Re-Theorizing Politics in Water Governance
Abstract
:1. Introduction
Who gets what, how, and why? Who or what are the most important actors, institutions, groups, movements, ideas, and practices in a given situation or issue? What are the rules of the game, and who sets them and why (as well as who are the winners and losers in the game)? What are the pros and cons of particular ideas, structures, rationalities, and programmes? Who is being silenced, excluded, marginalised, or harmed? What are the consequences of particular actions or ways of thinking? What values or principles should guide our action and thought? What are the conditions of possibility of change? Where can we identify resistance?[6]
2. Theorizing Power and Politics in Water Governance
help conceal the political and economic interests that lie behind the institutional arrangements, social relations, material practices and scalar configurations involved in so-called ‘good governance’. If we are to employ this concept, then it is imperative we do so critically, carefully elucidating the political nature inherent in the institutional arrangements and socio-environmental relationships to which it refers.[15]
Mushkegowuk water governance, like Indigenous water governance across Canada, is further ruptured through neoliberal policies that secure and stimulate capitalist accumulation at the expense of Indigenous autonomy and environmental sustainability.[38]
3. Key Outcomes of this Special Issue
3.1. New Terrains and Engagements with the Political in Water Governance
3.1.1. Politics of Water Infrastructure and Insecurity
3.1.2. Participatory Politics and Multi-Scalar Governance Dynamics
3.1.3. Emergent Technologies of Water
3.1.4. Indigenous Water Governance and Politics
3.1.5. Water Governance Practices, Ethics, and Narrative
4. Conclusions: Re-theorizing Politics
Author Contributions
Funding
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
References
- Bakker, K. Good Governance in Restructuring Water Supply: A Handbook; Federation of Canadian Municipalities: Ottawa, ON, Canada, 2003. [Google Scholar]
- Zwarteveen, M.; Kemerink-Seyoum, J.S.; Kooy, M.; Evers, J.; Guerrero, T.A.; Batubara, B.; Biza, A.; Boakye-Ansah, A.; Faber, S.; Flamini, A.C.; et al. Engaging with the politics of water governance. Wiley Interdiscip. Rev. Water 2017, 4, e1245. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Rogers, P.; Hall, A.W. Effective Water Governance: Learning from the Dialogues; Global Water Partnership: Stockholm, Sweden, 2003. [Google Scholar]
- Bakker, K. A political ecology of water privatization. Stud. Polit. Econ. 2003, 70, 35–58. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Staeheli, L.; Kofman, E.; Peake, L. Mapping Women, Making Politics: Feminist Perspectives on Political Geography; Routledge: New York, NY, USA, 2004. [Google Scholar]
- Death, C. Critical, environmental, political: An introduction. In Critical Environmental Politics; Death, C., Ed.; Routledge: New York, NY, USA, 2014; pp. 1–12. [Google Scholar]
- Budds, J.; Hinojosa, L. Restructuring and rescaling water governance in mining contexts: The co-production of waterscapes in Peru. Water Altern. 2012, 5, 119–137. [Google Scholar]
- Linton, J. What is Water?: The History of a Modern Abstraction; Nature/history/society series; UBC Press: Vancouver, BC, Canada, 2010; ISBN 978-0-7748-1701-1. [Google Scholar]
- Linton, J.; Budds, J. The hydrosocial cycle: Defining and mobilizing a relational-dialectical approach to water. Geoforum 2014, 57, 170–180. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Boelens, R. Cultural politics and the hydrosocial cycle: Water, power and identity in the Andean highlands. Geoforum 2014, 57, 234–247. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- McGregor, D. Traditional knowledge and water governance: The ethic of responsibility. Altern. Int. J. Indig. Peoples 2014, 10, 493–507. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Shah, S.H.; Narain, V. Re-framing India’s “water crisis”: An institutions and entitlements perspective. Geoforum 2019, 101, 76–79. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Wilson, N.J.; Inkster, J. Respecting water: Indigenous water governance, ontologies, and the politics of kinship on the ground. Environ. Plan. E Nat. Space 2018, 1, 516–538. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Yates, J.S.; Harris, L.M.; Wilson, N.J. Multiple ontologies of water: Politics, conflict and implications for governance. Environ. Plan. D Soc. Space 2017, 35, 797–815. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Perreault, T. What kind of governance for what kind of equity? Towards a theorization of justice in water governance. Water Int. 2014, 39, 233–245. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Craft, A. Anishinaabe Nibi Inaakonigewin Report: Reflecting the Water Laws Research Gathering Conducted with Anishinaabe Elders, June 20–23, 2013 at Roseau River, Manitoba; University of Manitoba, Centre for Human Rights Research (CHRR) and Public Interest Law Centre (PILC): Winnipeg, MB, Canada, 2014. [Google Scholar]
