualitative research (n = 30) and grounded in perspectives rooted in urban political ecology, our findings indicate that ganyu helps poor households cope with acute water shortages. On the other hand, it also binds them to problematic and often exploitative social relationships. Specifically, the findings show that ganyu relations give rise to usufruct rights through which the urban poor can obtain potable water on a day-to-day basis from the homes of the individuals for whom they work. However, material control over potable water by those who own it fosters indentured relations, as it allows these individuals to wield enormous control over the productive labour of the people who work for them. And as these providers of ganyu hold all the cards, they also sometimes weave sexual demands into these ad hoc contracts, locking poor women into a cycle of both labour exploitation and sexual servitude. Underscoring the relational nature of water, overall, these findings contradict simplistic notions of water as a market commodity and show that in urban Malawi water is a mechanism for the generation and exercise of social power, a marker of social differentiation, a force for material reproduction for the well-off, and an instrument for further subordination of women.

KEYWORDS: ganyu, potable water, social relations, gender, political ecology, Malawi

Régis Barraud
Professor in Geography, ER MIMMOC, University of Poitiers, Poitiers, France; regis.barraud@univ-poitiers.fr

ABSTRACT: Environmental activism has been instrumental in the adoption of public policies to protect the last remaining free-flowing rivers. In this regard, the passage of the 1968 Wild and Scenic Rivers Act in the United States is an internationally recognised milestone. This legislation continues to inspire both other campaigns to protect wild rivers and the development of new conservation measures. The primary objective of this review is to provide a reconstruction of the trajectory of wild rivers as scientific subject matter. This approach allows us to study the processes of diffusion and adaptation of the American Wild and Scenic Rivers Act in other geographical contexts. It also aims to help us better understand the social and political effects of public policies that are geared towards the preservation of wild rivers. To this end, 106 scientific articles on wild rivers covering the period 1967 to 2024 were subjected to a lexical analysis (Step 1), a thematic analysis (Step 2) and a discussion of key issues based on an in-depth reading (Step 3). This review shows that the recreational, cultural and emotional values associated with wild rivers are increasingly being replaced in the scientific literature with the ecological values of free-flowing rivers. Furthermore, while the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act still largely guides scientific research on the subject, this review identifies the controversies underlying its adoption/adaptation in other colonial contexts where the idea of wilderness plays a key role in conservation. Underlying these conflicts is the need to rethink river conservation initiatives based on Indigenous people’s ontologies.

KEYWORDS: Wild rivers, environmental movements, nature conservation policy, nature-culture ontologies

Ehsan Nabavi
Responsible Innovation Lab, The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, The Australian National University; and Käte Hamburger Kolleg, Cultures of Research, RWTH, Aachen, Germany; ehsan.nabavi@anu.edu.au

ABSTRACT: In water conflicts, models and their creators are often seen as guides that help public and policy actors make sense of controversies and formulate responses. In such contexts, it is tempting for both modellers and decision-makers to adopt the narrative that models are neutral and that, by extension, they present objective insights. This assumption, however, overlooks two critical issues. First, many choices made by modellers, which significantly shape a model’s outcome, are subjective and context-dependent. Second, water conflicts are inherently sociopolitical processes, and models themselves actively shape how these conflicts unfold. This paper argues that within hydropolitical dynamics, water models become the 'focal points' of a convergence of scientific expertise, political priorities and societal values and expectations. They become 'intervention technologies' that actively shape the very water realities they seek to describe. Drawing on ethnographic research and on insights from Science and Technology Studies, this paper explores this argument through the case of a water transfer controversy in the Zayandeh-Rood River Basin in central Iran. By unpacking how modelling (and countermodelling) practices are entangled with broader sociopolitical dynamics, the paper traces how models intervene in the making of the common resource, common sense and common good, while themselves being in turn shaped by these contested arenas.

