Berhanu Abegaz
Department of Economics, William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA, USA; bxabeg@wm.edu

ABSTRACT: The Nile River Basin (NRB) is home to a long-standing dispute with colonial roots. A comprehensive agreement on water allocation and joint basin management has so far eluded its eleven riparians. How might the states reconcile downstream dependence on existing uses with upstream development needs? Principles of equitable and reasonable utilization and prevention of significant harm are indispensable, but they leave open important operational questions. Agreements on other transboundary rivers offer instructive, although imperfect, examples of fixed deliveries, percentage formulas, seasonal schedules, drought adjustments, joint commissions, and dispute procedures. This Viewpoint argues that the disagreement is ultimately about power and legality rather than hydrology. A positive path to treaty engagement is for (i) Ethiopia to articulate a coherent national water strategy and a model treaty proposal; (ii) all riparians to recognize that negotiated allocation, alongside dam operation and basin management, belongs on the agenda; (iii) the parties to draw jointly on international watercourse principles and, just as importantly, relevant treaty practices; and (iv) the basin states to develop reciprocal arrangements for sediment management, water use, and watershed protection. A phased agreement would protect vital existing uses while creating tangible opportunities for equitable upstream development.

KEYWORDS: Nile River Basin, watercourse conventions, water treaties, Ethiopia, Egypt, Sudan

Sameer H. Shah
School of Environmental & Forest Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, United States of America; shs89@uw.edu

Nicole J. Wilson
Department of Environment and Geography, and the Centre for Earth Observation Science, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada; nicole.j.wilson@umanitoba.ca

Cassandra L. Workman
Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina Greensboro, Greensboro, United States of America; clworkma@uncg.edu

ABSTRACT: Datacentres are increasingly being built to service artificial intelligence (AI) – and large volumes of water are often required to power and cool these facilities. Today, public opposition against new datacentre development is sharply increasing in the United States, with local water insecurity concerns – including institutional distrust, ecosystem risks, and escalating utility rates – featuring prominently. The scientific community participates in these debates by quantifying datacentres’ volumetric water use – what we call "assessment-driven" research. Our viewpoint argues that such assessments can inadvertently produce an information ecosystem in which water overuse becomes framed as a resource management problem to be solved with more efficient water-use technology. To us, this will not be sufficient to overcome opposition – and could, paradoxically, inflame existing tensions. This is because the "water problem" is an existential one for local communities, not a techno-managerial one. Water access shapes the futures of local communities, their perceived character, and the lives people want for themselves – and water use, including more efficient use, by these industrial facilities can enable the very kinds of existential changes that are often the bases of local resistance movements. Assessing who (if anyone) benefits from the water used for AI can challenge existing managerial approaches that often separate co-constitutive water-society relationships and assume efficiency improvements will, at least partly, quell public opposition.

KEYWORDS: Datacentres, artificial intelligence, resistance, water security, United States of America

Antoine Brochet
Université Grenoble-Alpes, UMR PACTE, UMR IGE, Grenoble, France; antoine.brochet@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr

Joana Guerrin
INRAE, UMR G-EAU, Université de Montpellier, Montpellier, France; joana.guerrin@inrae.fr

ABSTRACT: This article examines the transformation of inherited hydraulic infrastructures through the case of the former saltworks of the Camargue, in France’s Rhône Delta. There, an ecological restoration project – subsequently framed as a Nature-based Solution – has restored hydrological connectivity while discontinuing the maintenance of former industrial seafront dykes. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork conducted between 2021 and 2023, combining semi-structured interviews, observation and document analysis, the article examines the social and political consequences of this transformation. The project is conceptualised by the authors as a process of de- and re-infrastructuring that reconfigures hydrosocial territories and their historically sedimented hydrosocial heritages. The analysis shows how infrastructural transformation reshapes social practices, ecological relations, power relations and perceptions of risk, and how it can generate conflicts over historically constituted relationships between water, infrastructures and territorial practices. The article argues that such transformations can produce forms of hydrosocial misrecognition when historically constituted socio-ecological relations, situated knowledge and territorial practices are insufficiently recognised. More broadly, it shows that Nature-based Solutions, often presented as consensual and depoliticised, can themselves become sites of conflict over how territories should be inhabited, protected and transformed.

