Procedural Justice in Water Management: A Review

Abstract

This review examines how procedural justice is dealt with in water management literature. Based on a targeted sample of journal articles between 2006 and 2025, it offers an overview of the disciplinary, geographic, and topical scope of engagement with the concept. Recognizing a plurality of definitions of justice, the review examines areas of overlap and disagreement in the articles’ treatment of procedural justice and highlights insights offered for just water management. It focuses in particular on defining and valuing procedural justice and related dimensions of justice and analyzing power relations in water systems decision making. The conclusion offers suggestions for future scholarship and flags impending challenges.

1. Introduction

This targeted literature review examines how the concept of procedural justice is being used within contemporary water management literature. Increasingly, researchers and practitioners within water management are grappling with questions of justice. Yet, the concepts of justice being used—its definition, causes, and consequences—are far from uniform. This work from the water sector sits within long-standing debates and multiple proposals about what constitutes fair environmental relations, how to recognize justice and injustice, and how to remedy injustices. The frameworks available to water researchers and practitioners, and the expectations of readers and constituents, are shaped by these genealogies.

Environmental justice literature has been particularly influential on this issue. During its earliest years, environmental justice research focused primarily on the disproportionate exposure of people of color to toxins in the United States [1,2,3]. This focus broadened to include other lines of discrimination, such as class and gender, and expanded spatially to encompass different geographic locales and connections from local to global scales [4,5]. This focus has come to be referred to as distributive justice, a concern for achieving equitable environmental outcomes, which includes both environmental burdens and benefits [6].

As investigation deepened, researchers and environmental practitioners alike began focusing on the processes and procedures that lead to such disproportionality and methods for remedying harms, as well. In response, environmental justice literature developed attention to multiple dimensions of justice [7,8]. One commonly cited classification of environmental justice by Robert Kuehn [6] notes distributive, procedural, and corrective dimensions. In this view, procedural justice requires that the process for decision making be fair. While the explicit focus is on the processes themselves, concern for the “who” factor of decision making is implied. Attention to this dimension has historically been motivated by concerns about how these processes exclude and disadvantage certain social groups, most notably by privileging the scientific expertise and procedural norms favored by racial and class-based elites, to the detriment of low-income and people of color communities (e.g., [9]). Compensatory justice, in Kuehn’s view, entails the even distribution of compensation and restoration to, as well as punishment on behalf of, all those harmed by environmental damage [6].

For many, cultural recognition is an important missing factor in materialist explanations such as Kuehn’s, which overlook important forms of discrimination and its consequences [10,11]. In an alternative environmental justice categorization, distributive, compensatory, and recognition dimensions are asserted [12]. In this approach, recognition justice requires that all groups with “a vital interest” in the environmental issue be included in decision making and that decision-making procedures respect these groups’ environmental identities and environmental heritages and account for local knowledge systems [12]. This formulation of recognition justice overlaps significantly with previous discussions of procedural justice, but expects more fundamental social change, i.e., that “the institutions of mainstream environmentalism [be] transformed to include the voices of those most affected by the environmental burdens” [12]. Rather than implying the “who” factor, this formulation of recognition justice foregrounds this factor and expects additional procedural changes to follow. Other scholars have asserted the need to focus on both recognition and procedural justice, often depicting recognition justice as foundational to both procedural and distributive justice [13,14]. Within Indigenous studies, recognition has been central to understandings of justice, including a particular emphasis on the recognition of sovereignty [13,15,16]. While differing from each other in significant ways, all of these theories of justice share a genealogy founded in distributional theory, adding dimensions to build out a more complete understanding of justice.

Developing in parallel, and at times intersecting with this distributional genealogy of justice, has been an alternative, capabilities-based assessment. This approach builds on Amartya Sen’s [17] notion of “capabilities” and “functionings,” as well as Martha Nussbaum’s [18] later contributions. Rather than establishing the expectation that people share equally in the distribution of “primary goods” (which include physical/monetary resources and rights), this approach sets an expectation that members of a society should be equally capable of achieving a normative outcome—a dignified life—but expects that they may each do so through different means [19]. Some environmental justice scholars have incorporated this capabilities approach with classic environmental justice frameworks to better theorize environmental issues. For example, Schlosberg [14] suggests that a capabilities approach offers a way of uniting multiple dimensions of justice—namely distribution, recognition, and procedure—as all being essential components for flourishing lives.