- Todd, Z. Refracting the state through human-fish relations: Fishing, Indigenous legal orders and colonialism in north/western Canada. Decolonization Indig. Educ. Soc. 2018, 7, 60–75. [Google Scholar]
- Anand, N. Hydraulic City: Water and the Infrastructures of Citizenship in Mumbai; Duke University Press: Durham, NC, USA, 2017. [Google Scholar]
- Harris, L. Hegemonic waters and rethinking natures otherwise. In Practicing Feminist Political Ecologies: Moving beyond the Green Economy; Harcourt, W., Nelson, L., Eds.; Zed Books: London, UK, New York, USA, 2015. [Google Scholar]
- Jepson, W.; Budds, J.; Eichelberger, L.; Harris, L.; Norman, E.; O’Reilly, K.; Pearson, A.; Shah, S.; Shinn, J.; Staddon, C.; et al. Advancing human capabilities for water security: A relational approach. Water Secur. 2017, 1, 46–52. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Ranganathan, M. Thinking with Flint: Racial liberalism and the roots of an American water tragedy. Capital. Nat. Social. 2016, 27, 1–17. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Sultana, F. Suffering for water, suffering from water: Emotional geographies of resource access, control and conflict. Geoforum 2011, 42, 163–172. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Wutich, A.; Ragsdale, K. Water insecurity and emotional distress: Coping with supply, access, and seasonal variability of water in a Bolivian squatter settlement. Soc. Sci. Med. 2008, 67, 2116–2125. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed]
- Conca, K.; Weinthal, E. The political dimensions of water. In The Oxford Handbook of Water Politics and Policy; Conca, K., Weinthal, E., Eds.; Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK, 2018. [Google Scholar]
- Harris, L.; McKenzie, S.; Rodina, L.; Shah, S.H.; Wilson, N.J. Water Justice: Key concepts, debates and research agendas. In The Routledge Handbook of Environmental Justice; Holifield, R., Chakraborty, J., Walker, G., Eds.; Routledge: New York, NY, USA, 2017; pp. 338–349. [Google Scholar]
- Loftus, A. Water (in)security: Securing the right to water. Geog. J. 2015, 181, 350–356. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Shah, S.H.; Rodina, L. Water ethics, justice, and equity in social-ecological systems conservation: Lessons from the Queensland Wild Rivers Act. Water Pol. 2018, 20, 933–952. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Sultana, F. Water justice: Why it matters and how to achieve it. Water Int. 2018, 43, 483–493. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Brisbois, M.C.; de Loë, R.C. Power in collaborative approaches to governance for water: A systematic review. Soc. Nat. Resour. 2016, 29, 775–790. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Brisbois, M.C.; De Loë, R.C. State roles and motivations in collaborative approaches to water governance: A power theory-based analysis. Geoforum 2016, 74, 202–212. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Lukes, S. Power: A Radical View; Palgrave Macmillan: New York, NY, USA, 2005. [Google Scholar]
- Bakker, K.; Simms, R.; Joe, N.; Harris, L. Indigenous Peoples and Water Governance in Canada: Regulatory Injustice and Prospects for Reform. In Water Justice; Boelens, R., Perreault, T., Vos, J., Zwarteveen, M., Eds.; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 2018; ISBN 1-107-17908-4. [Google Scholar]
- Koontz, T.M.; Steelman, T.A.; Carmin, J.; Korfmacher, K.S.; Moseley, C.; Thomas, C.W. Collaborative Environmental Management: What Roles for Government? Resources for the Future: Washington, DC, USA, 2004; ISBN 978-1-891853-80-7. [Google Scholar]
- Mascarenhas, M. Where the Waters Divide: Neoliberalism, White Privilege, and Environmental Racism in Canada; Lexington Books: London, UK, 2012; ISBN 978-0-7391-6828-8. [Google Scholar]
