Woodhouse paper

Question 1

What is the societal risk concern about water?

Answer 1

Intensify competition for water among agriculture, ecosystems, settlements, industry, and energy production, affecting regional water, energy, and food security

Question 2

Characteristics of water

Answer 2

1. Fugitive
2. Unequally distributed
3. Highly variable yet renewable natural resource
4. Inherently part of the natural environment
5. Essential to all social and economic activity

Question 3

What is the Sustainable Development Goal of water?

Answer 3

Goal 6
Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all

Question 4

Difference between water resource management and water governance

Answer 4

Water resource management is considered to focus on the operational activities of monitoring and regulating water resources and their use.

While

Water governance is then the overarching framework which sets objectives, guides the strategies for their achievement and monitor outcomes

Question 5

According to Wittfogel, historically what was essential for the development of water irrigation infrastructures?

Answer 5

Hierarchical state formation

Question 6

“Post-modern” world of developed countries has turned away from engineering increased water supply towards goals of “demand management” and environmental protection

Answer 6

true

Question 7

There is a progression whereby an emphasis on developing increased supply through infrastructure has given way to institutional and regulatory approaches to manage consumption
Why?

Answer 7

Yes,

Because tackling management yields better results on investment

Question 8

What is a consistent theme in the water governance debate?

Answer 8

Participatory environmental governance

That the success of a plan would depend on public acceptance which could be facilitated by public participation in the discussion and formulation.

Question 9

What did the debate on water governance give rise to?

Answer 9

The development of the framework “Integrated Water Resource Management”

Question 10

Why do water resources require flexible and adaptive approaches to their management?

Answer 10

Because they’re dynamic and unpredictable

Question 11

The effectiveness of participatory env. gov. is often greater at small scales. However, the resolution of issues requiring internalisation of env. externalities can only be achieved at a larger scale

Answer 11

true

Question 12

What is an important element of Ostrom’s framework for understanding the institutional basis for management of natural resources

Answer 12

“Nesting” of decision-making at different scales

Question 13

what is suggested as the most important practical global governance initiative?

Answer 13

UN-water established in 2003, which coordinates 27 international agencies in water management

Question 14

why do we treat water as an economic good?

Answer 14

because demands for water require financial investments in infrastructure and institutions to meet them

Question 15

What is a strong argument for using market instruments to guide water allocation?

Answer 15

That most of the world’s water abstractions serve economic users such as agriculture, power production and industry.

Question 16

What is a challenge for the legal definitions of property in water?

Answer 16

That many competing interests need to be balanced

Example:
A river in China is used for agriculture, transportation, tourism and domestic water discharge. Additionally, drought and floods occurring periodically in the river cause social and economic damage.

Question 17

Uusing market and prices as the primary instruments of governance to achieve goals of efficiency, equity and sustainability is weak

Answer 17

true

Question 18

What are the relevant prescriptions of IWRM

Answer 18

1. Water should be managed within the boundaries of natural hydrological units constituted by river basis or watersheds
2. Water should be treated as an economic good as it is scarce
3. Participative approaches had to be adopted within the boundaries of the river basin

Question 19

What does the scarcity narrative support?

Answer 19

1. It demands efficiency in water allocation
2. promotes the interpretation of environmental conservation as minimizing departure from “natural hydrology” as the criterion for sustainable water resource management

Question 20

difference between water limits and water scarcity

Answer 20

Limits as objective, empirically verifiable characteristics (flow volumes, recharge rates)

Scarcity as individual or social subjective perceptions of what those limits signify

Question 21

How are Fukuyama, Rhodes and Ostrom related in their theories about water governance?

Answer 21

Fukuyama: “the to apparently opposed meanings of governance- on the one hand, governing without government, and on the other, traditional state based public administration- are in fact linked”. He approximates Rhodes who, for his purposes, said that “governance refers to governing with and through networks” envisaging a “core executive and decentralissd steered networks. This conce`tual structure resonates with that of Elinor Ostrom who, in order to explain how the use of “common pool” natural resources could effectively be governed, conceptualised a series of “nested” or “policentric” institutions

Question 22

Water politics timeline

Answer 22

1972: Conference on the Human Environment
1977: UN 1977 Water
Debates on how water governance could and should respond to the challenges of sustainable
development

1992: 1992 Rio Earth Summit ,
1992 Dublin ICWE - new global institutions promoting universal norms, proliferation of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM)
2003: Establishment of UN-Water
2015: COP21 in Paris
2016: Paris Agreement & 2030 SDGs implemented
2018: Start of the Water Action
2023:UN 2023 Water Conference

Question 23

Main claims from Woodhouse & Muller

Answer 23

Often not clear what water governance entails nor what its goals
should be
—– The role of context: difficulty that comes with the diversity of circumstances

Weak motivations for the adoption of formal global systems of water
governance
—– Challenging universalizing norms of ‘best practice’ and silver bullet solutions
—– Explicitly avoiding normative approaches

Advocating for locally-diverse approaches that see water governed
within ‘problem-sheds’ rather than ‘water-sheds’
—– Water decisions are rarely separable from social and economic decisions in
practice
—– Nexus approach

A need to go beyond the “rules, practices and processes” approach to
water governance
—– Moving beyond the characterization of water as a ‘sector’ to be governed by
technical criteria

Question 24

Conceptualization of water governance

Answer 24

Water governance = 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 25

What are the different perspectives/approaches to governance?

Answer 25

• Scarcity
• Participation
• Scale
• Markets
• Networks and nested hierarchies

Question 26

Expand on the approach to water governance focusing on scarcity

Answer 26

• 1992 Dublin Conference: scarcity becomes a major concern
• mportance of scale: limited evidence of scarcity at a global level,
  however, at local scale…
• ‘Economic water scarcity’ vs ‘physical water scarcity’
• Virtual water (Allan, 1998)

Question 27

Expand on the approach to water governance focusing on participation

Answer 27

• Widespread belief: participation will “lead to outputs . . . with higher
  environmental standards”
• Sporadic evidence of this positive impact (Newig, 2012)
• Challenges of long-term & effective participation: time, trust,
  interdependence
• Power structures often ignored in participatory processes

Question 28

Expand on the approach to water governance focusing on scale

Answer 28

• River-basin as primary scale challenged -> “you can ignore the basin”
  (Giordano & Shah, 2014, p. 374)
  - Basin seldom the locus for decision-making where non-water issues also at play
• Transboundary shared waters
• Global water governance vs plurality of frameworks
  - Context-related responses adapted to local specificities

Question 29

Expand on the approach to water governance focusing on markets

Answer 29

• Main arguments against greater use of market mechanisms practical
  rather than ideological
  - Markets’ limited ability to effectively allocate water
  - Complexities of using market mechanisms to adjudicate on water governance
  decisions
• Formal markets only applicable to water resources with related uses, in
  bounded local situations

Question 30

Networks & nested hierarchies

Answer 30

• No common architecture can be demonstrated
• Rhodes: “core executive” and “decentralised, steered networks”
• Ostrom: “nested” or “polycentric” institutions to govern the use of
  “common pool” natural resources such as water
• Generic scale issues in environmental governance

Question 31

Goal of the paper

Answer 31

• Goal of the paper: to strengthen the analytical purchase of the term
  water governance and improve the utility of the concept for describing
  and analyzing actual water distribution processes
  —- Purchase (n.) = the ability to make sense of and help understand actual
  processes of governing