KEYWORDS: Politics of modelling, water conflict, co-production, intervention, imaginary, countermodel, common sense, common good, Zayandeh-Rood River

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

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

Mark A. Trigg
School of Civil Engineering, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom; m.trigg@leeds.ac.uk

Shivani Singhal
School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom; s.singhal@leeds.ac.uk

Sarah Cooper
University of Liverpool, United Kingdom, Liverpool, United Kingdom; s.j.cooper2@liverpool.ac.uk

Abel Negussie Alemu
Water Technology Institute, Arba Minch University, Arba Minch, Ethiopia; nugussie2127@gmail.com

Eden Seifu
Addis Ababa university, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; eden.seifu@aau.edu.et

Cindy Lee Ik Sing
Faculty of Medical Sciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle, United Kingdom; and Newcastle University Medicine, Iskandar Puteri, Malaysia; cindy.lee@ncl.ac.uk

Mark V. Bernhofen
Environmental Change Institute, Oxford University, Oxford, United Kingdom; mark.bernhofen@eci.ox.ac.uk

Ajay Bhave
School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom; a.g.bhave@leeds.ac.uk

Andrew Carr
Water Consultancy Division, Mott Macdonald, Glasgow, UK; andrew.b.carr@googlemail.com

C.T. Dhanya
Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), New Delhi, India; dhanya@civil.iitd.ac.in

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

Leonairo Pencue-Fierro
GOL/GEA, Universidad del Cauca, Popayán, Colombia; leonairo@unicauca.edu.co

Zulfaqar Sa’adi
Centre for Environmental Sustainability and Water Security, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor, Malaysia; zulfaqar19863@gmail.com

Prabhakar Shukla
Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), New Delhi, India; prabhakar.gcrf@gmail.com

Yady Tatiana Solano-Correa
Faculty of Engineering and Sciences, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Cali, Colombia; tatiana.solano@javerianacali.edu.co

Jaime Amezaga
Faculty of Engineering and Sciences, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Cali, Colombia; jaime.amezaga@newcastle.ac.uk

Shambhavi Gupta
School of Engineering, Newcastle University, Newcastle, United Kingdom; guptashambhavi5@gmail.com

Ashok Kumar
School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, New York, USA; a.kumar@spa.ac.in

Adey Nigatu Mersha
School of Planning and Architecture; New Delhi, India; adey.n@wlrc-eth.org

Zainura Zainon Noor
Water and Land Resource Centre (WLRC), Ethiopia; zainurazn@utm.my

Alesia Ofori
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor, Malaysia; alesia.ofori@cranfield.ac.uk

Tilaye Worku Bekele
Faculty of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Cranfield University, UK; tworkcon@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: Momentum and interest have gathered around global flood risk datasets and models (GFMs). Such tools are often argued to be particularly useful in contexts where relevant data – such as stream flow and human settlement location – is sparse, inconsistent, or non-existent. As a relatively new technology, the technical limitations of GFMs – as specifically technical methodological challenges – have been quite well explored in existing literature. However, through engagement with literature, government policy documents and plans, and interviews with academic and commercial experts in Colombia, Ethiopia, India, Malaysia, and the UK, we show that their relevance and utility in reality cross-cut the technical, the political, and the social.

We argue that GFMs risk becoming another means through which states and other powerful actors re-imagine floods as technical challenges, while they are at root political-economic dilemmas (cf. Ferguson, 1994). This is linked to the ways that such technologies advance, becoming increasingly computationally powerful and accurate, and to the mutually reinforcing roles they play in relation to various 'fantasy plans' produced by governmental and other agencies (Weinstein et al., 2019). By focussing on an extended case study in the Akaki Catchment, Ethiopia, we argue that such fantasy plans – like those blueprinting urban development – serve to buttress state power through the performance of stability and reliability, while they avoid effectively tackling, or may even exacerbate, the political-economic realities which drive unequitable and unsustainable development. Such forms of development are directly linked to increasing flood risk both locally and globally.

