Beyond water, beyond boundaries: spaces of water management in the Krishna river basin, South India

Abstract

As demand and competition for water resources increase, the river basin has become the primary unit for water management and planning. While appealing in principle, practical implementation of river basin management and allocation has often been problematic. This paper examines the case of the Krishna basin in South India. It highlights that conflicts over basin water are embedded in a broad reality of planning and development where multiple scales of decisionmaking and non-water issues are at play. While this defines the river basin as a disputed "space of dependence", the river basin has yet to acquire a social reality. It is not yet a "space of engagement" in and for which multiple actors take actions. This explains the endurance of an interstate dispute over the sharing of the Krishna waters and sets limits to what can be achieved through further basin water allocation and adjudication mechanisms – tribunals – that are too narrowly defined. There is a need to extend the domain of negotiation from that of a single river basin to multiple scales and to non-water sectors. Institutional arrangements for basin management need to internalise the political spaces of the Indian polity: the states and the panchayats. This re-scaling process is more likely to shape the river basin as a space of engagement in which partial agreements can be iteratively renegotiated, and constitute a promising alternative to the current interstate stalemate.

Transforming river basins: Post-livelihood transition agricultural landscapes and implications for natural resource governance

“…River basin based NR governance being institutionalized in many countries of the South is rooted in the principle of subsidiarity whereby resource management actions are taken at the lowest appropriate level (Molle, 2009;World Bank, 2004). The reconstitution of natural resource use in diversified livelihood landscapes of river basins links the local spaces of NR governance across multiple scales and institutional levels through resource and livelihood networks (Adger et al, 2005;Cleaver and Franks, 2005;Sreeja et al, 2012;Venot et al, 2011). Distinct interest group networks are formed in the wake of these new resource configurations that play a huge role in stakeholder based co-management of resources.…”

Inclusive spaces in Integrated River Basin Management: discerning multiple boundaries of resource relations

“…It is also a wellgrounded criticism that river basin governance in most countries where it has been implemented was appropriated to suit the needs and perspectives of the powerful even though it was projected to be sanitized of all political influences in the interests of the environment, efficiency and equity (Biswas 2004, Conca 2006, Molle 2008, Graefe 2011. These criticisms have led to serious reflections and reconsiderations as to the fit of river basins and strict hydrological boundaries from a management perspective (Moss 2004, Ferreyra et al 2008, Warner et al 2008, Venot et al 2011, Vogel 2012 and outright rejection of it by others (Biswas 2004, Shah and van Koppen 2006, Graefe 2011.…”

“…Cleaver and Franks (2005) on the strength of experience from the Usangu Basin in Tanzania and later Venot et al (2011) based on a case study of the Krishna basin in India, pointed out that numerous social networks through which people access resources and manage their livelihoods lead to permeable and fluctuating resource use boundaries across multiple scales and institutional levels. Smith (1969) even while stating that 'the identity of the drainage basin seems to offer a concrete and "natural" unit which could profitably replace political units' cautions that in many cases river basin unity is achieved not in the drainage basin as a whole but in those parts which have relevance for a particular activity; very few recognizing the interrelations of the whole drainage basin in any conspicuous way.…”

Protected areas and regional development: conflicts and opportunities - presented on the example of the UNESCO biosphere reserve Bliesgau

“…water conflicts cf. Venot et al 2011). There are also conflicts between nature protection and tourism indicated in the literature (e.g.…”