Using the concept of sociotechnical tinkering, this paper provides detailed empirical observations about the everyday practices of design, construction, operation, maintenance and use of a piped water supply network in a small town in Mozambique. We use these to show that the form, materiality, and functioning of this water infrastructure are constantly changing as result of interactions with its physical environment as well as in response to experimentation and improvisation by engineers, construction workers, operators and water users. Sociotechnical tinkering not just (re)distributes water, but also provides an avenue through which powers to control water flows can be wielded and exercised. In this sense, empirical attention to sociotechnical tinkering provides a useful entry-point for rethinking the distribution of control, authority and responsibility in water governance, or more broadly the relations between power and infrastructure. This, in turn, may yield new inspirations for identifying pragmatic possibilities for progressive water politics.

Since the UN Water Conference in 1977, international debates have centered on global water scarcity and achieving sustainable development. In 1995, Morocco introduced a water policy to strengthen the country’s socio-economic development through irrigated agriculture, while ensuring the long-term sustainability of water resources through integrated water resource management (IWRM). Empirical research, however, reveals decreasing groundwater levels and increasing inequalities around water access. The purpose of this article is to shed light on the challenges this policy provokes for achieving sustainable development, the limitations it faces to implement IWRM, and provide insights on how the policy is linked to the increased pressure on water resources as reported in the literature. We conducted a content analysis of ten key water policy documents and thirty-seven in-depth semi-structured interviews undertaken between 2020 and 2021 with governmental actors and inhabitants of the Middle Draa Valley (south Morocco). We found that sustainability and social-inequality problems unintendedly triggered by the policy were linked to three factors: the use of a disciplinary approach for policy formulation and its limitations to encompass the complexity of the water-related problems, the compartmentalization of government sectors hindering the development of sound solutions to water-related problems, and the neglect of social, economic, and political factors affecting actual access to water.

This paper aims to contribute to the relatively few empirical studies done on how processes of urbanization affect water supply in smaller towns by providing an in-depth case study of Bushenyi-Ishaka municipality in Uganda. The paper shows how changes in water service provision as a result of the rural to urban transformation of the area differently affect various groups of water users in their access to water. Based on this research, the authors question the process of categorization and labelling in public service delivery, especially rigidly distinguishing between urban and rural water infrastructures and management models, as it often (re)produces binaries and potentially creates structural inequities. Building further on literature focusing on understanding and dealing with complexity, the paper calls for more empirical research to document everyday practices of providing and accessing water in changing environments in the hope to ultimately inform more effective policy interventions that aim for equity in water distributions.

<p>El ACS (Agua Caliente Sanitaria) de uso doméstico es una necesidad imperante debido a las condiciones de temperaturas bajas en la ciudad de Cuenca, para suplir esta necesidad actualmente se utilizan sistemas eléctricos y a base de GLP (Gas licuado de petróleo), los mismos que en su producción y uso emanan dióxido de carbono (CO2) el cual se constituye en el primer factor de contaminación.</p><p>La energía solar utilizada a través de colectores solares de tubos de vacío para la obtención de ACS, es una tecnología que aporta significativamente a disminuir la utilización de combustibles fósiles; actualmente en el Ecuador se comercializa colectores de este tipo, que han sido copiados o importados de países europeos y norteamericanos, en donde las condiciones meteorológicas y de localización son diferentes a las que se tiene en Ecuador. En el presente estudio se caracteriza un colector solar de tubos de vacío, a través de la verificación de su eficiencia con los datos ambientales, y de localización medidos en el lugar de emplazamiento y se estructura un diseño con características que favorecen su implementación en la ciudad de Cuenca, es decir considerando su localización, datos meteoroló- gicos y condiciones tecnológicas que posibilitan la fabricación de los mismos en la industria local.</p>

The authors wish to make the following correction to this paper [...]