KEYWORDS: Hydrosocial territory, de- and re-infrastructuring, Nature-based Solutions, hydrosocial misrecognition, Rhône Delta

Georges Gabriel
Independent Researcher, Brussels, george2gabriel@gmail.com

Luna Sylverans
Independent Researcher, Antwerp, lunasylverans@live.be

Edoardo de Paola
Independent Researcher, Brussels, edoardo.depaola@gmail.com

Maarten Loopmans
KU Leuven, Leuven, maarten.loopmans@kuleuven.be

ABSTRACT: This paper examines the sociomaterial bricolage that emerged on the island of Gozo, Malta, following the introduction of treated wastewater for irrigation, commonly branded as 'New Water'. Drawing on an actor-centred sociomaterial bricolage approach, the study investigates how farmers adapted infrastructures and institutions in response to the opportunities, constraints and inequalities created by the new-water system. Based on qualitative fieldwork involving interviews with farmers, Water Services Corporation employees, and local officials, the analysis compares four water dispensers that are each operating under different conditions of water availability and pressure. The findings show that infrastructural and institutional adaptations are closely intertwined and are shaped by material conditions. At water-abundant ‘head-ender’ locations near the beginning of the water distribution canal, farmers developed arrangements enabling simultaneous water sharing, while water scarcity and unreliable supply at tail-ender locations encouraged forms of time sharing and stricter coordination. These adaptations also generated new tensions that prompted interventions at broader system-level scales. The study demonstrates how sociomaterial bricolage is multiscalar and path dependent, with successive adaptations responding to the consequences of earlier interventions; it also highlights the importance of anticipating such dynamics when designing equitable wastewater reuse systems.

KEYWORDS: Sociomaterial bricolage, circularity, wastewater reuse, irrigation, Malta

Gustavo do Amaral Loureiro
King’s College London, Rio Branco Chair (2025-2026), London, United Kingdom / Núcleo de Estudos Atores e Agendas de Política Externa (NEAAPE) – UERJ / Centro Interinstitucional de Análise de Políticas Sociais (CIAPSoc) – UFMG; gus.amaral7@gmail.com

João Paulo Nicolini Gabriel
King’s College London, London, United Kingdom; joaopaulo.nicolinigabriel@gmail.com

Bárbara Furtado Barra
University of Greenwich, London, United Kingdom / René Rachou Institute, Fiocruz Minas, Belo Horizonte, Brazil; bbarra@aluno.fiocruz.br

Alex Moura de Souza Aguiar
King’s College London, Rio Branco Chair (2025-2026), London, United Kingdom / SMARH-UFMG, Belo Horizonte, Brazil; alex.aguiar@kcl.ac.uk

Alex Loftus
King’s College London, London, United Kingdom; alex.loftus@kcl.ac.uk

Andreza Aruska de Souza Santos
King’s Brazil Institute, King’s College London, London, United Kingdom; andreza.souza_santos@kcl.ac.uk

Léo Heller
King’s College London, Rio Branco Chair (2025-2026), London, United Kingdom / René Rachou Institute, Fiocruz Minas, Belo Horizonte, Brazil; leo.heller@fiocruz.br