KEYWORDS: Global datasets, global models, flood risk management, politics, fantasy plans

Edward Challies
Waterways Centre, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand; edward.challies@canterbury.ac.nz

Marc Tadaki
Cawthron Institute, Nelson, New Zealand; Lincoln University, Lincoln, New Zealand; marc.tadaki@lincoln.ac.nz

Jim Sinner
Cawthron Institute, Nelson, New Zealand; jim.sinner548@gmail.com

Margaret Kilvington
Independent Social Research, Evaluation and Facilitation, Christchurch, New Zealand; margaret.kilvington@gmail.com

Paratene Tane
Takarangi Research, Dunedin, New Zealand; hirini@takarangi.co.nz

Christina Robb
Happen Consulting, Christchurch, New Zealand; christina.robb@happen.co.nz

David Diprose
Pourakino Catchment Group, Farmer, Riverton, New Zealand

Phillip Fluerty
Te Runaka O Ōraka Aparima, Kai Tahu. Colac Bay, New Zealand

Rio Greening
Parawhenua marae, Northland Ohaeawai, New Zealand

Lee Mason
Ngāti Kuia, Te Hoiere, New Zealand

Brent Paterson
Mangaone Catchment Group, Patoka, New Zealand

Marty Robinson
Waitangi River Catchment Group, Northland Regional Councillor, Keri Keri, New Zealand

Michael Shearer
Hebron Farming Ltd., Reefton, New Zealand

ABSTRACT: Water quality decline has proven to be an intractable policy problem worldwide due to the complexity of multiple interests in land and water use. In Aotearoa New Zealand, a proliferation of local catchment groups, including collectives of farmers and other land users and stakeholders, raises important questions about the scope for government to direct collective management towards water policy implementation, and the opportunities and pitfalls of doing so. This paper draws on evidence from a collaborative research project in Aotearoa New Zealand to consider how an emerging catchment-group–led approach might address water policy goals. We examine the emergent policy narrative around catchment groups as a water management solution, and the investment in this approach by government agencies, industry bodies and non-governmental organisations. We then explore a diversity of experiences across four case study catchments. Our focus is on group membership, purpose, relationships, structure and resourcing, with the aim of illustrating how these characteristics of catchment groups influence their ability to carry out policy-relevant actions. We argue that efforts to enlist catchment groups in policy implementation have uneven consequences and that agencies and catchment groups alike should pay attention to the alignment between policy goals and group purpose, to the value of diversity and difference among groups, and to the fine line between supporting and instrumentalising groups towards implementing freshwater policy.

KEYWORDS: Watershed groups, collective management, action research, Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, policy implementation, Aotearoa

Jeremy Trombley
Department of Anthropology, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada; jtrombl@uwo.ca

ABSTRACT: Large-scale watershed management increasingly depends on the use of computational models to inform decision-making and track management goals; however, the roles that models play in environmental management institutions far exceed their informational content. Science studies scholars have approached modelling as also a performative practice that shapes the relational context of watershed management. Drawing on an ethnographic approach, this article examines a single computer model as it is developed and deployed in an environmental management organisation. The study shows that a single model can serve multiple roles within a watershed management institution depending on specific conditions and contexts; further, by serving these multiple roles rather than a single informational one, models are uniquely useful for organising environmental science and management practices and institutions across a heterogeneous set of agents. Examining these multiple roles can help us to understand not only the process of computational modelling, but also the process of management and how different organisations can coordinate with one another through the use of modelling.

KEYWORDS: Computational models, watershed management, performative research, participatory modelling, Chesapeake Bay

Neha Sarwate
The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara, India; neha.v.sarwate@gmail.com

Shishir R. Raval
Formerly with the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara, India; inmsuarchsrr@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: As rivers in the urban areas of developing economies are subjected to various policies that result in environmental pressures, it is prudent to examine the administrative attitudes and decision-making processes to learn how concerned community members and experts can shape and guide such policies and plans. This paper provides a description and summative evaluation of the intercession process by the Concerned Citizens of Vadodara (CCV) in the case of the Vishwamitri Riverfront Development Project (VRDP) and post-VRDP phase. This inductive approach records the entire interplay of stakeholders’ decisions and actions through interviews with key decision-makers and analysis of events and communications amongst the stakeholders. Emerging patterns are correlated through content and frequency analyses and are discussed in terms of values, structure, and processes. The case of the VRDP is significant, as the multipronged, persistent intercession by the CCV not only resulted in the withdrawal of the project but set a precedent in the judicial realm towards the scientific understanding of rivers in India. It provides lessons for making course corrections in similar cases and demonstrates that diligent involvement of local citizens and experts along with application of legal tools is crucial for shaping socio-ecological interventions concerning rivers in urban areas.