As these multiple theories of justice have been incorporated into research in a growing number of fields, alternative definitions of previously identified dimensions of justice and additional dimensions have been proposed. Coming from a psychological perspective, some researchers call for attention to interactional justice, which focuses on interpersonal treatment. This is meant to complement the focus on formal processes that had dominated much discussion of procedural justice by attending more acutely to informal behavior and to individual’s experiences within decision-making and allocation processes [20,21]. At times, interactional justice is described as synonymous with recognition justice (e.g., [22,23]), though this represents a much narrower, more individualized definition of recognition justice than that offered by Figueroa, Whyte, and others.

Researchers and water practitioners examining justice draw from this proliferating web of definitions and theories. At the same time, they come from a broad array of disciplines—from hydrogeology to humanities and from anthropology to engineering—with their different priorities and epistemologies. This creates the potential for great confusion, as one term may accrete multiple meanings, and a term’s implicit meanings may be lost or changed through new use. While a plurality of discourses on justice may be “a good thing…both theoretically justifiable and pragmatically applicable” [14] (p. 165), this plurality demands careful attention and, at times, translation. Such is the aim of this literature review. As in the environmental justice literature more broadly, equitable distribution has been a common and long-term focus. Engagement with procedural justice is relatively more recent, and its definitions are more contested, making a review of this sort particularly useful [14]. This literature review uses targeted sampling and thematic coding to capture a snapshot of how water management literature has taken up the concept of procedural justice and related dimensions and theories of justice.

The review proceeds by describing the method used for selecting and analyzing articles. Next is an overview of the articles that indicates their disciplinary, geographic, and topical scope and discusses their different types of engagement with procedural justice. A discussion section then examines areas of overlap and disagreement in the articles’ treatment of procedural justice and highlights insights offered for just water management. It focuses in particular on defining and valuing procedural and related dimensions of justice and analyzing power relations in water systems decision making. The conclusion summarizes findings, offers suggestions for future scholarship, and flags impending challenges.

2. Methodology

This article offers a targeted literature review, rather than a systematic review. Multiple methodologies may be used to conduct a literature review. Rather than being a systematic review that follows an externally designed methodology and aims for comprehensive coverage of published literature in the field, this targeted literature review examines a specific subset of the literature. As a targeted review, this article highlights trends in the concept’s usage, the breadth of ways the concept is defined, and areas of disagreement regarding the concept. Because it is not a systematic review, it will have less to say about the frequencies and relative weights of different usages and definitions given to the concept within the larger body of the water management literature.

Four significant journals within the field of water management were selected to provide a sample of articles. All four journals focus on water issues, with significant engagement with water governance and an international scope. They represent a variety of approaches and leanings, targeted to include both mainstream and more critical perspectives, a broad range of academic disciplines, high- and low-volume journals, and both long-established and more recent journals (See

Table 1. Targeted sample of journals.

Journal	Published Since	Publishing Model	Annual Volume of Articles Published	Impact Factor (Web of Science)
Water International	[Available online since 1975]	Hybrid	Low	1.6; 5-year: 2.6
Water Policy	1998	Open Access	Medium	1.5; 5-year: 1.6
Water Alternatives	2008	Open Access, optional authors’ fee	Low	2.4; 5-year: 2.2
Water	2009	Open Access	High	3.0; 5-year: 3.3

). Water Policy, the official journal of the World Water Council, covers water management and water infrastructure, with a stated prioritization of integrated water management. It publishes approximately 80 articles annually. Water International is the official journal of the International Water Resources Association (IWRA) and is principally concerned with sustainable water management. It has a hybrid publishing model, with an open access option, and publishes approximately 30 articles per year. The third journal, Water Alternatives, also small volume in article output, offers a different perspective. Its manifesto criticizes dominant models of integrated water resource management (IWRM) and proposes the journal as a space for examining alternatives. Water is a very large-volume publishing, open-access journal that covers a broad array of topics and perspectives related to water resources, ecology, and management.

