Engaging with the politics of water governance

Zwarteveen, Margreet; Kemerink-Seyoum, Jeltsje Sanne; Kooy, Michelle; Evers, Jaap; Guerrero, Tatiana Acevedo; Batubara, Bosman; Biza, Adriano; Boakye-Ansah, Akosua Sarpong; Faber, Suzanne; Flamini, Andrés Cabrera; Cuadrado‐Quesada, Gabriela; Fantini, Emanuele; Gupta, Joyeeta; Hasan, Shahnoor; Horst, Rozemarijn ter; Jamali, Hameed; Jaspers, Frank G.W.; Obani, Pedi; Schwartz, Klaas; Shubber, Zaki; Smit, Hermen; Torio, Phil; Tutusaus, Mireia; Wesselink, A. J.

doi:10.1002/wat2.1245

Cited by 106 publications

(109 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…By sharing these examples, we want to propose that empirical attention to the (often messy) details of the everyday sociotechnical arrangements that make water move provides a useful entry-point for a practice-based understanding of water governance. As some of us have argued in more detail elsewhere [2], a practice-based understanding usefully shifts thinking about water governance away from societal orderings that can be assumed (theorized) before an empirical investigation, and therefore, rationally designed and "fixed". Instead, a practice-based understanding takes societal orders, and the governance these assume or produce, as always in-the-making and inherently performative.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attention to Sociotechnical Tinkering with Irrigation Infrastructure as a Way to Rethink Water Governance

Kemerink-Seyoum

Chitata

Guzmán

et al. 2019

Water

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Inspired by the proposal of political scientists and anthropologists to focus on “practice” as the smallest unit of analysis for understanding politics, as well as the renewed scholarly attention to materiality, this paper sets out to show that detailed ethnographic attention to processes and acts of sociotechnical tinkering provides a useful entry-point for understanding water governance. This is so methodologically, because infrastructural forms of tinkering are very visible, and therefore researchable, manifestations of agency and change in water governance. Attention to sociotechnical tinkering helps shift the basis for understanding water realities from official norms, designs and laws to everyday practices. This in turn allows questioning, rather than assuming, how expertise and agency are exercised and distributed in water governance, thereby also providing useful information for re-thinking water politics. In addition, by explicitly engaging with the contingency and capriciousness of actual water flows, a sociotechnical tinkering approach entails a much-needed re-appreciation of the materiality of water, infrastructure and other matter, a re-appreciation that extends to those who design, construct, operate and use water infrastructure.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attention to Sociotechnical Tinkering with Irrigation Infrastructure as a Way to Rethink Water Governance

Kemerink-Seyoum

Chitata

Guzmán

et al. 2019

Water

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“…Thus portraying Dutch delta planning activities suggests that they have a coherence and stability that those involved in them may find difficult to recognize. As we are showing elsewhere, in the Netherlands itself, ideas about what constitutes the best approach for living in, and dealing with, a delta are continuously changing and subject to debate (Van Buuren, Ellen, and Warner 2016; Zwarteveen et al 2017;Zegwaard et al, 2019). The presentation of the Dutch Delta Approach as a tested solution for helping to achieve resilient and prosperous deltas is, therefore, clearly also a construction specifically invented to help create enthusiasm for Dutch water expertise in other parts of the world.…”

Section: A Changing Context: From Aid To Tradementioning

confidence: 99%

Making waves in the Mekong Delta: recognizing the work and the actors behind the transfer of Dutch delta planning expertise

Hasan

Evers

Zegwaard

et al. 2019

Journal of Environmental Planning and Management

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The government of the Netherlands actively promotes Dutch delta planning to other deltaic countries. This paper describes and analyzes the Dutch-Vietnamese interactions and relationships around the development of the Mekong Delta Plan as a case of policy transfer. The paper uses an approach that regards policy transfers as processes of translation. It draws attention to the work that goes into making Dutch delta expertise and knowledge useful elsewhere. The paper shows that the financial and political support for Dutch Delta Planning expertise in Vietnam needed to be actively and continuously wielded to keep the process going. We conclude that there is merit in understanding policy transfer as a process of translation between many actors, all of whom change, learn, and influence not just each other but also what is transferred. Such an understanding allows better acknowledgement of the deeply dialogic and relational character of policy transfer processes.

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“…Such an approach departs from understandings and uses of governance as a tool to achieve predefined 'good' outcomes that are centered on predefined normative principles, such as accountability, transparency, participation, inclusiveness, and legitimacy [35]. Rather, it stresses the need for empirically assessing how processes of governing water actually happen-and not how governance should happen-and what the distributional outcomes of such processes are [36].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Water Brokers: Exploring Urban Water Governance through the Practices of Tanker Water Supply in Accra

Alba

Bruns

Bartels

et al. 2019

Water

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Accra, the capital city of Ghana, is characterized by limited networked supply, heterogeneous water providers, and various forms of provision. In this paper, we explore how the people delivering water through water tankers shape the distribution of water across the city. Drawing on empirical descriptions of water sourcing and distribution by truck drivers, we show that who gets what water at what price is shaped by the ability of tanker drivers to act as brokers, piecing together various social and material arrangements and resorting to different rationalities and expertise. We analyze how state actors deal with tanker supply seeking to reconcile their mandates with the realities of water supply. Analyzing urban water supply through the practices of water distribution, we show the messy and open-ended character of water governance processes. A practice-based approach makes the complex interrelations between different water providers across the city visible, and underscores the role of individual and collective identities, emotions, moral norms, and unequal interdependencies between actors in shaping urban water distributions.

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Engaging with the politics of water governance

Cited by 106 publications

References 14 publications

Attention to Sociotechnical Tinkering with Irrigation Infrastructure as a Way to Rethink Water Governance

Attention to Sociotechnical Tinkering with Irrigation Infrastructure as a Way to Rethink Water Governance

Making waves in the Mekong Delta: recognizing the work and the actors behind the transfer of Dutch delta planning expertise

Water Brokers: Exploring Urban Water Governance through the Practices of Tanker Water Supply in Accra

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