- Pulido, L. Flint, Environmental racism, and racial capitalism. Capitalism Nat. Socialism 2016, 27, 1–16. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Fabris, M. Decolonizing neoliberalism? First Nations reserves, private property rights, and the legislation of Indigenous dispossession in Canada. In Contested Property Claims: What Disagreement Tells Us about Ownership; Routledge: New York, NY, USA, 2017; pp. 201–220. [Google Scholar]
- Preston, J. Neoliberal settler colonialism, Canada and the tar sands. Race Cl. 2013, 55, 42–59. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Daigle, M. Resurging through Kishiichiwan: The spatial politics of Indigenous water relations. Decolonization Indig. Educ. Soc. 2018, 7, 159–172. [Google Scholar]
- Dean, M. Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society, 2nd Ed; SAGE: Los Angeles, CA, USA, 2010; ISBN 978-1-84787-384-2. [Google Scholar]
- Foucault, M. Governmentality. In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality; Burchell, G., Gordon, C., Miller, P., Eds.; University of Chicago Press: Chicago, IL, USA, 1991. [Google Scholar]
- Vos, J.; Boelens, R. Neoliberal Water Governmentalities, Virtual Water Trade, and Contestations. In Water Justice; Boelens, R., Perreault, T., Vos, J., Eds.; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 2018; ISBN 978-1-316-83184-7. [Google Scholar]
- Goff, M.; Crow, B. What is water equity? The unfortunate consequences of a global focus on ‘drinking water’. Water Int. 2014, 39, 159–171. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Torio, P.C.; Harris, L.M.; Angeles, L.C. The rural–urban equity nexus of Metro Manila’s water system. Water Int. 2019, 44, 115–128. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Craft, A. Navigating Our Ongoing Sacred Legal Relationship with Nibi (Water). In UNDRIP Implementation: More Reflections on the Braiding of International, Domestic and Indigenous Laws; Centre for International Governance Innovation: Waterloo, ON, Canada, 2018; pp. 53–62. [Google Scholar]
- Goldman, M.J.; Turner, M.D.; Daly, M. A critical political ecology of human dimensions of climate change: Epistemology, ontology, and ethics. Wiley Interdiscip. Rev. Clim. Chang. 2018, 9, e526. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Harrington, C. The political ontology of collaborative water governance. Water Int. 2017, 42, 254–270. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Steinberg, P.; Peters, K. Wet ontologies, fluid spaces: Giving depth to volume through oceanic thinking. Environ. Plan. D Soc. Space 2015, 33, 247–264. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- O’Brien, K. Global environmental change II: From adaptation to deliberate transformation. Prog. Hum. Geogr. 2012, 36, 667–676. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Swyngedouw, E. The non-political politics of climate change. ACME: Int. J. Crit. Geog. 2013, 12, 1–8. [Google Scholar]
- Harris, L.M.; Alatout, S. Negotiating hydro-scales, forging states: Comparison of the upper Tigris/Euphrates and Jordan River basins. Politi- Geogr. 2010, 29, 148–156. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
- Norman, E.S.; Cook, C.; Cohen, A. Negotiating Water Governance: Why the Politics of Scale Matter; Ashgate Pub Co: Farnham, UK, 2015; ISBN 978-1-4094-6790-8. [Google Scholar]
- Hommes, L.; Boelens, R.; Harris, L.M.; Veldwisch, G.J. Rural-urban water struggles: Urbanizing hydrosocial territories and evolving connections, discourses and identities. Water Int. 2019, 44, 81–94. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Boelens, R.; Perreault, T.; Vos, J. Water Justice, 1st ed.; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 2018; ISBN 978-1-316-83184-7. [Google Scholar]
- Mawani, V. Religiously unmapped water access: Locating religious difference in access to municipal water supply. Water 2019, 11, 1282. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Rodríguez-De-Francisco, J.C.; Duarte-Abadía, B.; Boelens, R. Payment for ecosystem services and the Water-Energy-Food nexus: Securing resource flows for the affluent? Water 2019, 11, 1143. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Atkins, E. Disputing the ‘National Interest’: The depoliticization and repoliticization of the Belo Monte Dam, Brazil. Water 2019, 11, 103. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Razavi, N.S. ‘Social control’ and the politics of public participation in water remunicipalization, Cochabamba, Bolivia. Water. in Press. [CrossRef]