These journals were searched for research and review articles published between 1996–2025 that address procedural justice in relation to water management, with a particular focus on water provisioning for human use. An initial keyword search (“procedural justice”) yielded 65 articles. These were screened to gather articles that actually use the concept of procedural justice (This step was necessary because some of the search interfaces offered for these journals did not distinguish between the phrase “procedural justice” and the individual words “procedural” and “justice”). In addition, articles were screened for relevance to provisioning for human use. Water is, of course, highly interconnected. Many actions impact water supplies, and water management approaches have knock-on effects across many sectors of society and on more than human beings. For this review, articles focused on water only in terms of nonhuman habitat (e.g., addressing ecosystem restoration projects without attention to impacts on humans’ water supplies) were excluded. Articles that narrowly focus on flood risk management were removed, whereas those addressing flood risk in relation to water provisioning issues were retained. Nineteen of the found articles were deemed relevant. Publication dates range from 1998 to 2025, though all but one were published since 2010.

Because relatively few articles were found with this targeted search, an additional search was conducted to expand the body of literature under consideration. The Science Direct database was searched for articles published from 2006 to 2025 with “procedural justice” anywhere and “water” in the title, abstract, or keywords. This search yielded 119 hits. These were sorted into three categories: “not relevant” to the topic of water management with a focus on water provisioning (67 articles), “topically relevant” but not engaging with procedural justice beyond a passing reference (43 articles), and “topically relevant with procedural justice content” (9 articles).

These nine articles with procedural justice content, along with all relevant articles from the targeted journals were imported into MaxQDA coding software. This sample of 28 articles was thematically coded using both deductive and inductive coding (for bibliographic information, see Supplementary Materials). Deductive coding focused on keywords, study location, methods, aim of study, and definition of procedural justice. As the breadth of other forms of justice within this sample became clear, inductive codes were added to track these other forms, and any discussion of the genealogy(ies) of justice being drawn upon, as well as researchers’ disciplinary backgrounds.

This review is focused on the literature specifically using procedural justice and drawing on that term’s specific definitions and meanings. Such a keyword search does not capture all the ways in which people discuss overlapping concepts. For example, it is notable that of the 50 articles originally found through keyword search in Water, only six actually used the term “procedural justice” (others used each word separately). However, thirty-one of the remaining articles discussed topics that overlap with aspects of the procedural justice concept. Common examples include “stakeholder engagement,” “participatory decision making,” “participatory governance,” and “community participation.” These allied concepts did not incorporate an explicit justice emphasis, and these articles were not fully coded and analyzed. However, to better understand the boundaries of procedural justice discussions, articles gathered from the four targeted journals, but deemed not to be directly engaging with procedural justice, as well as the 43 “topically relevant” Science Direct articles, were also considered. They were scanned, analyzed more cursorily to note whether any treated participatory decision making and justice in dramatically different ways from the targeted sample, and are referred to in the text below as the “broader sample.”

3. Overview of Surveyed Articles

The articles reviewed are diverse in many senses. They cover a broad geographic area. Four articles are not place-based, instead analyzing documents or drawing from a topical literature review. The remaining articles cover case studies on six continents, with North America most heavily represented and Europe least represented. Three articles deal with multi-country or border region cases, but most are more locally focused, often on a single county, city, or even neighborhood. The articles’ authors hail from seventeen different countries (across five continents) and have training in a wide variety of scholarly disciplines. Geography was the discipline most frequently represented (13 authors in 10 articles), but authors also come from many social sciences (e.g., anthropology, political science, social psychology), lab and field sciences (e.g., biology, environmental science, hydrogeology), humanities (English), engineering (civil engineering, environmental engineering), and law. Many articles are interdisciplinary, including teams that span broad fields of study.

In terms of methodology, the articles are also diverse: four are based on quantitative research, thirteen are qualitative, and nine use a mix of the two; two are analytical essays. The vast majority take deductive approaches, applying a framework of justice to evaluate an empirical water management situation. One took a more inductive approach, learning how people in a given context define justice and using this to recommend adjustments to existing theory [24].

The depth of engagement these articles exhibit with the concept of procedural justice is also highly varied. Eleven articles in the sample note procedural justice in passing. Within these articles, a subset do not focus on justice per se, but note the issue within discussions of other issues. For example, within a discussion of how third parties may help transboundary water governance, Zikhali-Nyoni [25] cites the tendency of third-party participants to emphasize procedural justice over distributional justice, but the article does not include discussion of whether or how third parties’ involvement may impact the procedural justice of transboundary water negotiations. Others in this category include a journal special issue introduction to water as hydrosocial [26]; an analysis of how topography influences resilience to flooding and other natural hazards [27]; and an evaluation of six different frameworks for approaching integrated management of water-environment resources, one of which incorporates attention to distributive and procedural justice [28].

