Lesson 1: Water Politics & Critical Perspectives Flashcards
Define governance
Governance is a complex process that considers multilevel participation beyond the state. It includes public institutions, private sectors and civil society.
Why is governance an ambiguous term?
It is ambiguous because it can be understood as:
1. simply meaning governing
2. in its more specific sense of governing without government
3. in its normative sense of governing the right way 
Define environmental governance
Environmental governance is the totality of interactions among societal actors aimed at coordinating, steering, and regulating human access to, use of, and impact on the environment.
It is a set of regulatory processes, mechanisms, and organisations through which political actors influence environmental actions and outcomes.
Name 3 components of Lemons & Agrawal hybrid form of environmental governance
- State
- Market
- Community
Define institutions and why they are important for policy-makers and scientists
Institutions are the rules of the game and they are the norms, the rules and the strategies. They are important because they can determine how humans relate to their environment. 
Define water governance according to the OECD
The range of political, institutional and administrative rules, practices and processes, formal and informal, through which decisions are taken and implemented, stakeholders can articulate their interests and have their concerns considered, and decision-makers are held accountable for water management.
Define water management according to Zwarteveen et al
The practices of coordination and decision-making between different actors around contested water distributions 
How has the water governance approach developed?
Old approach includes:
-government and bureaucracies
- power monopoly
-hierarchical control
- enforcement of rules and regulations
- top-down management
- formal rules
New approach:
- less government authority
- civil society and markets
- diversity of actors
- decentralisation
- networks
- dialogue & partnership as well as participation & negotiation
What are the 4 levels (or scales) Gupta talks about?
Global, fluvial/trans boundary, national, local
What are some reasons for scaling up according to Gupta? (Going from a smaller level of governance to a bigger one)
1- to enhance understanding of a problem, such as accounting for the global hydrological system and externalities as influential factors.
2 - to improve the legitimacy and effectiveness of policy making, by including other actors or countries in decision-making and protecting common goods.
3- to promote domestic interests, such as postponing decisions or avoiding measures at the domestic level
4- to promote extraterritorial interests, such as gaining influence over resources in another location, despite potential loss of control over resources by actors at a lower scale
What are some reasons for scaling down according to Gupta?
1- to enhance understanding, such as recognising that local people are experts on their own water problems
2- to improve the effectiveness of action, for example, using existing problem-solving institutions in taking advantage of built-in processes designed to ensure legitimacy, legality, transparency and accountability
3- to strategise, for example to mobilise locals and using their knowledge, protect national and local interests and bypass an agency
Why is Multi Level Governance (MLG) such as that proposed by Gupta a good approach for sustainable management of water?
Because some issues are more relevant at a particular scale or a level, a multi level governance approach could contribute to sustainable management of the resource because it allows for the dispersion of governance, which internalise externalities, and allows for local heterogeneity and jurisdictional competition as well as it creates a credible policy culture with innovation and experimentation.
What are important dates for water politics?
- 1972 conference on the human environment
- 1977 UN water conference
- 1992 Rio earth summit & Dublin ICWE
- 2003 UN-water is established
- 2015 COP21 Paris
- 2016 Paris agreement & 2030 SDGs are implemented
- 2018 start of the Water Action Decade
- 2023 UN water conference
Based on Woodhouse & Muller, what are the 5 lenses through which water governance has been looked at?
- scarcity: in the 1992 Dublin conference it is clear that water scarcity becomes a major concern, not at a global scale but at a local scale. The difference between physical and economic water scarcity is made and many scholars adopt the concept of virtual water introduced by Allan.
- participation: participation is often believed to lead to outputs with higher environmental standards even though it might not always be the case. Long-term and effective participation are difficult challenges that relate to time, trust and interdependence. Moreover power structures are often ignored in participatory processes.
- scale: water governance needs to be assessed at different scales based on the context. The main debate is about the need for a global water governance or the need for a plurality of frameworks.
- Markets: very limited lens for water governance, even if it might be effective for other natural resources. They do not deal with the allocation of al water nor with other informal local contexts.
- networks & nested hierarchies: polycentrism, decentralisation, looking at problem sheds rather than watersheds
Zwarteveen et al focuses on how distribution should be the basis of water governance. What are the three types of distribution they write about?
- Distribution of water, as in distribution across several sectors and users, also looking into patterns of access and how they are explained or justified.
- distribution of voice and authority: how these are distributed in society, who is included in decision-making.
- distribution of knowledge and expertise: there is a mutually constitutive relationship between power and knowledge. Unequal/unfair distribution of knowledge is necessary to deal with natural resources