ABSTRACT: With the global rate of water privatisation either slowing or going into reverse, the water and sanitation sector in Brazil stands as an outlier. This paper develops an in-depth analysis of the Brazilian model, arguing that the privatisation of water services represents not simply a transfer of ownership but a process of profound sectoral re-engineering. The theoretical framework combines a Marxist approach to political economy with a neoinstitutionalist analysis. Empirical content is drawn from legislation, documents on regulatory standards, concession contracts, official reports, auction documents, and financial prospectuses. The paper’s findings reveal three structural features: the rapid expansion of privatisation, the oligopolisation of service provision, and the increasing financialisation of operating firms’ ownership structures. These structural features have emerged in a context of political de-risking and disenfranchisement of social movements. The paper goes on to analyse five drivers of the privatisation process: the influence of international finance, regulatory stability as a de-risking strategy, the influence of interest groups, a neoliberal shift in Brazilian politics, and the federal government’s role as anchor and guarantor of privatisation. The paper concludes by questioning whether the Brazilian experiment will catalyse a new wave of water privatisation worldwide or whether it will come to be viewed as another chapter in the failure of neoliberal policies more broadly. Taken together, the findings situate the Brazilian case within broader debates around the reform of public services under financialised capitalism.

KEYWORDS: Water and sanitation, privatisation, financialisation, oligopolisation, Brazil

Nils Mühlenbrock
Chair of Sociology of Technology and Organization (STO), Institute of Sociology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; nmuehlenbrock@soziologie.rwth-aachen.de

Roger Häußling
Chair of Sociology of Technology and Organization (STO), Institute of Sociology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; rhaeussling@soziologie.rwth-aachen.de

Tim Franke
Chair of Sociology of Technology and Organization (STO), Institute of Sociology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; tfranke@soziologie.rwth-aachen.de

ABSTRACT: Rivers like the Rhine are embedded in complex hydrosocial entanglements. They serve as vital, though often latent, infrastructures that provide essential services and resources and underpin a wide array of situated sociomaterial practices. Yet their close relationship with societies is marked by a profound duality, as indicated by the increasing frequency of flood events and droughts. This article introduces a sociological account of rivers as hydrosocial infrastructures, that acknowledges heterogeneity, materiality and fluidity, alongside technical rationality and issues of control. Drawing on Bennett’s "thing-materialism", the paper develops a theoretically grounded, process-sociological heuristic that reconceives "thing-power" as a relational capacity and systematises (hydrosocial) infrastructuring across six dimensions. Applying this framework to the historical case of the Rhine rectification in the 18th and 19th centuries enables a deconstruction of the engineering work as the product of a heterogeneous assemblage, while highlighting the multifaceted forces at play in the river’s gradual transformation into a hydrosocial infrastructure. The paper shows how the Rhine’s "modern" infrastructural character emerges from long-standing transformations that inscribe particular ontologies, values, expectations and relations to nature into the river’s form – patterns that remain embedded within ongoing sociomaterial processes. While emerging from hydrosocial inquiry, the framework offers a perspective that may extend to other sociomaterial contexts that are shaped by infrastructured relations.

KEYWORDS: Infrastructure, hydrosocial, thing-power, modern water, sociology of water, Rhine straightening

Paroma Wagle
Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, Virginia Tech, Arlington, VA, USA; paroma@vt.edu

ABSTRACT: Mumbai’s 2022 'Water for All' policy contravenes the 2010 United Nations General Assembly recognition of the human right to water as well as UN Sustainable Development Goal 6. The rationale underlying this contravention is rooted in requirements of what we refer to in this paper as the 'centralised infrastructure paradigm' to which Mumbai’s municipal authorities subscribe. This paradigm places sole emphasis on large, centralised equipment and systems, while what we call here the 'UN institutional paradigm of the human rights to water' – drawn from formal UN documents – provides a conceptual framework, practical guidelines and policy analysis tools for positioning the human right to water at the centre of the policies and practices that govern the water distribution sector. The paper underscores the need in the Global South to replace the dominant urban water distribution concepts of 'water connections' and 'dwellings' with a focus on 'water access' and 'human beings'. It provides a paradigmatic explanation for the chronic denial of water access to Mumbai’s slumdwellers. Based on an analysis of formal documents, academic literature, and data from interviews with experts, officials and activists, the paper suggests a new paradigmatic perspective for further research on water sector policies; it also encourages policymakers and activists to become sensitised to the covert and overt influences of different paradigms on policies.

