Blended finance, transparent data, and the complications of waters' multiple ontologies

Abstract

Abstract. In this article, I will utilize the elusive and fluid identity and texture of water to complicate an essentialist view of modern water that finds new relevance in claims to close the financing gap to provide safely managed water for all by the year 2030. To close this gap, models of blended finance are pursued that rely on transparent and auditable performance data of digital systems. Tracing the implementation of pay-as-you-go (PAYGo) water dispensers in off-grid areas in the Global South, I will demonstrate that the supposedly transparent and objective data generated from remote monitoring systems form part of the enactment of only one water reality amidst the multiple enactments of waters in relation to their sociotechnical environments, non-human encounters, and human bodies. Drawing on ethnographic material from two different settings in Kenya – the so-called informal Nairobi settlement of Mathare and a village called Kondo – I will show that, on the one hand, waters' multiplicity proliferates and, on the other hand, multiple waters and alternative water realities are deliberately undone. The paper closes with a call for the attentiveness to multiple waters.

Hydrosocial geographies: Cycles, spaces and spheres of concern

“…Other technologies, such as the 'water ATMs', increasingly found across the Global South, purify and dispense water in ways that do not fit distinctions of formal or informal infrastructure as they operate locally yet manage water quality and payments through cloud computing (Schmidt 2020). Tristl (2022) shows how similar technologies in Kenya operate through forms of blended finance and data-driven governance that facilitate and complicate multiple water ontologies. As Hoefsloot et al (2023) show in their analysis of the 'datafication' of water in Lima, hydrosocial geographies are increasingly shaped by the data used to monitor and control water access and relations between utilities and consumers.…”