KEYWORDS: Citizen Action, Riverfront Development, Urban Governance, Socio-ecological Interventions, Environmental Litigation, India

Yu-Kai Liao
International Degree Program in Climate Change and Sustainable Development, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan; liaoyk@ntu.edu.tw

ABSTRACT: Shrimp economies in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta are a form of economic, political, and infrastructural project undertaken to address saline water intrusion and increase access to international markets. This paper examines shrimp farming in this region using the concept of hydrosocial life to analyse how water is entangled with life forms and forms of life in bioeconomies from two angles: (1) the ecological conditions of production and (2) agrarian, technical, and environmental changes in the delta. It does so using delta methods, comparing four kinds of shrimp farming: integrated mangrove-shrimp farming, alternating rice-shrimp farming, intensive shrimp farming, and super-intensive shrimp farming. All are conducted by various stakeholders in the rainy and dry seasons and in different parts of the Mekong Delta. This paper argues that shrimp farming organises hydrosocial lives by constructing ecological conditions of production, which are both supported and constrained by the delta as a turbulent environment and an infrastructuralised object. Each kind of shrimp farming requires a distinctive hydrosocial life, imposing uneven impacts on the everyday lives of farmers, workers, and entrepreneurs and producing agrarian transformations, technical development, and environmental changes. Shrimp breeders shift between these four types of shrimp farming in response to household income needs, biosecurity concerns, and policy measures. This paper extends water research and delta studies by exploring relationships between water, life, and economies in a deltaic environment.

KEYWORDS: Shrimp, disease, hydrosocial life, ecological conditions of production, Vietnamese Mekong Delta

John T. Van Stan II
Biological, Geological, and Environmental Sciences, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA; j.vanstan@csuohio.edu

Jack Simmons
Philosophy and Religious Studies, Georgia Southern University, Savannah, GA, USA; jacksimmons@georgiasouthern.edu

ABSTRACT: In constructing global 'water worlds', modellers stitch together data and theories from disparate locales, weaving them into seemingly universal hydrological frameworks. This approach offers immense scientific efficiencies, enabling planetary-scale predictions of water availability and related ecological, biogeochemical and atmospheric responses. As this paper shows, however, it risks creating 'geographical chimera' of mismatched empirical parts where, for example, British leaves define rainwater storage, fresh-cut Idaho conifers define snow interception, and blotting‐paper bark substitutes for stem evaporation. Each localised study, once transplanted into a global model, can become disconnected from its site‐bound context, potentially distorting science, management actions, and policy. Focusing on forest canopy precipitation interception – the first step in the precipitation‐to‐discharge pathway – this paper reveals how (excellent) decades-old, narrowly framed experiments now anchor universal equations in cutting-edge land surface models. These inherited formulas and parameters risk obscuring local phenomena, devaluing in situ data, and fostering equifinality whereby different configurations yield similar outputs while masking real biophysical processes. In this paper, scientific review is complemented by philosophical critiques, reminding us that abstractions detached from place may become preserved in models through methodological inertia, forming self‐justifying 'mathematical mummies'. We need not abandon universality, but this work aims to reinforce the standing call to embed water models in diverse, site-grounded observations, re-examine entrenched analogies, and embrace pluralistic parameter development. A place-sensitive methodology can prevent 'chimeric' routines from eclipsing the hydrological realities they aim to illuminate, enabling models to better reflect the richly varied planet they represent.