KEYWORDS: Water policy, water access, human rights, paradigms, infrastructure, Mumbai, India

Douglas J. Merrey
Independent Consultant on Natural Resources Management, Gainesville, Florida, USA; dougmerrey@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: Globally, aquifers underpin food security and domestic water supplies, yet many are severely threatened by over-extraction and pollution. In the southeastern United States, the Floridan Aquifer System is the primary source of water for drinking and other uses, especially in Florida. The system is distinctive because in Florida alone, it includes roughly 1100 artesian springs and extensive underwater caverns. Despite clear evidence that the aquifer and springs are seriously impaired, and despite legal and regulatory requirements for sustainable use, the state continues to issue consumptive-use permits and allow pollution to worsen. Why does this continue? After reviewing evidence of aquifer and spring deterioration, this paper analyses the legal and institutional framework governing Florida’s water resources. It argues that Florida has adopted a centralized regulatory system dominated by large-scale water users, creating little incentive to prioritize conservation. The paper concludes with recommendations for reform, while recognizing the obstacles such reforms would face. Without radical governance reforms, Florida is likely to face an existential challenge as development priorities collide with the decline of the Floridan Aquifer System.

KEYWORDS: Aquifer, groundwater governance, springs, Floridan Aquifer System, nitrates, Florida, USA

Amanda Shankland
Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; ashankla@torontomu.ca

Carolyn Johns
Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; cjohns@torontomu.ca

Kelly Fran Davis
University of Waterloo, Brock University, St. Catherine’s, Ontario, Canada; kdavis@brocku.ca

Kelsy Chan
Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; kelsychan@torontomu.ca

Julia Baird
Brock University, St. Catharine’s, Ontario, Canada; jbaird@brocku.ca

ABSTRACT: This critical reflection explores how community-based participatory research (CBPR) can serve as both a methodological and political foundation for transforming water and climate governance. Beginning with an overview of CBPR, the paper emphasises its capacity to centre community needs, redistribute power, and foster resilience through participatory governance. Rather than viewing CBPR solely through the lens of research ethics or engagement, we argue that it enables deeper structural transformation by challenging exclusionary governance systems and amplifying community-defined priorities. We examine how CBPR contributes to water and climate governance by integrating relational place-based knowledge and enabling more adaptive and equitable policy responses. Central to this approach is the recognition of Indigenous Knowledges (IK) not as supplementary to effective governance, but as foundational. By unsettling dominant epistemologies and exposing power asymmetries, CBPR facilitates the inclusion of IK and other marginalised knowledge systems in governance reform. The paper further engages with Indigenous research approaches and decolonial methodologies that inform CBPR, highlighting their role in cultivating relational accountability and shared authority. Situating CBPR within broader debates on knowledge justice and decolonial governance, we also address tensions such as institutional resistance, issues of scale, and the risk of co-optation. Ultimately, we present CBPR as a critical research approach and governance practice that supports climate-resilient, justice-oriented, and community-led policy transformation.

KEYWORDS: Community-based participatory research, Indigenous Knowledge, policy, water, climate, justice

Aybike Alkan
Independent Researcher, Berlin, Germany; aybike.alkn@gmail.com

Arda Bilgen
Middle East Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK; a.bilgen@lse.ac.uk

ABSTRACT: Large dams are often portrayed as technical achievements that advance economic development, energy production and regional integration, yet they also embody political struggles over expertise, authority and development priorities. This article examines the Atatürk Dam, Turkey’s largest hydraulic infrastructure project, as a technopolitical intervention rather than merely an engineering structure. It asks how technical expertise, institutional arrangements and technopolitical strategies have shaped the dam’s governance, and how processes of politicisation and depoliticisation have influenced the framing of its hydrosocial, hydropolitical and politico-ecological implications. Drawing on archival sources, interviews and documentary analysis, the article argues that the governance of the Atatürk Dam did not move from technical design to political controversy in a linear trajectory; rather, it evolved through recurrent and co-constitutive processes of politicisation and depoliticisation, as competing actors continuously contested expertise, institutional authority and scalar governance. In doing so, the article reconceptualises politicisation and depoliticisation as intertwined technopolitical processes and demonstrates how large-scale water infrastructures both materialise and mediate political conflict.