Another subset focuses on distributive justice and notes procedural justice only in relation to that. Ngarava [29] examines how land access may shape distributive justice in relation to water, energy, and food (WEF) resources, and notes that enhancing procedural justice may be a means to achieving distributive justice. Torio et al. [30] evaluate distributive injustice in water access in one metro region, and they note that other forms of injustice, both procedural and recognition, can influence this, but do not engage directly with this wider examination of injustice. Similarly, Anderson et al. [31] focuses on distributive injustice in relation to water poverty in Scotland, stating that procedural justice is beyond the scope of their study and calling for future research on the issue.

A third subset focuses heavily on participatory governance, with brief mention of procedural justice in this context. Hofmann and Mitchell [32] examine “participatory decision making” at length and reference “procedural equity” as an important component. Furber et al. [33] offer in-depth discussion of “Shared Vision Planning” as one participatory approach to resource conflict management, but only note procedural justice in passing as a priority that some participants within a water-related conflict may have. Two articles examine models of participatory decision making, not with a sustained focus on justice, but with the aim of improving the water system. Within a larger discussion of adaptive governance, Saikia and Jiménez [34] find that inclusive, participatory governance risks slowing adaptation, but also holds the potential to achieve more resilient water systems. Dewa et al. [35] find a similar trade-off in relation to flood management.

In seventeen articles, procedural justice is a more significant focus. These articles cluster around five aims related to procedural justice: studying conceptions, analyzing implications, evaluating water management, developing analytical tools, and prescriptions for water management. First, two qualitative studies examine the different understandings of justice among people in their field sites, but take rather different approaches. One is deductive, categorizing the visions of justice expressed by members of two water alliances according to recognized forms of justice and noting ways in which alliance members agreed and where they held divergent and even contradictory vision of justice [36]. They find that allies shared short-term visions of distributive and procedural justice, but differed in their visions of reparative and transformative justice. Another article uses an inductive approach to analyze residents’ conceptions of justice, finding some views that align with forms of justice covered in the literature, but also additional forms [24]. In their research setting of rural Mexico, they found justice-as-recognition and ecological justice to be fundamental for setting the conditions that make social justice possible, and procedural and distributive justice to be the practical dimensions that can be used to enact it.

Several articles examine the implications of perceived justice or injustice in water management. All three are concerned with the role that perceptions of procedural justice can play in shaping trust of and support for water management practices. These studies span India, Honduras, and the United States and include both cooperative or community-based water management [37,38] and agency-run initiatives [39].

A third set of articles evaluates how innovations in water management have impacted the degrees and types of (in)justice found on the ground. In the context of informal water vending in Cochabamba, Bolivia [40] and Nairobi, Kenya [41], authors find mixed indications of procedural and interactional injustice among venders and buyers, but also the potential for ameliorating distributive injustice through informal distribution. Among “modular, adaptive, and decentralized” (MAD) water systems in the United States, Roque et al. [42] find distributive and procedural injustices, but also opportunities for interpersonal, recognitional, and transformative/restorative justice. In an example of co-governance between the Yukon Government and First Nations, Wilson [43] finds improvement in three dimensions of justice (distributive, procedural, and recognition), but also the persistence of power asymmetries that disadvantage First Nations.

Several studies propose frameworks for analyzing justice. Each describes the framework in comparison with existing analytical tools, applies it to a case study, and recommends it both to analysts and to practitioners aiming for more just water management. Hamilton et al. [44] argue for the utility of integrated assessment to evaluate water management strategies, applying it to a case study in Bangladesh. Within this assessment, attention to procedural justice enables the authors to analyze tangled power asymmetries and their impacts on water access and collective agency. Patrick [45] describes the “Cycles and Spirals of Justice” to examine the impacts of (in)justice at multiple social scales, while Wade [46] proposes a “water security” framework that aims to add power and scale considerations to prior environmental justice frameworks. Each identifies procedural justice as an essential element in their analytical framework.