KEYWORDS: Hydrological modelling, precipitation partitioning, canopy interception, ecohydrology, empiricism, place, science philosophy

Laure de Tymowski
Maynooth University, Maynooth, Ireland; laure.detymowski.2021@mumail.ie

Elliot Hurst
Independent researcher, Canberra, Australia; ehurst@posteo.net

ABSTRACT: Water models are world-making devices that stabilise or remake social structures and power relations. This has spurred calls for deeper explorations of how models are situated within historical and political contexts. The paper examines the flood model used for flood management planning in the River Poddle catchment in Dublin, Ireland. Starting from the death of Celia de Jesus during a 2011 flood in this catchment, we argue that Dublin’s neoliberal property regime is an essential context for situating this model. Using a method grounded in discourse analysis and interdisciplinary dialogue, our situating approach follows the modelling process across two levels: the policy context and the model outputs and outcomes. Irish flood management policy sets strong boundaries for modelling, while embedding property assumptions in the model’s aims, scenarios and maps. Model outputs are shown to effectively serve the interests of real estate actors while negatively impacting those marginalised in property relations. Our critical situating has important implications for those hoping to use or critique models in order to challenge injustice.

KEYWORDS: Flood modelling, situated knowledge, property regime, land justice, Dublin, Ireland

Akash Jash
Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru, India; akash@isec.ac.in

ABSTRACT: This paper examines the Hesaraghatta Waterworks project as a case study of urban water governance in colonial Bangalore, now called Bengaluru. The study investigates how the project’s administrative and institutional dimensions sought to reshape the relationship between water and urban populations. The findings demonstrate that the introduction of piped water through the new waterworks coincided with the emergence of a modern water governance framework. This framework was marked by new rules and legal instruments that attempted to alter the dynamics of water-people interactions in the urban context; in the process, however, it also led to unequal access and distribution of water. Based on these findings, the paper argues that the Hesaraghatta project represented a broad transformation in the social construction of urban water, whereby water shifted from being a shared ecological resource to a centrally governed urban utility, which was characterised by an association with institutional governance, legal control, and commodification. The paper further contends that these administrative and infrastructural changes operated as strategies through which the colonial administration sought to exercise its governmental rationality, rendering water not only a material necessity but also a potential tool for population management and social ordering.

KEYWORDS: Urban water, Hesaraghatta Waterworks, Urban Political Ecology, colonial governance, governmental rationality, Bengaluru, India

Brooke Wilmsen
La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia; b.wilmsen@latrobe.edu.au

Ardhitya Eduard Yeremia
Universitas Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia; yerehi@ui.ac.id

Sarah Rogers
The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia; rogerssm@unimelb.edu.au

Suraya Abdulwahab Afiff
Universitas Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia; suraya.afiff@ui.ac.id

ABSTRACT: In 2015, a long-proposed dam project was finally completed in West Java, Indonesia. Ultimately financed and built by Chinese actors, Jatigede Dam entailed a series of drawn-out processes of proposal, land acquisition, withdrawal, finance, and compensation. While the social impacts of dams are usually observed within fixed temporal boundaries, in this article we argue that a focus on 'project time', strictly bounded by planning and construction timeframes, obscures the broader conditions that render people displaceable and that disrupt nature-society relations. To better illuminate the lived experience of displacement and resettlement at Jatigede we engage Mahanty and colleagues’ (2023) analytic of rupture, which provides an extended temporal and spatial frame. Through analysis of 24 interviews in the dam area, observation, and secondary data we detail the particular contours of rupture at Jatigede Dam and the crises that preceded and followed its construction. Our analysis understands dam construction to be embedded in broader processes of colonisation, transmigration, regime change, persecution, poor planning and governance, and inequality of opportunity. We conclude that the extended temporal frame of the rupture analytic captures the non-linear but interrelated, long-term processes that shape dam construction, displacement and resettlement to provide a richer understanding of nature-society disruption. By deepening the temporal dimension of rupture through the voices of those impacted by the Jatigede Dam, we provide a richer, socio-culturally contextualised understanding of time and its implications in hydropower developments.

KEYWORDS: Rupture, hydropower dams, displacement, resettlement, social impacts, Sinohydro, project time, Indonesia