KEYWORDS: Atatürk Dam, depoliticisation, politicisation, technopolitics, water infrastructure, Turkey

Alexandra Turgul
College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University; Corvallis; caplana@oregonstate.edu

ABSTRACT: This article examines the geopolitics of water conflict and cooperation in the Euphrates-Tigris River Basin from 1948 to 2023. Drawing on a newly constructed database of water-related interactions, it traces how hydropolitical interactions have been shaped by multi-scalar dynamics involving state, non-state and transnational actors. Conflict and cooperation in the basin often co-exist. Interstate cooperation has persisted at the technical level even as high-level cooperation has been stalled during periods of broader political instability; similarly, even during periods without interstate conflict, high-intensity water conflict has persisted at a more local scale as armed groups embroiled in regional conflicts utilised water as a weapon of war. The last two decades, however, have also seen broadened participation in water governance due to increasing involvement of NGOs and civil society initiatives. The analysis offered in this paper highlights the importance of taking a multi-scalar approach to the study of water conflict and cooperation and the role of geopolitics in shaping hydropolitics.

KEYWORDS: Hydropolitics, transboundary water, conflict and cooperation, Euphrates-Tigris, Middle East

Ahmed Haj Asaad
Geo Expertise, Geneva, Switzerand; ahmed.haj.asaad@geoexpertise.org

Elodie Feijoo Seara
Geo Expertise, Geneva, Switzerand; elodie.feijoo@graduateinstitute.ch

Ieman Hajasaad
Geo Expertise, Joubas, Idlib, Syria; ieman.haj.asaad@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: Between 2012 and 2020 in Syria, water was weaponised, but the manner of its weaponisation was constrained by the material and infrastructural characteristics of the country’s water system. Weaponisation took the form of infrastructure targeting, flow manipulation and access denial; at the same time, forms of interaction were structured by interdependence and material constraints. Drawing on geospatial analysis, remote sensing and interview-based data, this article develops the concept of hydro-coercive negotiation to explain how access to water emerges through the interaction of asymmetrical power relations, coercive pressure and infrastructural interdependence. The findings identify four overlapping configurations through which actors engage in temporary and reversible forms of coordination; these are: mutual dependency, resource-based exchange, truce-based arrangements, and civilian solidarity. These dynamics challenge binary interpretations of water as a source of either conflict or cooperation, highlighting instead its role as a sociotechnical system that simultaneously produces coercion, constraint and negotiated interdependence.

KEYWORDS: Water weaponisation, Hydro-Coercive Negotiation, hydropolitics, hydrocoercion, water governance, Syria

Carles Sanchis-Ibor
Centro de Investigación en Regadíos y Agrosistemas Mediterráneos (CIRAM), Universitat Politècnica de València, València, Spain;

Nuria Hernández-Mora
Fundación Nueva Cultura del Agua, Madrid, Spain;

Lucia De Stefano
Departamento de Geodinámica, Estratigrafía y Paleontología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain;

Leandro del Moral
Departamento de Geografía Humana, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain;