Four additional articles are even more directly focused on prescribing water management improvements. These look across scales, from the World Commission on Dams [47] to local advisory councils in Western Australia [48]. All are acutely attentive to power dynamics. Kolinjivadi et al. [49], for example, present a case study of residents of a catchment in Nepal deliberating on a potential payment for ecosystem services (PES) plan. They identify the potential for injustice at all stages of this complex decision-making process, from the assumptions embedded in PES, to the choice of analytical method, to deliberation of results and (future) implementation of payments. Likewise, Irvine et al. [50] are attentive to the many ways that power dynamics shape inequitable water access and procedural justice for First Nation communities in western Canada.

4. Discussion

4.1. Definitions and Typologies

This sample of the literature demonstrates a diversity of views about the purview of procedural justice and how it relates to other dimensions of justice. This is not surprising given the diverse disciplinary backgrounds of authors and the multiple genealogies of justice that have developed in broader political theory, Indigenous studies, and psychology. Within the broader literature on justice, for example, a psychology-influenced discourse focuses more on individuals within interactions, while a discourse developed within political theory and the environmental justice movement stresses the importance of collective identities and political power. However, few articles in this sample explicitly discussed the genealogy or genealogies upon which they draw. Only eight of the 28 articles include any such discussion, and only five note the existence of different frameworks or genealogies. Some include references that can be used to infer a genealogy, but many do not. Furthermore, amidst the interdisciplinary mix of the water studies literature, an author’s disciplinary background is not always a reliable predictor of the discourse they employ.

There is some broad agreement about the definition of procedural justice among these 28 articles. Among the twenty articles that offer definitions for the term, all describe a focus on decision making and the establishment of rules. Fairness is the primary basis of nine definitions—for example, “fairness in processes of environmental management” [24] and “the fairness of the decision-making process” [38]—and is included in two more. None of these articles offered a definition of fairness. Six articles specify that procedural justice addresses not only the “how” of decision making, but also the “who.” Wilson defines procedural justice as “consideration of who is involved or has influence, and what process is used to make decisions” [43] (p. 95). Similarly, Wade asserts that procedural justice includes “consideration of who is not included in the process and the effects this exclusion may have” [46] (p. 1028; see also [36]). Other authors leave this “who” factor implicit.

Beyond this basic, shared definition, there are several significant disagreements. First, in an effort to attend to the causes, consequences, and experiences of (in)justice more fully, many articles in this sample attend to additional facets of justice alongside the procedural. Articles in the sample offer different combinations. In all but two, authors cite distributive justice alongside procedural. The tripartite discourse of distributive, procedural, and recognition justice is also particularly common (asserted by three articles). Several articles note a different trifecta: distributive, procedural, and interactive/interactional justice (three articles refer to “interactional” justice, and one refers to “interactive” justice; however, all three define this form of justice similarly). These differing typologies matter because they highlight different elements of justice and acknowledge and seek redress for different groups’ experiences of injustice. While the deductive approach of many of these studies suggests an aim toward identifying and refining a universal discourse of justice, Lecuyer et al. [24] take an explicitly social constructionist stance that leads them to offer a different set of dimensions. The authors urge researchers and practitioners to embrace the subjective nature of justice and use empirical analysis to identify context-specific notions of it. As noted above, they found justice-as-recognition and ecological justice to be necessary foundations. Water and wildlife managers attempting to intervene in this setting who are focused on procedural and distributive justice without these foundations, they suggest, would not be effective.

Second, the articles in this sample are divided as to whether or not they recognize a separate interactional dimension of justice. Wutich et al., for example, define procedural justice as “fairness in the rules and norms that determine distributive outcomes” and interactional justice as “fairness in the social interactions through which procedural rules are enacted and distributive outcomes are determined” [40] (p. 15). In contrast, other authors include all these elements within procedural justice, either making no distinction between formal rules and interactions or stating explicitly that procedural justice includes the interpersonal requirement to “engage all participants in nondiscriminatory ways” (Jenkins et al., in [36]). Meanwhile, Syme and Nancarrow [48] recognize interactional justice as a worthy category of study but describe it as simply an informal component of the overarching procedural justice.

More controversially, Wutich et al. suggest that interactive justice is synonymous with recognition. As noted in the introduction, they are not alone in this view within the broader literature (e.g., [22,23,41]). In contrast, Wilson [43] cites a different genealogy of literature, which asserts that discussion of “recognition justice, requires us to consider the question of political representation within a given social structure” [12] (Recognition Justice section).] In this genealogy, it is specifically political recognition that is sought through recognition justice, not interpersonal recognition. Several authors in the reviewed sample note the importance of recognition justice (sometimes also “justice-as-recognition”) for drawing attention to the significance of Indigenous sovereignty for realizations of justice (e.g., [26,36]). This variation matters because it can be unclear whether references to “recognition justice” are intended to highlight relatively apolitical, but deeply interpersonal issues, or deeply political issues of communal power. This, in turn, shapes the reach and aims of any proposed interventions.

