Water politics and critical perspectives

Question 1

Water Governance by Zwarteveen et al 2017

Answer 1

‘the practices of coordination and decision making between different actors around contested water distributions’ (Ref 7, p. 19). Such practices are thick with politics and culture; they are linked to creative processes of imagining and producing collective water futures, and combine political problems of scale (spatial, ecological, administrative, and temporal), with problems of coherence (the durable alignment of different people and different waters despite problems of commensurability and political tensions) (cf. Ref 8).

Question 2

Water Governance by OECD, in Woodhouse & Muller, 2017

Answer 2

“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”

Question 3

Water Governance by Pahl-Wostl, 2015

Answer 3

“Water governance is the social function that regulates development and management of water resources and provisions of water services at different levels of society and guiding the resource towards a desirable state and away from an undesirable state. A water governance system is the interconnected ensemble of political, social, economic and administrative elements that performs the function of water governance. These elements embrace institutions as well as actors and their interactions.”

Question 4

Institutions

Answer 4

• North, 1991 (inspired by Ostrom): the humanly devised constraints that structure political, economic and social interaction”
• Ostrom, 1990: The rules of the game
• Crawford, 1995: norms, rules and strategies

Question 5

nested systems

Answer 5

happen in multiple levels (body example: cells, that create organs, that create the digestive system; they work together and individually at the same time, it scales up). The nested system is how many environmental scientists understand structures and systems. A water system is nested, it happens in multiple levels. They need coordination in between stakeholders, but also stakeholder’s levels, with different rules.

Question 6

resource curse

Answer 6

Term is used with regards to precious materials (gold, oil etc.). The countries that are very rich in for example oil, have very high levels of corruption. (Wester neo-colonial perspective, misses the point where the exploiters are from and how they got in that position).

Question 7

Subsidiarity used in Gupta 2013

Answer 7

Relates to the idea that here should be the lowest level of intervention to address a certain issue (fits the rationale of decentralization). The closer to the problem, the easiest to address it. Centre of authority shifted to a local level.

Question 8

Universal Nature used in Gupta 2013

Answer 8

many environmental problems are transboundary. For a global problem need global action. (exampleswater governance at global level: water as a human right)

Question 9

Scaling up used in Gupta 2013

Answer 9

raising the level of authority for who addresses a water problem. Enhances understanding of the problem, improves legitimacy and effectiveness of policymaking, promotes domestic and territorial interests, and avoids the race to the bototm

Question 10

Scaling down used

Answer 10

Gupta 2013 - lowering the level of authority for who addresses a water problem. Enhances undersatnding, improves effectiveness of action, helps strategize, better at pulling on traditional ecological knowledge

Question 11

Multilevel governance

Answer 11

Gupta - multiple levels of governance being involved in addressing a problem. Internalizes externalities, allows for heterogeniety in policy response, avoids jurisdictional competition, promotes innovation and compeition, ballances bottom-up and top-down approaches and allows for cross-level coordination.

Challenge: politics of scale. How to assess what should be governed at what level / what kind of cross-level coordination required to achieve sustainable management

Question 12

Statement about Water Governance by Zwarteveen et al 2017

Answer 12

“water governance is at heart about political choices as to where water should flow; about the norms, rules and laws on which such choices should be based; about who is best able or qualified to decide about this; and about the kind of societal future such choices support.”

Question 13

Distribution by Zwarteveen et al 2017

Answer 13

The practice of examining how water resources/services are allocated through dunamic interactions of humans with their biophysical environment; who gets water for what purposes? How much? Who makes those decisions? Examines who has voice, authority, and water knowledge/expertise in which places. Foregrounds questions of equity when examining water governance.

Question 14

Statement territorial struggles by Boelens et al. (2015)

Answer 14

“territorial struggles go beyond battles over natural resources as they involve struggles over meaning, norms, knowledge, identity, authority and discourses”.

Question 15

Territories by Boelens et al. (2015)

Answer 15

The outcomes of interactions in which the contents, presumed boundaries and connections between nature and society are produced by human imagination, social practices and related knowledge systems

Question 16

Hydrosocial territories by Boelens et al. (2015)

Answer 16

socially, naturally and politically constituted spaces that are (re)created through the interactions among human practices, water flows, hydraulic technologies, biophysical events, socio-economic structures and cultural-political institutions

Question 17

socio-environmental imaginaries by Boelens et al. (2015)

Answer 17

socio-environmental world views and aspirations held by particular social groups, as the wished-for patterning of the material and ecological territorial worlds with and through the corresponding values, symbols, norms, institutions and social relationships.

Question 18

re-politicization

Answer 18

Boelens et al. (2015) - Recognizing and re-centering the political nature of something (e.g. water)