Peri-urban areas in the global south are experiencing over-exploitation and contamination of water resources as a result of rapid urbanisation. These problems relate to the ineffectiveness of the underlying institutions in this dynamic, multi-actor context. Institutions need to be considered during problem solving; however, peri-urban communities have limited insight into their institutional context. This research examines the extent to which problem solving capacity can be improved through gaming-simulation methods. A game-based approach is tested in a capacity building workshop with peri-urban communities in Khulna (Bangladesh). A role-playing game designed from game theory models is used to examine local drinking water problems through an institutional lens. Workshop evaluation shows that through role-play, participants learned about strategies in drinking water supply (in both the current and future scenarios) and about the potential to address water quality issues through cooperative groundwater monitoring. Results also show improved problem understanding with regards to institutions, actor strategies, and problem-solving constraints. Participants valued the interactive medium for comparing and evaluating strategies. This paper highlights limitations in game design and its implementation, and offers ways to address this in future applications.

Issues concerning water security plague agricultural, residential, and industrial sectors worldwide, despite advances in the understanding of biophysical water system processes.Proposed solutions to water challenges have been inadequate because they do not account for the dual role of humans as both contributing to and subsequently adapting to problems. This reality has motivated researchers to consider human decision-making and activities as endogenous to water system dynamics Vogel et al., 2015). Sivapalan et al. (2012) introduced the concept of socio-hydrology as a "new science of people and water" to meet this challenge. Socio-hydrology aims to broaden the study of water cycle dynamics with explicit consideration of social processes, similar to the field of ecohydrology, which incorporates ecological processes into the study of water cycling. This poses difficulties. Unlike ecohydrology, which involves a synthesis of two natural science disciplines, socio-hydrology involves incorporation of social processes, which many consider fundamentally different from processes tackled traditionally by natural scientists and engineers. Rittell and Webber (1973) define "wicked problems" as problems with unknown or indeterminate scope and scale, and for which there may be no definitive formulation or optimal solution -specifically problems of social policy and planning. It is possible to conceptualize socio-hydrology as a science that wrestles with wicked problems. Sociohydrology does not possess a precise set of principles or testable hypotheses characteristic of physical sciences, but advocates a holistic approach to examining water system challenges through inclusion of social processes (Lane, 2014;Troy et al., 2015; van der Zaag et al., This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. 2014). It is therefore challenging to unambiguously articulate socio-hydrology's guiding questions and methods, reconcile preferred and available data types, and define what modeling and prediction mean to this new field. However, far from being a deterrent, this wickedness is precisely what attracts and motivates the first generation of young researchers specializing in socio-hydrology -the doctoral student authors of this paper.Student ambitions are practical: socio-hydrology is both necessary and inevitable.Researchers increasingly acknowledge the importance of incorporating social processes into the study of water resources (Montanari et al., 2015;Rajaram et al., 2015). In the original account of wicked problems, Churchman (1967) states that the decision to wrestle with the whole rather than part of a problem is fundamentally a moral decision. Students have witnessed the rise of sustainability research in the water, climate, and environmental sciences, along with the shortcomings of that research in connecting with human-decision-making, management and policy. Tackling the whole of the problem, despite its challenges, is the most appropriate way to acknowledge and address the needs of the communities we claim to serve...

India’s urbanisation results in the physical and societal transformation of the areas surrounding cities. These periurban interfaces are spaces of flows, shaped by an exchange of matter, people and ideas between urban and rural spaces—and currently they are zones in transition. Periurbanisation processes result inter alia in changing water demands and changing relations between water and society. In this paper the concept of the hydrosocial cycle is applied to interpret the transformation of the waterscapes of six periurban villages in the fringe areas of Pune, Hyderabad and Kolkata. In doing so, three specific aspects will be investigated: (1) the institutions shaping the hydro-social cycle, (2) the interplay between water as a livelihood-base and the waterscape, (3) the interplay between the waterscape and water as a consumption good. This approach opens new views on periurban interfaces as emerging mosaic of unique waterscapes. The meaning of water, the rights to access water and the water related infrastructure are constantly renegotiated, as permanently new water demands emerge and new actors enter the scene. Especially this process-based understanding links the theoretical lens of the hydrosocial cycle with the object of investigation, the periurban space.

No abstract

Institutional work offers a promising lens for understanding institutional change, focusing on the efforts of actors in creating, maintaining or disrupting institutions. In this paper, we explore the capacity of a narrative approach to provide insights on institutional work, using a case study from the coast of Sweden. We identify four narratives that compete in the policy discourse regarding erosion and beach nourishment in the coastal province of Scania. The narratives reveal that actors hold different beliefs concerning the magnitude of the erosion problem, the division of responsibilities and the suitability of sand nourishment as a coastal protection measure. The narrative competition is considered reflective of past institutional discussions and ongoing institutional work in coastal management in Scania, confirming that narratives are used as sense-making and meaning-giving devices in institutional discussions.