Another important area of variation is the relationship asserted by these articles between distributive and procedural justice. While distributive justice was the first type systematically studied within environmental justice literature, it also appears to remain the most studied form within water literature. It would be expected within this search targeted toward discussion of procedural justice to find articles focused on this form without specific reference to the other forms. Indeed, this is the case for two articles, both of which focus on legitimacy and trust in water governance [37,39]. However, as noted above, procedural justice is almost always accompanied by discussion of distributive justice. In addition, even within this procedural justice-targeted search, there were multiple articles—three within the targeted sample and nine more within the broader sample—that either discuss distributive justice without mention of procedural justice or state that procedural justice is not within the scope of the article (e.g., [51,52,53]). For example, from the broader sample, Annys et al. [54] examine the impacts of an irrigation and drainage project in Ethiopia, with a primary focus on land tenure, farm economics, erosion, and flooding. Following in-depth discussion of distributional facets of the outcomes, the authors also note that more investigation is needed into the procedural justice implications of this and similar projects. Given a long genealogy of study in both qualitative and quantitative ways, it may be easier for researchers to work distributive justice into familiar methodologies. However, a relative lack of attention risks leaving procedural injustice less understood and less remedied.

The articles in this review also reflect a deeper debate about the purpose and value of procedural justice. Is it valuable for instrumental reasons, to serve ends other than itself, and if so, which ends? Does it have intrinsic value, as an end in itself? When both procedural and distributive justice are investigated, the former is often depicted as being in service of the latter. As Lecuyer et al. note, attention to procedural justice initially arose from an understanding that it could cause (or prevent) distributive justice, i.e., seeing it as “the decision process leading to the distribution of costs and benefits” [24] (par. 7). This relationship continues to be apparent in many of the definitions within this sample, implying that procedural justice is important insofar as it achieves distributive justice. It is one form of an instrumental stance on procedural justice that has been taken by many scholars [8].

The articles reviewed assert other instrumental values of procedural justice, as well. Several studies focus on its relation to compliance with water management. Leahy and Anderson [39] suggest that higher trust (with procedural justice as one contributing factor) prompts greater support for Army Corps of Engineers activities, while Dewa et al. [35] evaluate the effectiveness of a community consultation approach based on the degree to which community members come to agree with expert-recommended flood risk mitigation strategies. Procedural justice can also be viewed as valuable for contributing to more resilient water systems [34] or reducing the chance of resource-based conflicts [24]. Two additional studies come to somewhat different conclusions about the instrumental value of procedural justice. Both study residents’ perceptions of the procedural justice of local water management approaches primarily to explain their willingness to pay or resistance to water payment reforms. Grillos et al. [38] found in their survey in Honduras that more participatory decision-making processes were associated with more favorable ratings of the resulting water payment system decided upon. However, Bouma et al.’s [37] study suggests that this instrumental value of procedural justice may be weak or more situationally dependent. They found in their survey in India that different perceptions of procedural justice did not correlate with differences in participants’ willingness to pay water fees.

In addition to this instrumental value, some articles recognize an intrinsic value of procedural justice. Irvine et al. [50] assert the need for procedural justice to counter some of the long-standing harms of colonialism, noting the dismantling of First Nations government systems and the exclusion of First Nations people from environmental decision making. Achieving procedural justice in water management is not only a means toward achieving more just water distribution, but also “a necessary step toward self-determination” [50] (p. 11). Wilson et al. similarly assert the intrinsic value of achieving sovereignty. However, they do so through unusual definitions of distributive and procedural justice. After an initially typical distinction between distributive and procedural justice, the authors then treat “the extent to which a party is considered to have water rights and authorities” as part of distributive justice [43] (p. 95). More typically, this would be part of the procedures of decision making. However, the authors treat “jurisdiction” and “authority” as goods being distributed. This definitional move is one way to recognize the value of jurisdiction and the recognition of a group’s authority as important ends, not just means toward the equitable distribution of goods. In both cases, authors assert meaningful participation in decision making as an important aspect of political equity in its own right, not in service of another goal. (This, too, is a position widely taken in environmental justice scholarship [5,8,12]).