ABSTRACT: River basin organisations are frequently portrayed as technically grounded and politically neutral instruments of water governance, but this framing conceals the contested social and political processes through which they are constituted and transformed. This article reviews the hundred-year trajectory of Spain’s confederaciones hidrográficas – established in 1926 and among the oldest RBOs in the world – through three analytical threads: 1) vertical governance (the central state versus peripheral regional powers), 2) horizontal governance (social participation), and 3) shifting ideological projects. Drawing on critical institutionalist and political ecology perspectives across four periods of institutional reconfiguration, the analysis shows that each one of those components has been variously interpreted, diluted, instrumentalised, or contested across radically different political regimes. Crucially, while the first three periods were organised around the hydraulic mission as a shared political project, the fourth reorients the confederaciones hidrográficas towards the European Union’s Water Framework Directive. This illustrates a decoupling between an institution’s continuity and its political purpose. Meanwhile, social participation has oscillated between irrigation associations having genuine autonomy, their authoritarian subordination, and procedural formalism that achieves no substantive redistribution of decision-making power to a broader range of social actors. Basin unity, though technically legitimised, has been persistently contested by provincial, regional, and sectoral interests. The centralisation-decentralisation balance has proven no less volatile, reflecting broader disputes over territorial organisation rather than water-related governance needs. These findings challenge the narrative of the confederaciones hidrográficas as a pioneering and exemplary model and contribute to debates on the institutional plasticity of river basin organisations – understood as their capacity to accommodate divergent political projects while preserving formal institutional continuity. Ultimately, they underscore that the performance of basin organisations cannot be understood in isolation from the historically specific power configurations and hydro-social conflicts in which they are embedded. These socio-political relations must be rendered visible, and governance arrangements must not only incorporate broader participation but actively challenge entrenched power asymmetries.

KEYWORDS: River basin organisations, water governance, water management, social participation, basin unity, hydrographic confederations, Spain

Vishal Narain
Management Development Institute Gurgaon, Gurgaon, India; vishalnarain@mdi.ac.in

ABSTRACT: This paper provides a review of the literature on peri-urban water (in)security in India. Articles were selected using a mix of a Google Scholar search and snowball sampling. The literature is dominated by the experience of peri-urban water insecurity in a few large cities that grew in response to the neoliberal expansion policies of the early 1990s. Peri-urban water insecurity is experienced in a variety of ways including: weakened access to water commons such as lakes, tanks, ponds and wetlands; increasing competition for groundwater; the physical flow of water from peri-urban spaces to urban centres; uneven access to safe drinking water; and declining water quality. Social and power relationships mediate how residents of peri-urban spaces experience changing access to water sources. A wide variety of approaches to improved peri-urban water security have been put forward by actors such as academics, NGOs, corporations and civil society groups. A gender and intersectionality lens should be used in further research that focuses on the peri-urban dynamics of water insecurity around smaller towns and urban centres.

KEYWORDS: Peri-urban, political ecology, urbanisation, water security, India

Sergio Villamayor-Tomas
Department of Political Science and Public Law, Instituto de Ciencia y Tecnologia Ambientales, ICTA-UAB, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Cerdanyola del Valles, España; sergio.villamayor@uab.cat

Paulina Raniecka
Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), Vrije University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; p.raniecka@vu.nl

Jampel Dell’Angelo
Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), Vrije University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; jampel.dellangelo@vu.nl

ABSTRACT: Since Elinor Ostrom was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2009, research on the commons, and particularly on water commons, has expanded significantly in volume and theoretical diversity. This paper offers a scoping review of 61 'water commons' studies to identify theoretical strands and ways in which water commons are currently operationalised and problematised. First, the review reflects on the evolution of water commons research from the Ostromian – that is, more institutional – approach, towards one that is more critical, relational and social constructivist. The paper shows that recent contributions have the potential for both constituting an inflection point and expanding the Ostromian tradition. Second, the review identifies four interconnected ways of operationalising water commons, that is, as a resource, an organisation, a community and a process. It highlights a shift away from purely resource- and right-centric understandings towards more complex sociopolitical conceptualisations. Also, water commons are predominantly framed as responses to market- and state-driven governance failures, though warnings against romanticisation remind us of their limits in addressing large-scale challenges and internal power asymmetries. The analysis further identifies two major debates – on the role of the state and on the relationship between rights-based approaches and relational commons governance – and two emerging threads concerning commons endurance under external pressures and the ambivalent role of social movements. Overall, the review enriches our understanding of the literature on water commons beyond the ‘institutional vs. critical studies’ dichotomy, and sheds new light on the diverse ways in which scholars have empirically worked with, and on, water commons.

