False Promises: The contours, contexts and contestation of good water governance in Lao PDR and Alberta, Canada

Matthews, Nathanial; Schmidt, Jeremy J.

doi:10.7564/14-ijwg61

Cited by 17 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Simons et al, 2015); a better understanding of the interaction of global and local weather and climate processes, through integration of hydrology, hydrogeology and agronomy with climate and social science; systematic consideration of the influence of processes beyond the water box (e.g. food trade, international agreements); improved integration of the findings with established thinking on appropriate infrastructure and technology; improved documentation of experience with adaptation management techniques (DFID, 2015;see Hallegatte, 2009); integration of the thoughts on 'water tenure security' (Hodgson, 2016); and a better understanding of the way that political and economic systems, corruption, and transparency influence all of the above (Matthews and Schmidt, 2014). There is also considerable gain to be had by combining extensive comparative research into water security processes and outcomes with deeper contextualised work on how local variations in water security occur.…”

Section: The Route To Effective Water Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Reductionist and integrative research approaches to complex water security policy challenges

Zeitoun

Lankford

Krueger

et al. 2016

Global Environmental Change

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(2016) Reductionist and integrative research approaches to complex water security policy challenges. Global Environmental Change, 39 . pp. 143-154. ISSN 0959-3780 DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2016 Reuse of this item is permitted through licensing under the Creative Commons: AbstractThis article reviews and contrasts two approaches that water security researchers employ to advance understanding of the complexity of water-society policy challenges. A prevailing reductionist approach seeks to represent uncertainty through calculable risk, links national GDP tightly to hydro-climatological causes, and underplays diversity and politics in society. When adopted uncritically, this approach limits policy-makers to interventions that may reproduce inequalities, and that are too rigid to deal with future changes in society and climate. A second, more integrative, approach is found to address a range of uncertainties, explicitly recognise diversity in society and the environment, incorporate water resources that are less-easily controlled, and consider adaptive approaches to move beyond conventional supply-side prescriptions. The resultant policy recommendations are diverse, inclusive, and more likely to reach the marginalised in society, though they often encounter policy-uptake obstacles. The article concludes by defining a route towards more effective water security research and policy, which stresses analysis that matches the state of knowledge possessed, an expanded research agenda, and explicitly addresses inequities.Complex Water Security

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Section: The Route To Effective Water Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Reductionist and integrative research approaches to complex water security policy challenges

Zeitoun

Lankford

Krueger

et al. 2016

Global Environmental Change

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146

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“…What we researched and discussed in Darjeeling and Sikkim mirrors the nature and circumstances in which hydropower projects are being rolled out in fragile democracies in the region: in India's North-East and in the neighbouring Mekong Basin. In the Lao People's Democratic Republic, the rush to implement hydropower participatorily happens where historically there has been no culture of participation (Goldman, 2001;Grumbine & Xu, 2011;Matthews & Motta, 2015), and where civil society is either absent, heavily restricted and/or criminalized (Matthews & Schmidt, 2014). Our findings draw attention to what is likely ongoing as a rhetoric of cooperation, consensus, citizen participation and engagement in processes of building large dams as climate mitigating strategies in these and other areas.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 85%

Watered down? Civil society organizations and hydropower development in the Darjeeling and Sikkim regions, Eastern Himalaya: A comparative study

et al. 2018

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Mitigating climate change is often framed as the ultimate collective action problem of this era and great emphasis is made on the need for approaches that foster 'cooperation' and 'consensus'. This paper argues that the irony of this rhetoric could not be more stark; climate policy framing is an exclusionary process, and climate mitigating interventions that are engineered essentially to address neoliberal economic concerns rather than environmental challenges are often the source of multiple new conflicts. In this regard, this paper shows how the response of local non governmental organisations (NGOs) to hydropower development in the Darjeeling region of West Bengal in the Eastern Himalayas bears evidence to Gramscian analyses of 'the manufacture of consent' between elite bourgeois actorsthe state, formal civil society, political parties and the private sector. Such 'associational' unions are only occasionally interrupted, as in the case of the people's movement, Affected Citizens of Teesta (ACT) in North Sikkim. Finding a balance between resistance and enabling political space to think and act differently, the movement led to the cancellation of several hydropower projects put forward in the name of climate mitigation, and in the process, drew attention to political processes involved in the manufacture of consent. Using case studies from the Darjeeling and Sikkim regions, this paper distinguishes between Gramsci's vision of the political space of disruption vis-à-vis the covert agenda of climate consensus. Key policy insights. A politics of consensus in relation to climate change is an outcome of, and in turn reiterates, a narrowing of distance between the state and civil society.. Including civil society in climate policy decision making and implementation is considered positive and inclusive, however, it is important to note that civil society is not always and everywhere inclusive and transformative.. Both at global and national levels, it is claimed that climate change interventions happen in an overall framework of participatory, inclusive environmental governance; in relation to hydropower development, we note that this is hardly the practice on the ground.

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“…Notably in the Mekong River in Southeast Asia, the TVA provided a key organizational model (Biggs 2006;Ekbladh 2010). In 1957, the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East backed the creation of the Mekong Committee (later the Interim Mekong Committee) following the independence of Cambodia, Laos PDR, and Vietnam from France (Matthews and Schmidt 2014). The creation of an RBO on the Mekong subsequently went through different permutations as the seven countries making claims to the river sought -or were compelled to seek -an international coordinating organization (Gardner 1997;Biggs 2011).…”

Section: From River Basin Organizations To Global Ios: Historical Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Water as Global Social Policy—International Organizations, Resource Scarcity, and Environmental Security

Schmidt

2021

Global Dynamics of Social Policy

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Water is an important area of global social policy. This chapter provides historical context for understanding how international organizations developed a distinctly global orientation to water policy alongside the emergence of global hydrology in the mid-twentieth century. Subsequently, international organizations linked concerns over water scarcity to integrated approaches to resource management. As human impacts on the global water system accelerated into the twenty-first century, international organizations influenced the shift from concerns over resource scarcity to those over environmental security. Water security is now central to how international organizations frame and respond to risks affecting interconnected environmental and economic systems.

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False Promises: The contours, contexts and contestation of good water governance in Lao PDR and Alberta, Canada

Cited by 17 publications

References 37 publications

Reductionist and integrative research approaches to complex water security policy challenges

Reductionist and integrative research approaches to complex water security policy challenges

Watered down? Civil society organizations and hydropower development in the Darjeeling and Sikkim regions, Eastern Himalaya: A comparative study

Water as Global Social Policy—International Organizations, Resource Scarcity, and Environmental Security

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