4.2. Participation, Power, and Procedural Justice

What can studies focused on procedural justice teach us about power and participatory decision making in water management? Among the reviewed articles, those that engage more substantively with procedural justice also tend to attend more to this question of power. In doing so, they suggest both some of the challenges and the importance of maintaining nuanced attention to power.

These substantively engaged studies show that a broad and holistic view of procedural justice is important. First, power is expressed and wielded in many ways. For example, Hamilton et al. [44] attend not only to the highly visible disagreements between people in different strata of the local power hierarchy, but also the less visible social and economic constraints faced by marginalized community members that prevent them from even objecting. Likewise, Kolinjivadi et al. [49] consider power wielded in various ways, including through economic resources, numerical majority, upstream location, and access to specialized knowledge. Second, a broad view of procedures, including not just formalized decision making, but also informal elements of the process, supports a nuanced view of power. Such a broad understanding of procedures within the procedural justice framework used by Kolinjivadi et al. [49] prompts the authors not only to identify injustices within the water planning they analyze, but also to suggest remedies suited to the particular context.

These articles also provide insights on the relationship between participation and power. Terms such as “stakeholder engagement,” “participatory decision making,” “participatory governance,” and “community participation” often accompany “procedural justice” in the sampled water studies journals. All these concepts share a concern with decision-making procedures and participation. However, as Dore and Lebel point out, “politics and power are not eliminated by participation, and require much more attention than they receive” [47] (p. 130).

In many contexts, evaluation of participation hinges on whether or not there is participation, or perhaps the extent of participation [55,56,57], but there is more to procedural justice than public participation, and a relatively simplistic more/less evaluation of participation misses critical power dynamics. Participation can serve many purposes, not all of them aimed at justice for the participants. Within development projects, for example, participatory approaches can be used in a “solutions backward” manner, with the aim of prompting greater acceptance of project plans among participants [47] (p. 129). Such approaches can, deliberately or unwittingly, consolidate the powers of local elites over other residents [58]. More cynically, they can also be mobilized as mere performances that actually consolidate state power [59] or be used to greenwash a project or discredit residents’ opposition to development plans [57].

In order to distinguish cursory or cynical uses of participation from more robust versions, a number of typologies have been offered. In 1969, Sherry Arnstein proposed a “ladder of participation,” which asserts that true “citizen participation is citizen power” and distinguishes this from participation activities “contrived by some to substitute for genuine participation” [60] (pp. 216–217). Eight levels of participation are proposed, ranging from two types of “nonparticipation” at the bottom, through three forms of “tokenism” in the middle, up to three levels of “citizen power” at the top. This model has been influential across many fields. More recently, alternative typologies of participation have modified the ladder metaphor to propose a three-dimensional “democracy cube” [61] or a less hierarchical wheel of participation [62].

A similar risk of weakening or dilution faces the concept of procedural justice. Within this sample, the term’s connection to politics and power imbalances is inconsistent. For example, those studies that assert the instrumental value of procedural justice, but not its inherent value, were less attentive to the power imbalances between different types of participation discussed in their articles (e.g., [35,39]). To shore up attention to power, some scholars have leveraged typologies to specify the types of participation involved; three articles in this sample reference Arnstein’s ladder, for example [33,47,48]. Others offer normative proposals for specific “best practices” in water management that should be included to ensure procedural justice (see [39] (p. 102) and [28]). These approaches usefully forefront power within approaches to remedying (or avoiding) injustice. However, they risk incompatibility when applying a universalist normative expectation for best practices to diverse social contexts [14]. Procedural justice, with its foundation in “fairness,” is an inherently value-laden concept. Fairness is a socially constructed value, varying between cultures, societies, and time periods. What counts as meaningful participation in decision making is not universally agreed (e.g., open voting, secret ballot, consensus-building), nor are principles for distribution (such as merit, equality, or need) deemed fair across societies or even across different goods within one society (e.g., jobs and voting) [24].

