“Governance restricts”: A contextual assessment of the wastewater treatment policy in the Guadalupe River Basin, Mexico

Flores, César Casiano; Özerol, Gül; Bressers, Hans

doi:10.1016/j.jup.2017.06.006

Cited by 31 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…For example, the implementation of the wastewater treatment plant policy is only symbolic [43]. Also, the concept of water basin management which was introduced in 1992 has not been fully implemented and the river basin institutions do not impact the water policy [70]. This is exacerbated by the governance system where authorities change every three years, which implies an ample renewal of bureaucrats.…”

Section: Discussion Of Results and Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some reforms have already taken place in other water issues. For example, in 2015 a program called PROSAN merged two programs, one that supports the wastewater treatment plants construction and the program that supports the operation of the wastewater treatment plants [70]. This could be a key step to create a governance system that could support leapfrogging.…”

Section: Discussion Of Results and Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Table 3 below, shows how we operationalized Table 1 in order to assess the three catalyst factors of leapfrogging under the GAT framework. The GAT assessment matrix has shown its academic relevance in previous publications, where they were used to evaluate the implementation of the wastewater treatment plant policy in Mexico [44,70].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous applications of the GAT have delivered valuable outcomes for the understanding of the Mexican water governance context [43,44,[70][71][72][73]. The GAT considers governance as "beyond merely government", it is a context for decision-making and implementation; which can be both supportive and restrictive for those processes.…”

Section: Theoretical Framework For the Governance Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Governance Assessment of the Flood’s Infrastructure Policy in San Pedro Cholula, Mexico: Potential for a Leapfrog to Water Sensitive

et al. 2019

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Climate change together with population growth and land-use change have increased the risk of urban floods. Urban floods cause severe damages to cities and their inhabitants, and they are expected to increase over time. Consequently, urban adaptation is required to shift from traditional infrastructure (grey) to multifunctional infrastructure (blue-green) for improved flood management. Until recently, studies on the role and adoption of blue-green infrastructure have centered around large cities in developed countries, including Melbourne and Rotterdam, among others. Meanwhile, middle-sized cities in developing countries have received less attention. According to the Urban Water Management Transition Framework (UWMTF), cities in developing countries can learn from the experiences of developed cities and leapfrog to more 'water sensitive' practices. Although leapfrogging is context-dependent, our understanding of factors that support leapfrogging remains embryonic. This paper contributes to the scholarly understanding of the governance factors that support and limit leapfrogging. By applying the Governance Assessment Tool through semi-structured interviews and reviewing secondary data, this research assessed the implementation of flood protection infrastructure in San Pedro Cholula, a middle size city of Mexico. This work found the most supportive quality for delivering multifunctional infrastructure, was the extent of the governance system. The governance support extent was rated as moderate-low considering the platform for change is limited to government actors, which has further reinforced traditional approaches to infrastructure. In addition, the necessary governance features of coherence, flexibility and intensity were assessed as constraining change, with flexibility being the least supportive governance factor and ultimately hindering social actors' participation and innovation. While the contemporary governance arrangements of San Pedro Cholula are not yet conducive to promoting a leapfrog in the delivery of urban flood infrastructure, the analysis has pointed to three catalytic factors to underpin a leapfrogging situation: trans-disciplinary science; cross-sector partnerships; and, innovation experiments.

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Section: Discussion Of Results and Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussion Of Results and Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Theoretical Framework For the Governance Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Governance Assessment of the Flood’s Infrastructure Policy in San Pedro Cholula, Mexico: Potential for a Leapfrog to Water Sensitive

et al. 2019

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“…Operational rules in water provision practices and the authority to impose them are regularly subverted. This situation is similar to many water governance contexts in which enforcement is problematic [38], yet the surprising matter here is that the canalero's competent mediation avoids potential disorder. Instead of depending on formal allocation rules, the canalero acquires a detailed knowledge of the idiosyncratic, unpredictable and heterogeneous features of the sections in which he works and the complexities involved in water distribution.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 63%

Engaging with Flows: Embodied Cognition in Water Provision

Rap

Zaag

2019

Water

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This article provides an ethnographic example of a practice-based approach to water governance. It presents the situated case study of a canalero (canal operator) in the everyday water distribution of an irrigation system in Western Mexico. The canalero represents the low-ranked field operators at the frontline of many water provision organizations around the world, thereby providing a wider relevance to this case study. In spite of different waves of modernization that aimed to reduce ‘the human element’ and control water flows from a distance, canaleros still operate the manually adjustable gates and intakes in many medium and large open canal irrigation systems. Through a precise documentation of the daily routines of administering water, money, and data flows, anticipating shortages and mediating between conflicting demands, we conceptualize their semi-autonomous field of competent action. In contrast to a rule-based or normative approach to water governance, we will argue that the canaleros’ cognition and competencies in mediating multiple resource flows are embodied and situated in specific social, technical and spatial arrangements for water provision. However, this field of professional competence is not clearly delineated and gets regularly contested in practice. The water operators deal with these ‘problems of control’, by drawing on their situational knowledge and embodied cognition acquired on-the-job. This case study outlines a framework for a practice-based and decentered study of water governance, focused on cognitive processes in water provision arrangements.

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Corporate governance and sustainability in water utilities. The effects of decorporatisation in the city of Naples, Italy

et al. 2020

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The recent economic literature has largely investigated sustainability in the provision of public utilities, highlighting the role of governance models in the determination of economic results. Little attention however has been devoted to the social and environmental dimensions of sustainability. In Italy, a long‐lasting debate on governance structures in the water sector has been fuelled by scholars and policymakers for more than 30 years, whereas the first (and unique) experiment involving the return of full public management in water provision is taking place in the city of Naples. The present work analyses this peculiar case study, aiming to assess the effects of a major governance shift that occurred in the early 2010s—that is, decorporatisation—in terms of economic, social and environmental sustainability. We resort to a bundle of qualitative and quantitative techniques to address the research question and our exploratory results suggest that decorporatisation was overall beneficial: Although little changed in terms of economic sustainability, the social and environmental dimensions benefitted from the shift in governance.

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“Governance restricts”: A contextual assessment of the wastewater treatment policy in the Guadalupe River Basin, Mexico

Cited by 31 publications

References 27 publications

Governance Assessment of the Flood’s Infrastructure Policy in San Pedro Cholula, Mexico: Potential for a Leapfrog to Water Sensitive

Governance Assessment of the Flood’s Infrastructure Policy in San Pedro Cholula, Mexico: Potential for a Leapfrog to Water Sensitive

Engaging with Flows: Embodied Cognition in Water Provision

Corporate governance and sustainability in water utilities. The effects of decorporatisation in the city of Naples, Italy

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