KEYWORDS: Water, commons, Ostrom, critical theory, commoning, definitions, governance

Nicole K. Dalmer
Department of Health, Aging and Society, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada; dalmern@mcmaster.ca

Meridith Griffin
Department of Health, Aging and Society, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada; griffmb@mcmaster.ca

Vera Gallistl
Department of Gerontology and Health Research, Karl Landsteiner University for Health Sciences, Krems, Austria; vera.gallistl@kl.ac.at

Kim Sawchuk
Department of Communication Studies, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada; kim.sawchuk@concordia.ca

ABSTRACT: Water is a vital but underexplored dimension of older women’s leisure. While aquatic activity is often framed through health promotion or 'active ageing' discourses, such framings can obscure the complex entanglements of embodiment, gender, environment and social life. This paper presents findings from a scoping review of 36 peer reviewed studies that examined older women’s engagements with water across diverse contexts and activities including swimming, aqua aerobics, surfing, rowing and wild swimming. Four clusters of meaning emerged: water as supporting physical and mental well-being; water as a medium for identity and agency; water as a site of belonging, memory and spirituality; and water as context for social connection and mutual support. These practices illuminate water’s role not only as a therapeutic resource but also as an agentic, affective and political force. By foregrounding older women’s watery leisure, we highlight tensions of safety and autonomy and of inclusion and exclusion, and we call for a hydrological turn in gerontology that is attentive to joy, risk and belonging.

KEYWORDS: Water, older women, scoping review, embodiment, water-based leisure

Samara López-Ruiz
Institute of Sustainable Processes, University of Valladolid, Valladolid, Spain; Department of Chemical Engineering and Environmental Technology, School of Industrial Engineering, University of Valladolid, Spain; samaralr@uva.es

Klaas Schwartz
IHE-Delft, Delft, The Netherlands; Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; k.schwartz@un-ihe.org

Gabriela Cuadrado-Quesada
IHE-Delft, Delft, The Netherlands; Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; g.quesada@un-ihe.org

ABSTRACT: This article examines how Dutch water utilities implement and justify disconnection policies under the conflicting imperatives of cost recovery and the human right to water. Based on 12 semi-structured interviews and discourse analysis, it identifies 3 dominant narratives – technocratic, socially engaged, and human rights-based; it then maps these along two dimensions: the framing of water and the interpretation of non-payment. Despite operating within a uniform legal framework, utilities interpret and apply practices differently, reflecting variations in organisational contexts and discursive understandings of responsibility and vulnerability. The analysis shows how actors engage in discursive manoeuvring, using strategic ambiguity to reconcile regulatory obligations with social concerns. These findings challenge assumptions of technocratic neutrality and demonstrate how discretion and institutional discourse shape regulatory practice. The study contributes to regulatory governance debates by showing how formal compliance can coexists with informal adaptation in the provision of essential services.

KEYWORDS: Discursive institutionalism, human right to water, policy implementation, regulatory governance, water disconnections, the Netherlands

Ruben V. Weesie
Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; r.v.weesie@vu.nl

Melanie Rohse
Global Sustainability Institute, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, United Kingdom; melanie.rohse@aru.ac.uk

Johanna Koehler
Public Administration and Policy Group, Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands; johanna.koehler@wur.nl

Marlies H. Barendrecht
Department of Geography, King’s College London, London, United Kingdom; marlies.barendrecht@kcl.ac.uk

Moses Mwangi
Department of Hydrology and Aquatic Sciences, South Eastern Kenya University, Kitui, Kenya; mmwangi@seku.ac.ke

Anne F. van Loon
Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; anne.van.loon@vu.nl