Taking a different approach, some scholars within this sample draw on context-specific understandings of justice to ensure fairness and power-sharing. This enables them to build particularly nuanced accounts of power and to suggest feasible avenues for confronting injustices. Wilson uses community-based research to highlight important incompatibilities between the Canadian government and First Nation understandings of just governance and the basic values of water. Irvine et al. [50] also use local context to guide their investigation, examining the potential for improving water justice in a particular place by applying a set of principles that had previously been useful for ensuring health justice in that place. As noted above, Lecuyer et al.’s [24] inductive approach was useful in building a local notion of justice.

Incorporating a capabilities approach has been another avenue scholars have taken to address power in context-sensitive ways. This approach sets a normative goal of a dignified life, but expects the means to achieve it to vary by context. Among this sample, Anderson et al. [31] and Kolinjivadi et al. [49] incorporate this approach most substantively. In doing so, they reveal potentially overlooked ways in which giving everyone the same rights or including everyone in deliberations in the same way actually results in very uneven participation in decision making.

5. Conclusions

This review has examined a sample of the water management literature to consider how the concept of procedural justice is defined and used and what insights studies of the topic might offer to the field. Within this interdisciplinary arena, there is considerable diversity in the definitions offered. While the studies agree in focusing on fairness in decision-making processes, they vary in the degree to which they focus on who is included or excluded in those processes and they include procedural justice within various different typologies of justice. The studies take quite different stances on the intrinsic or instrumental value of procedural justice, and they also differ markedly in how focused they are on justice within personal interactions or social structures. Delineating these disagreements is important not in order to narrow the field to agreement on one definition and stance on procedural justice’s value, but in order to contribute to clearer communication in the field about these different discourses.

With all this variation in usage, a cohesive set of lessons is difficult to assert. However, substantive employment of the procedural justice concept does offer some important insights for the field of water management. In particular, it can prompt more nuanced engagement with issues of power. Articles within this sample demonstrate that such engagement can help to distinguish substantive from perfunctory participation and to do so in context-sensitive ways. Combined with a broad view of procedure and different forms of power, this approach can also help to identify persistent injustices and develop feasible remedies.

The geographic and disciplinary breadth and quality of analysis found in the articles within this literature review show that procedural justice is relevant in a broad array of water management settings. And yet, compared to distributive justice and compared to the more general, less power-attuned topic of “participation,” procedural justice is less apparent in the literature. Indeed, the relatively small number of articles substantively engaged with procedural justice, given the breadth of the search, suggests that there is potential for more investigation of the concept within water management literature. In particular, there is room for additional work examining procedural justice as an end in itself, rather than as a means to achieving distributive justice or some other aim.

As the literature expands, it would be useful to attend to and make more explicit the understanding of justice (more generally, and procedural justice, more specifically) being utilized in a particular study. The danger here is not the plurality of definitions of justice, but rather, assumptions of commonality within that plurality [14]. With several genealogies to draw from across literatures in political theory, psychology, and environmental justice, and coming from so many different academic disciplines, authors and readers of the water management literature cannot take for granted a shared notion of justice. To avoid misplaced assumptions, it would be useful for authors to delineate more clearly from which genealogies they draw.

This review also suggests two more specific lines of inquiry that would be particularly productive. First, procedural justice holds the potential to bring greater attention and nuance to operations of power within different forms of participatory water governance. Second, empirical investigations of people’s notions of procedural justice in different social settings are needed. Rather than relying on prescriptions of universal best practices for just water management that are based on analysts’ perceptions, it would be useful to develop a better understanding of the areas of broad agreement that can be found empirically among different groups’ understandings of procedural justice, as well as a clearer understanding of where significant variations arise. As Lecuyer et al. [24] note, such an approach can bring both the practical immediate advantage of more effective and less conflict-ridden water management and the more fundamental benefit of building more just social relations.

Within the current political climate, as researchers in the United States face great pressure to distance themselves from certain topics and avoid “trigger” words such as justice and equality, dedicating more sustained attention to procedural justice may be an uphill battle. This pressure will likely be felt most strongly by water practitioners and researchers working with historically marginalized communities. Yet, it is here that sustained attention and commitment to procedural justice are most needed. In this context, the geographic breadth of engagement with this issue, as evident from the spread of researchers’ institutional affiliations in this sample of the literature, offers encouragement. While the lead authors for one-quarter of the articles in this sample were at United States institutions at the time of publishing, three-quarters were affiliated with institutions elsewhere. The intellectual and funding strength within this global network of researchers can continue to work toward more just water management in the coming years.