- MacDonald, K. The user and the association: Neglecting household irrigation as neglecting household well-being in the creation of Water Users’ Associations in the Republic of Tajikistan. Water 2019, 11, 505. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Workman, C.L. Ebbs and flows of authority: Decentralization, development and the hydrosocial cycle in Lesotho. Water 2019, 11, 184. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Pacheco-Vega, R. (Re)theorizing the politics of bottled water: Water insecurity in the context of weak regulatory regimes. Water 2019, 11, 658. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Kooy, M.; Walter, C.T. Towards a situated urban political ecology analysis of packaged drinking water supply. Water 2019, 11, 225. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Campero, C.; Harris, L.M. The legal geographies of water claims: Seawater desalination in mining regions in Chile. Water 2019, 11, 886. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Sam, M.G.; Armstrong, J. Indigenous water governance and resistance: A Syilx perspective. In The Social Life of Water; Wagner, J.R., Ed.; Berghahn Books: Oxford, UK, 2013; pp. 239–254. [Google Scholar]
- Simms, R.; Harris, L.; Joe, N.; Bakker, K. Navigating the tensions in collaborative watershed governance: Water governance and Indigenous communities in British Columbia, Canada. Geoforum 2016, 73, 6–16. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
- Wilson, N.J. “Seeing water like a state?”: Indigenous water governance through Yukon First Nation self-government agreements. Geoforum 2019. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Yazzie, M.K.; Baldy, C.R. Introduction: Indigenous peoples and the politics of water. Decolonization Indig. Educ. Soc. 2018, 7, 19. [Google Scholar]
- Curley, A. Unsettling Indian water settlements: The Little Colorado River, the San Juan River, and colonial enclosures. Antipod 2019. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Montoya, T. Yellow water: Rupture and return one year after the Gold King Mine Spill. Anthr. Now 2017, 9, 91–115. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Yazzie, M.K. Unlimited limitations: The Navajos’ Winters rights deemed worthless in the 2012 Navajo–Hopi Little Colorado River Settlement. Wicazo Sa Rev. 2013, 28, 26–37. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Curran, D. Indigenous processes of consent: Repoliticizing water governance through legal pluralism. Water 2019, 11, 571. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Baijius, W.; Patrick, R.J. “We Don’t Drink the Water Here”: The reproduction of undrinkable water for First Nations in Canada. Water 2019, 11, 1079. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Taylor, K.S.; Longboat, S.; Grafton, R.Q. Whose rules? A water justice critique of the OECD’s 12 principles on water governance. Water 2019, 11, 809. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- United Nations. United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) 2008. Available online: https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf (accessed on 15 July 2019).
- Chiblow (Ogamauh annag qwe), S. Anishinabek Women’s Nibi Giikendaaswin (Water Knowledge). Water 2019, 11, 209. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Cohn, T.C.; Berry, K.; Whyte, K.P.; Norman, E. Spatio-temporality and Tribal water quality governance in the United States. Water 2019, 11, 99. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Wilson, N.J.; Harris, L.M.; Joseph-Rear, A.; Beaumont, J.; Satterfield, T. Water is medicine: Reimagining water security through Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in relationships to treated and traditional water sources in Yukon, Canada. Water 2019, 11, 624. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Meisch, S.P. I want to tell you a story: How narrative water ethics contributes to re-theorizing water politics. Water 2019, 11, 631. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
© 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Share and Cite
Wilson, N.J.; Harris, L.M.; Nelson, J.; Shah, S.H. Re-Theorizing Politics in Water Governance. Water 2019, 11, 1470. https://doi.org/10.3390/w11071470
Wilson NJ, Harris LM, Nelson J, Shah SH. Re-Theorizing Politics in Water Governance. Water. 2019; 11(7):1470. https://doi.org/10.3390/w11071470
Chicago/Turabian StyleWilson, Nicole J., Leila M. Harris, Joanne Nelson, and Sameer H. Shah. 2019. "Re-Theorizing Politics in Water Governance" Water 11, no. 7: 1470. https://doi.org/10.3390/w11071470