ABSTRACT: Seasonal rivers in East Africa’s drylands have become destabilised by climatic disruption and landscape changes. Despite widespread adaptation practices and interventions, recurrent droughts and floods continue to damage the agropastoral livelihoods dependent on these rivers. Few studies have explored how destabilising rainfall, river flows and adaptations have transformed hydrosocial relations among agropastoralists living near seasonal rivers. This paper reports on a case study in the Tiva River Basin in Kenya, exploring how agropastoralists have experienced changing river flows, rainfall and adaptation processes over the past 75 years. Based on storytelling workshops and a survey, we find that river flows and rainfall have been experienced as increasingly unpredictable and damaging. Water’s perceived role has shifted from being rhythmic and regenerative to being an erosive force and scarce resource to be captured and mobilised. Adaptation has materialised in multiple forms, each of which has, and continues to, reshape reshape the ways in which water is perceived and used. This requires attention from adaptation research with regard to policy and practice in agropastoral drylands. First, public hydraulic infrastructures inscribe norms for capturing and controlling water, while the limits of their functionality are layered into existing arrangements for accessing water. Second, the spread of private irrigation along seasonal rivers supports adaptation, but is only accessible for a small group and leads to inequalities in water access and adaptive capacities. Third, many agropastoralists pursue bottom-up adaptive practices to retain water, but face various hindrances in sustaining their efforts.

KEYWORDS: Dryland, seasonal river, water, agropastoralist, adaptation, Kenya

Çisem Kırcı
Boğaziçi University, Institute of Environmental Sciences, Istanbul, Turkey; cisem.kirci@gmail.com

Cem İskender Aydın
Boğaziçi University, Institute of Environmental Sciences, Istanbul, Turkey; cem.aydin@bogazici.edu.tr

ABSTRACT: Istanbul is Turkey’s economic and cultural capital. With a population approaching 16 million, it uses resources, particularly water, from far beyond its borders. The city’s persistent water scarcity, exacerbated by its exponential growth, has necessitated large-scale infrastructural interventions, including interbasin water transfer projects such as the Great Melen Project (GMP). This project, the nation’s second largest water transfer scheme, entailed the displacement of numerous rural communities via urgent expropriation decisions by the government – a procedure designed for use only in extreme circumstances such as war or natural disasters. This study investigates the social ramifications of this project, focusing on the 2014 evacuation of Ortaköy village in the basin. Through in-depth interviews with diverse stakeholders, particularly former residents, the researchers examine the project’s impact on local people’s lives and livelihoods. The project has been hailed as a technological and engineering marvel; however, the findings demonstrate how readily the Melen region is being sacrificed for the sake of the nation’s economic growth ideals. These are embodied in an idealised ‘modernisation’ narrative that justifies prioritisation of the needs of Istanbul as the country’s economic and cultural engine and thereby produces consent among the villagers.

KEYWORDS: Interbasin water transfers, political ecology, environmental justice, Istanbul, Great Melen Project, Turkey

Madina Gazieva
School of Law and Government, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland; madina.gazieva2@mail.dcu.ie

ABSTRACT: In recent years, Uzbekistan has embarked on an expansive agricultural modernisation programme, cast under the banner of the 'Green Economy'. Within the agriculture sector, this has entailed an overhaul of the former cotton-centred production model in favour of high-value crops and vertically integrated clusters that are irrigated using the most up-to-date technologies. This paper argues that such a process entails 'hydrosocial re-territorialisation', which is characterised by a shift from horizontal, socially mediated surface-flow interdependencies to vertical and individualised groundwater access. Using the case of the pseudonymised village 'Dostlik' in Samarkand Province, the paper looks at local manifestations of Uzbekistan’s current hydro-agrarian overhaul, arguing that hydrosocial re-territorialisation – by facilitating water grabbing – becomes the locus of agrarian change, experienced as 'slow violence' by rural residents. The effects are felt most acutely by scattered, informal homestead farmers who must continually dig deeper wells to irrigate their plots.

KEYWORDS: Political ecology of water, hydrosocial territories, slow violence, Green Economy, homestead farmers, Uzbekistan